Assessment

This section presents an overview of critical developments in technology-driven, classroom-based innovative assessment practices. It uses a framework organized around cognitive constructs, assessment functionality, and automaticity to review the technological developments of innovative assessments and identify how they have been advanced to meet researcher and practitioner needs.

Cognitive interviews play an important role in articulating the intended construct of educational assessments. This paper describes the iterative development of protocols for cognitive interviews with kindergarten through second-grade children to understand how their spatial reasoning skill development aligns with intended constructs. We describe the procedures used to gather evidence of construct relevance and improved alignment to task-based interview items through multiple pilot rounds before conducting cognitive interviews.

In this report section, we discuss the importance of aligning classroom assessments with learning goals and instructional practices to both shape and evaluate students’ learning opportunities. We describe a plausible solution for improving alignment by integrating theories of learning in the design of classroom assessments. We discuss ways in which the specification of theories of learning as learning progressions can improve alignment between classroom assessments and instruction by focusing on the content, task design, and data generated from classroom assessments.

There is strong agreement in science teacher education of the importance of teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), which includes their subject matter knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge. However, there are limited instruments that can be easily administered and scored on a large scale to assess and study elementary science teachers' CKT.

Bostic, J. (2023). Engaging hearts and minds in assessment research. School Science and Mathematics Journal, 123(6), 217-219. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12621

Bostic, J. (2023). Engaging hearts and minds in assessment research. School Science and Mathematics Journal, 123(6), 217-219. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12621

Bostic, J. (2023). Engaging hearts and minds in assessment research. School Science and Mathematics Journal, 123(6), 217-219. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12621

Bostic, J. (2023). Engaging hearts and minds in assessment research. School Science and Mathematics Journal, 123(6), 217-219. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12621

This study applied the many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM) to assess students’ knowledge-in-use in middle school physical science. 240 students completed three knowledge-in-use classroom assessment tasks on an online platform. We developed transformable scoring rubrics to score students’ responses, including a task-generic polytomous rubric (applicable to the three tasks), a task-specific polytomous rubric (for each task), and a task-specific dichotomous rubric (for each task). Three qualified raters scored 240 students’ responses to the three tasks.

The need for data literacy is an increasingly pressing priority in society, but most of the work in data-centred education has focused on developing skills at the middle school, secondary, and post-secondary levels, with little attention on the potential for engaging elementary-aged students in reasoning with and about data. This paper reports findings from a foundational study to explore the natural strengths, skills, and strategies that upper elementary students bring to reasoning about data-centred problems.