POSITION PAPER 4

“Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, Muslim counselors should not use standardized assessment instruments at all”. Discuss.

By: NOR ASLINAWATI BINTI NAWAWI (0726078)

Before I proceed with my explanation, let me define the word assessment and instruments first. According to Tom Angelo (1995), assessment is as “an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public, setting appropriate criteria and high expectations for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. Instrument in general can be defined as any tool that can be used in order to implement economic policy. For example, the government may use interest rates as an instrument for implementing monetary policy, and taxes as an instrument for implementing fiscal policy.

In counseling, assessment instruments are developing in order to help the counselors assess their clients. As we know, in each counseling session, counselors need to assess their clients in order to know their performance and improvement. With these assessments, it will help the counselors to affirm those things in their session and meeting that are going well. Assessment also helps identify what is not going well, and often points to the specific changes that might be needed.

Assessment is not static; rather, it is an ongoing and continuous effort and process to improve the quality of instruction, clients and counselor’s learning, and understanding. Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, Muslim counselors should not use standardized assessment instrument at all. Is it true that we, as a Muslim counselor cannot use the instruments that was create by American people?

In my opinion, I strongly disagree with that statement because, assessment instruments are important for the counselors in term of making improvement and getting the information about the clients’ achievement, attitude, aptitude and so on. Yes, it is true that American and Muslim are two different cultures which are sometimes they have many arguments towards each other. But, in certain field, like counseling was begun and being explore by American people first. So, American has created and establishes too many types of assessment instruments in order to achieve their client’s target. With those assessments, Muslim counselor may use it in order to help them assess their clients as long as the instruments are not clash with the Islam rules and regulations. For example like giving clients a set of questionnaire and quizzes for the purpose of knowing their personality and ability.

In Malaysia itself, we are still less in preparing and providing our own types of assessments. We are still left behind from other development country. There will be a problem if we are refusing to use those assessments. For example, as a school counselors, there will be a question from our students about what should they be and focus on and what are the things that are most suitable for them in choosing their career? What are the answers that we can give to them if we do not use the instruments? And most of the instruments were from the American. We have to use it in order to help our students who are still confuse and need our guidance. We cannot reject the American instrument hundred percent, but as a professional, we should be able to identify which assessment instruments that can be use and cannot be use. In Islam also we are being push to make an improvement as well as it is equivalent in Islamic perspectives. It is okay for us to follow it, but everything that makes us confuse and disturb, we must refer it back to the Quran and Sunnah.

As the future Muslim counselor, we must educate ourselves to be better person so that our mind will be same like the American counselor level of thinking. Not all the subjects in the western assessment instrument have negative side but they do have positive side that we can take. Take the positive one and left the negative one. “Amar Ma’aruf Nahi Mungkar”. As a conclusion, I strongly believe that Muslim counselor can use the American assessment instrument in term of helping people in need, making improvement and assessing the clients.