A few good sentences with each discussion post 6 questions—-no citations!
Discussion 1:Normative measures are based on a comparison of one’s performance to a sample, representative of some comparison group. Most measures have national norms, and the sample is stratified to include representation by sex, SES, ethnicity, age, etc. Some measures have specific norms. If we were selecting candidates to become jet pilots, national norms would not have enough specificity, so we would want to make a comparison between our candidates and successful current pilots, using their performance on such things as reaction time, decision speed, dexterity, and spatial conceptualization. (Who knew my utter lack of depth perception would lead to flunking out of jet pilot school?) Many students feel these comparisons are unfair. For example, if a normative measure is used to select students for a gifted and talented program and your child is not selected, we as parents would like to question the selection criteria and the validity and reliability of the measure as a selection tool. Police exams and Firefighter exams are routinely challenged when the results seem to put specific groups – e.g., women, African American sargents, etc. – at a disadvantage for selection purposes. Challenges are upheld or dismissed by the court system on the basis of an examination of scientific evidence regarding validity and reliability. This system is an alternative to cronyism, outright discrimination, bribery and nepotism as selection criteria, but requires continued re-examination.
Write a Discussion : When you have a chance to review the achievement motivation slides, you will see that I discuss the “Positive Stereotype” for the academic achievement of students of Asian descent or identification. However, with the advent of COVID 19, there has been an increase in hate crimes, against and greater sensitivity to, systemic discrimination of Asian people, who like Hispanic people, are lumped in a broad group despite separate origins, languages, culture, etc. We seem to have quickly forgotten internment during WW II, just as our recent political history tries to turn away from systemic racism and seemingly, return to Jim Crow laws.
Modern racism was generally thought to mean that people harbor racist attitudes, but recognize that society would reject overt expression. HOwever, polarity and a seeming acceptance of white supremacism masquerading as “nationalism” has made the expression of these attitudes somehow “okay”. Social psychologists tell us that our attitudes come from behaviors, rather than the other way around, so the increasing overt expression of racial hatred – even when expressed by proxies, people we admire such as political leaders, presidents, etc., brings these ideas out in the open to the detriment of vulnerable groups.
Hate crimes are shocking but unfortunately a part of our national story, as Isabel Wilkerson makes very clear in her seminal book, “Caste”. Even though we live in a time of misinformation, misdirection, alternate facts, etc., I think it is important to recognize that basic decency, respect for diversity, and kindness to others are important touchstones for American values.
Discussion 3: REliability refers to whether a test measures a construct in the same way, each time. Practice effects can impact reliability, as does poorly developed measures. A scale that typically is off by 5 pounds every time, consistently, is reliable. If it underestimates, you keep it, (obviously) even though its reading is not a valid estimate of your weight. Questions about reliability should be posted here.
Discussion 4:A professor at a local university thinks that his online classes may have shared information while taking their exams. He notices such issues as a similar pattern of error responses and relatively poor item discrimination, i.e., a group of low scoring students with a similar error pattern got the most difficult item on the test correct. He also noted similar omissions and incomplete responses on the essay questions. He asks if you if you think that a group of students is cheating on the online exam and wondered if there other explanations. He is considering requiring that the students take the exam at the same time with their cameras on, but worries that may not work either and also cause problems because it is an asynchronous class and may inconvenience honest students who may, for example, have other responsibilities during the schedule exam time.
What is your advice to the professor? Do you have other possible solutions?
Discussion 5:In the “getting started” lesson, I asked that you visit the professional testing website. I was particularly interested by Step 9 of website because it introduced the idea of item difficulty. While teachers typically grade a test on the basis of a passsing grade of 60% correct, step 9 points out that 60% correct, or an item difficulty of .60, actually is optimal for increasing the discriminatory value of the test. That’s discrimination in a good sense, separating those who know the course material from those who don’t. However, composing a test where students, on avearge, only get 60% correct is antithetical to what most teachers think is a good test. Reactions?——————-
Discussion 6:One morning at breakfast I had a chance to revisit Piaget’s theory of development. As you may recall, the demarcation between preoperational thinking and concrete operational thinking is Conservation in its many forms, such as Conservation or weight, volume, etc. Five-year-olds in the Piagetian view cannot overcome salient , unitary features like height to accommodate the interaction, for example, of height and width. A year or so ago, I re-enacted Conservation of liquid volume with my then-5-year-old daughter, Sofia, and she was able to get the concept and keep up with it. Today she served as a lab assistant as a 5-year-old cousin joined us for breakfast and wanted the “taller” juice glass. Sofia explained that the shorter one, actually had more juice because it was wider. He persisted in his choice. Though Piaget is often criticized as being quasi-scientific, nonetheless, some of ideas continue to “hold water – o jugo para que”. Our visitor was more into his internal perspective (accommodating) than external reality (assimilating) if we allow the classic version of Piaget’s process of equilibration some latitude. After breakfast, we conducted an experiment. Sofia assured him that “Dad’s experiments works”. Filling up the glasses one at a time, we demonstrated the tall, thin glass had “less room” than the short, wide one. Immediately afterward, I tested his ideas and he correctly chose which glass had “more” and upon inquiry said it had “more room” which seemed to suggest new learning. However, when trying to explain the new concept to Sofia, later, our visitor went back to preoperational concepts, i.e., taking one dimension at a time.
