W8 - Education Flashcards
(40 cards)
Aptitude
assessment of future learning potential
Main purpose of educational assessment
same purpose as other psychological assessment (e.g., mental health/clinical)
- Measure and observe behaviour
- Gauge student ability and competencies (fair, objective)
- Diagnose (if conducting a clinical assessment)
- Guide treatment/educational interventions
- Serve the best interests of the child; and society more generally
Educational testing, rather than psychological assessment
- more widely adopted.
- standardized tests are used to gauge student ability/proficiency
- more objective than an individual teachers’ assessment of a written task.
- provides hard data for education and policy makers to determine resourcing, teacher performance, and whether ‘new curriculum changes or teaching techniques’ are effective
Information can be interpreted and used in a variety of ways - main purposes of educational testing
normative approach – other students (inter)nationally
criterion approach – achievement expectations or standards
ipsative approach – student’s past performance
- to inform starting points for teaching
- to evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs and interventions
- to award qualifications (graduation!)
- to diagnose specific student misunderstandings or errors
Screening and program planning
Screening
- Wide-scale, mass standardized testing
- Identify individuals needing assistance or diagnostic assessment (e.g. literacy proficiency)
Program Planning
- Instruction, intervention
Diagnosis/Service Eligibility
- Formal assessment of strengths and weaknesses of individuals
- Diagnosis: specific learning disorder, intellectual impairment, or giftedness
Progress monitoring and evaluate outcomes
Progress monitoring
- Through lesson, module-course, year, program or intervention (is it working?)
- Frequent monitoring useful (for student, for educator)
Evaluate outcomes
For individual:
-> after special education, learning assistance, remediation, etc.
-> at end of course, grade, class
For whole school, district and/or country after change in curricula, policy
Formative versus summative assessment
Formative Assessment: achievement during instruction
- > e.g questions in class, practice test, take-home exam, assignment
- > Guides further instruction
- > Role in fostering motivation and learning
Summative Assessment: achievement after instruction completed
-> e.g. formal exam, final grade in course
Considerations in classroom testing
To establish where students are in their learning requires a thorough understanding of:
- typical paths of development
- sequences in which understanding is normally established
- common errors, difficulties, and misunderstandings
Appreciation of learning as an ongoing process (cf. snap-shot of standardized assessment at one point in time).
Provides a more ‘objective’ measure than subjective impression of child’s ability (may be biased for or against).
Criticisms of one-off or end-of-course examinations
- Designed to judge and compare students on the amount of course content they have learnt
- Promote ‘performance’ rather than ‘learning’ culture
“learning” driven more by external pressure for results than by curiosity and intrinsic motivation - Encourage cramming (rote learning, rather than deep understanding)
- Create high levels of stress
Criticism of educational testing by teachers
- resent emphasis on test performance (snapshot of one point in time, rather than ongoing assessment throughout the year),
- fear scrutiny of teaching methods (resorting to teaching to the test), or that their employment/promotion may be tied to test outcomes
Criticism of educational testing by parents and schools
Some parents
- feel it puts too much pressure on children, and may underestimate their ability (test anxiety)
Some schools
- fear standardized assessment, because principals are forced to make changes when their school is “underperforming”
Criticism of educational testing in Aus
- school data is made publicly available (ranking) which means an underperforming school will be seen as less attractive (enrolment drops, and good students head elsewhere).
- Some states fear standardized assessment, because of news broadcasts that they are underperforming relative to other states
Assessment for policy decisions - large scale international testing
- Economies run on a literate, numerate, and now scientifically literate workforce (affects GDP)
- Australia does not produce enough scientists, doctors, engineers and high-skilled workers. We need to import foreign minds, either as students or fully trained professionals.
- Our international performance on these tests determines how much funding goes to schools, and our relative standing
- It determines class sizes, and levels of teaching training, and so on.
PISA and Aus performance
- international test of 15 year olds every 3 years
- core areas of reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy and financial literacy
- look up image
Benefits of CAT NAPLAN
More precise measurement of student ability
-> Minimises floor and ceiling effects, so greater differentiation by using a wider range of question difficulty, without adding to the length of the test for each student
Greater test-taker engagement
- > Less frustration at lower ability end (and enhanced self-esteem)
- > Potential to reduce anxiety, as challenge better tailored to ability level
- > Computers are fun, or so I’m told
General aptitude tests
General aptitude tests = intelligence tests
- Tends to tap fluid abilities or psychometric g more than crystallised
Also used to assess intellectual impairment and giftedness
- Diagnosis of intellectual impairment also requires significant interference with adaptive functioning
- Diagnosis of giftedness can be important to identify students who are underperforming due to boredom, and a lack of academic engagement.
Achievement tests
Assessment of past learning
- Tends to tap crystallised abilities more than fluid
Used to assess and diagnose specific learning disorders
- For example, reading impairment (dyslexia), writing (dysgraphia) or numeracy (dyscalculia)
- Often combined with aptitude (IQ) assessment, to identify patterns of strengths and weaknesses
Common aptitude tests
WPPSI
WISC / WAIS
Standford-Binet (SB5)
Both Aptitude and Achievement:
- Woodcock-Johnson-IV suite
- > Cognitive Abilities (Aptitude)
- > Achievement (Achievement)
- > Oral Language (useful for reading assessments)
Woodcock Johnson IV Cognitive Abilities
- More closely aligned with C-H-C model than Weschler tests
- Provides scores on broad stratum abilities, based on subtest scores of underlying narrow abilities
- Provides more comprehensive assessment than WISC-V
- > 10 subtests in standard battery (18 in extended)
- > Approx. 5 minutes per subtest (so around 60 minutes for standard battery)
The ideal scenario for test development is co-norming
- Co-norming is when you administer two or more tests, like an IQ and an achievement test (aptitude and achievement).
- Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-III) co-normed with WISC-V
- Woodcock Johnson IV- Test of Achievement (WJ-IV-ACH) co-normed with WJ-IV-COG
Why use co-norming
- Recruitment of a sample is the most challenging (and expensive!) part
- Reduces cost of developing two normative samples separately
- Allow for comparison across tests, factorial analysis (demonstrate factorial validity)
Gifted students
- are those whose potential is distinctly above average in one or more of the following domains of human ability: intellectual, creative, social and physical.
- Giftedness designates the possession and the use of outstanding natural abilities, called aptitudes, in at least one ability domain, to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers in the school.
Talented students
- are those whose skills are above average in one or more areas of performance.
- Talent designates the outstanding mastery of abilities over a significant period of time. These are called competencies (knowledge and skills).
- Outstanding mastery is evident in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers in the school who are or have been active in that field.
