Localization of Student Achievement Monitoring (SAM) in CIS countries

The SAM math test was created in Russian for use in Russian schools and its use in other countries with a different cultural and linguistic environment requires adaptation and localization procedures.

SAM in math for primary school was localized in Armenian, Belarusian, English, Kyrgyz and Tajik languages. SAM in other languages is being constantly replenished with new banks of items.

In developing the national versions of SAM the following factors were taken into account:

• content of primary education in the country of localization;
• target audience of the test (which may not coincide in age and / or class of study with the Russian);
• cultural features of the country of localization (in particular the degree of familiarity of primary school students from different countries with tests and various forms of tasks, used response strategies and questionnaire experience);
• different testing conditions from Russian (for example, the required time limits, the need to take additional breaks etc.)

The work was carried out in close cooperation with the national centers for education quality assessment in the research countries.

The localized tools will be used during the cross-country research planned for 2019.