International performance assessment of critical thinking: framework for translation and adaptation

Higher education institutions worldwide claim they impact students’learning outcomes within and across academic domains. Critical thinking (CT) is prominent among the intended outcomes (Braun et al., 2020). In this context, there is increasing interest in ecologically valid performance assessments (PAs) of CTthat can be used internationally (Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2018). While several studies have aimed to measure and compare CTskills across countries, this typically has been doneusing multiple-choice questions.Only a fewstudiesinvolveadaptation of PAs. Their results point to the need fora more refined adaptation process (Braun et al., 2020), especially in terms of functionally equivalent adaptation and redesign. Based on areview of previous approaches related to test adaptation, with focus onthe challenges of achieving cultural responsiveness, we propose a conceptual framework for adaptingPAsof CT for international studies. The framework differentiates between two stages and three adaptation designs. The first stage involvesa collaborative approach to the design of PAsof CT. The second stageoffers three design alternatives whichdiffer in their emphasis on linguistic considerationsand cultural responsiveness.While thispaper focuses on PAs of CT for higher education, it may be applicable to pre-college education.