Empirical Recovery of Learning Progressions Through the Lens of Educators
Learning progressions represent the relationship between concepts within a domain and how students develop increasingly sophisticated thinking therein. Typical evidence sources used to validate theorized learning progressions are also used to validate the use and interpretation of assessments, such as student cognitive interviews and psychometric analyses of item responses on assessments (Alonzo, 2018; Duschl et al., 2011).
In this manuscript, we propose that educators’ perspectives may serve as an independent source of evidence that can be integrated with traditional evidence sources (e.g., cognitive interviews with students, psychometric data). This manuscript describes two studies that used surveys to draw on educator knowledge of students to identify upper and lower bounds of a learning progression (MMaRS study) and to understand the order of intermediary phases of learning (ESTAR study).