Position Paper No. 4

Siti Hajar bt. Che Nik
0724714


Assessment instruments are the tools that we use to evaluate our students achievement, aptitude and others. It is very important in order to know how far they have achieved and what can be done to help improve their weaknesses. As we can see, most counselors use the assessment instruments based on American. Everything that the counselors learn mostly is based on western theory including books and notes. Everything that we learn based on American culture has been use since long time ago and it is become a normal thing to everyone.

There are some advantages when we use the western assessment instruments which we are able to become more develop or up-to-date like them. We know as much as they know and there is not much difference. We are also able to learn a new thing which we never think about it before for example about how to expose the children to the outside world relate to the career counseling. For example, in American they are exposing their children to the career by bringing them to the workplace and let them explore themselves on how to work but with the teacher’s guide and observe. They are being giving advantage to experience in workplace. Maybe one day, counselors in our culture can use that kind of process to the students and give them some experiences which they will never forget and easy for them to achieve their ambition for the future. Besides that, by using their assessment will give us some knowledge and information about other cultures which we are able to know them more.

In my opinion, Muslim counselors can use standardized assessment instruments but in a certain situations. Our culture is not the same as them so we must use that assessment precisely. There are also some disadvantages when we are using their assessment instruments, whereby there are some assessment that is not suitable to be adapt to our culture especially something that relate to our religion for example, during a counseling session between Muslim female counselor and a male foreign client. The sensitive issue that is relating to our religion is when the client is going to hug that counselor. In western culture, hugging between male and female is a normal behavior but in Islam it is not encourage to do so because they do not have any legal relationship.

Each culture has their own differences for example in western, they are shaking their hand in a different way and there is a certain culture which a man and a woman cannot stare at each other. Other disadvantage is when we are to focus on the way they assess their students without making a research at first is it suitable or not to be apply to our students and we are not able to develop our own way to assess the students. We should give an opportunity to ourselves in order to create our own assessment instruments and not just to depend on their instruments.

As a conclusion, we as counselors that are going to use all of that assessment instruments should know what is the best for our Muslim. It does not matter whether we are going to use the western assessment or not but as long as it is the best assessment. We are the one who will develop our own assessment instruments for our culture.