Relevance to the course? Accurate assessment must take into account developmental growth and learning. While we can provide rote instruction, and get parrotted answers, to truly incorporate constructs and concepts the underlying cognitive structures must be in place. All children can learn – at least something, but we must be attuned to their developmental progression if we expect that the constructs we teach will last. This is more than just going from unfamiliar to familiar as you might in a course like this, but having the developmental foundation.
Typically there has been tension between Piagetian based early education models – Montessori and Emilio Reggio, and Behavioral models – Distar and Skinnerian or between associationist and constructivist math instruction, or between whole language and interactive systems in reading. These philosophical distinctions have been based on different views of how we learn. IN my view learning is very complicated and can take into account all models of learning to understand what is learned. By this I mean if we fail to (a.) take a measure of the child’s developmental progress, (b.) break down what is to be learned into digestible units, & (c.) hold the big picture in mind, we will be unlikely to have positive outcomes for kids. Assessment tends to look at a moment in time and fails to get the big picture, which is why longitudinal assessment, very rare, is so important. ONe other note: Item difficulty: If you get a 25% correct rate on a 4-choice item, and there is a random response pattern for both the best and worst students on the item, i.e., both get the item wrong at the same rate (item discrimination), when you expect the better students to get a hard item, right —- then you either have a poorly written item or it is too far above the current developmental level of the student responding.
It is easy to forget, and I am guilty of this as well, that just because a student does poorly on a test does not mean that they cannot work on their level of developmental functioning and substantially improve in the future. However, this becomes increasingly difficulty as someonne gets farther and farther behind or when they get dropped into the middle of an inappropriate grouping that has moved passed them – think of a student going from self-contained to regular classes, from a low functioning inner city school to a highly rated suburban district, from high school to college. Kids in those circumstances tend to personalize their initial failure and think “I can’t do it”. Thus they now have two things to overcome (a.) poor preparation and (b.) a feeling of being “not good enough”. This leads to self-defeating behaviors such as not studying, showing up late, or not handing in homework which are actually protective mechanisms to protect self-esteem, but give little chance of success because what is really needed is “doubling down” on effort.
One morning at breakfast I had a chance to revisit Piaget’s theory of development. As you may recall, the demarcation between preoperational thinking and concrete operational thinking is Conservation in its many forms, such as Conservation or weight, volume, etc. Five-year-olds in the Piagetian view cannot overcome salient , unitary features like height to accommodate the interaction, for example, of height and width. A year or so ago, I re-enacted Conservation of liquid volume with my then-5-year-old daughter, Sofia, and she was able to get the concept and keep up with it. Today she served as a lab assistant as a 5-year-old cousin joined us for breakfast and wanted the “taller” juice glass. Sofia explained that the shorter one, actually had more juice because it was wider. He persisted in his choice. Though Piaget is often criticized as being quasi-scientific, nonetheless, some of ideas continue to “hold water – o jugo para que”. Our visitor was more into his internal perspective (accommodating) than external reality (assimilating) if we allow the classic version of Piaget’s process of equilibration some latitude. After breakfast, we conducted an experiment. Sofia assured him that “Dad’s experiments works”. Filling up the glasses one at a time, we demonstrated the tall, thin glass had “less room” than the short, wide one. Immediately afterward, I tested his ideas and he correctly chose which glass had “more” and upon inquiry said it had “more room” which seemed to suggest new learning. However, when trying to explain the new concept to Sofia, later, our visitor went back to preoperational concepts, i.e., taking one dimension at a time.
Relevance to the course? Accurate assessment must take into account developmental growth and learning. While we can provide rote instruction, and get parrotted answers, to truly incorporate constructs and concepts the underlying cognitive structures must be in place. All children can learn – at least something, but we must be attuned to their developmental progression if we expect that the constructs we teach will last. This is more than just going from unfamiliar to familiar as you might in a course like this, but having the developmental foundation.
Typically there has been tension between Piagetian based early education models – Montessori and Emilio Reggio, and Behavioral models – Distar and Skinnerian or between associationist and constructivist math instruction, or between whole language and interactive systems in reading. These philosophical distinctions have been based on different views of how we learn. IN my view learning is very complicated and can take into account all models of learning to understand what is learned. By this I mean if we fail to (a.) take a measure of the child’s developmental progress, (b.) break down what is to be learned into digestible units, & (c.) hold the big picture in mind, we will be unlikely to have positive outcomes for kids. Assessment tends to look at a moment in time and fails to get the big picture, which is why longitudinal assessment, very rare, is so important. ONe other note: Item difficulty: If you get a 25% correct rate on a 4-choice item, and there is a random response pattern for both the best and worst students on the item, i.e., both get the item wrong at the same rate (item discrimination), when you expect the better students to get a hard item, right —- then you either have a poorly written item or it is too far above the current developmental level of the student responding.
It is easy to forget, and I am guilty of this as well, that just because a student does poorly on a test does not mean that they cannot work on their level of developmental functioning and substantially improve in the future. However, this becomes increasingly difficulty as someonne gets farther and farther behind or when they get dropped into the middle of an inappropriate grouping that has moved passed them – think of a student going from self-contained to regular classes, from a low functioning inner city school to a highly rated suburban district, from high school to college. Kids in those circumstances tend to personalize their initial failure and think “I can’t do it”. Thus they now have two things to overcome (a.) poor preparation and (b.) a feeling of being “not good enough”. This leads to self-defeating behaviors such as not studying, showing up late, or not handing in homework which are actually protective mechanisms to protect self-esteem, but give little chance of success because what is really needed is “doubling down” on effort.
