AIOU Assignment BEd 1.5 Year 2.5 Year 8602 Educational Assessment and Evaluation Assignment 1

AIOU Assignment BEd 1.5 Year 2.5 Year 8602 Educational Assessment and Evaluation Assignment 1

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Q 1: Explain the significance and scope of establishment of partnership between the teacher training institutions of Pakistan?

Answer:

Society has developed itself into a complex system of organisations and interactions, therefore the demands on schools and schooling has become greater. The need for professional teachers grew with it. Teaching is formative in nature and one grows within the profession and hence through daily experiences. As a result of this, various countries have over the years developed different modes of school-based teacher training.

Society has developed itself into a complex system of organisations and interactions, therefore the demands on schools and schooling has become greater. The need for professional teachers grew with it. With the recognition of teaching as a profession it has been acknowledged that all teachers require specialised training, in order to develop the knowledge and competencies necessary to take on teaching. However, educating teachers in specialized institutes was not the whole answer in the demand for qualified teachers. At the end of the 1980s the growing dissatisfaction with ‘teaching practice’ culminated in a UNESCO report. (Down, 1995). Teacher preparation was regarded as insufficient, due to a lack of linkages between for instance subject matter and teaching processes, and preparation for diverse class/school situations. Furthermore, the lack of training of cooperating teachers and the lack of credibility of college or university supervisors was seen as a real problem. (Down, 1995). As a result of this, pre-service teacher education practically all over Europe, the USA and Australia went through vigorous changes. One model which tried to address these concerns was one which encouraged a strong partnership between universities, colleges and schools. (Down, 1995).

Since then, in different countries in and outside Europe, several models of partnerships and types of cooperation between schools and institutes for teacher education emerged, under the general heading of school-based teacher education. (e.g. Furlong, 1996, Bulloch, 1997 and Snoek, 2001). 

Therefore the main purpose of the Faculty of Education Professional Development School Partnership will be simultaneous renewal of the teacher education programme at the university and teaching and learning in schools. The setting up of Faculty-School Partnerships offers us the possibility of exploring different ways of learning as a result of which there will be greater relevance to the teaching-learning context (Teitel, 1998; Zeichner and Miller, 1997). PDSs create opportunities, which allow us, st annual atee Association of Teacher Education in Europe conference 749 as teacher educators, to take on different roles. It is within such a context that we expect beginning teacher educators to feel at their best. They have just left the classrooms and are therefore ideally positioned to establish the necessary philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings necessary for any professional discourse to take place. Experience has shown us the need to work together with teachers in schools. On the one hand we need teachers at the school site who, through their diverse qualities, will be good models to prospective teachers. In this respect teachers can serve as mentors or co-operating teachers, both fulfilling different but complimentary roles. On the other hand, the university lecturer has the opportunity of getting closer to the school and establishing the ground for educational discourse to take place between the student-teachers and lecturers alike. Such opportunities do not only effect the personal and professional development of participants in the classroom context but also address areas which go beyond the classroom and which effect school-life in general. The contribution by mentors should ascertain a faculty-school partnership in at least the following areas: the training of student-teachers, the development of school programmes and continued teacher formation. In this model, the student-teacher learns from a mentor and a cooperating teacher by spending quality time in the classroom observing the co-operating teacher perform tasks, asking questions and receiving assistance, and gradually assuming increasing personal responsibilities as his/her knowledge and skills develop. The cooperating teacher initially models the task for the student-teacher, and then provides coaching (i.e. instructions, feedback) as the student-teacher attempts the task, fading the amount of coaching and turning over more and more responsibility for independent task completion to the student-teacher as his/her skills develop. In their experience Neubert and Binko (1998) found that the PDS internship was more effective that the regular programme in preparing teacher candidates to maintain classroom discipline, use

reflect on their teaching. Berrill (1997) and Neubert and Binko (1998) explain that the use of mentors as teacher trainers in schools, has actually even had a profound developmental effect on the qualified teachers themselves. They become more skilled at using theoretical discourse as part of their daily practice. With the introduction of such partnerships we aim to create and sustain a climate where professional discourse and action take place which will be of benefit to the student-teachers and the schools. Rather than going in for a six-week block teaching practice where the student is in full-control of a classroom we would like to introduce an atmosphere where the student has opportunities to work in a number of scenarios/contexts with different groups of students. It will also create opportunities for students to experience school life and whole school activities/initiatives rather than being involved only with one class. Through this approach we hope to overcome one of the main problems facing beginning teachers when they are confronted with unexpected aspects of the job which reflect that teaching is by far a complex activity which goes well beyond teaching a subject or class but one which involves countless interacting and changing variables. The scenario we want is one which encourages, develops, nurtures and sustains professional dialogue which enhances the teaching and learning experience of all participants which now no longer involve student, class and university tutor only, but is extended further to include mentor and co-operating teacher. It also allows the student to engage in developing the skills of reflection and application which was difficult to engage in, given the previous model (Pollard, 1998).

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Q 2: Explain the concept of validity of a test; also explain different types of validity of test.

Answer:

Test validity is the extent to which a test (such as a chemical, physical, or scholastic test) accurately measures what it is supposed to measure. In the fields of psychological testing and educational testing, "validity refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests". Although classical models divided the concept into various "validities" (such as content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity), the currently dominant view is that validity is a single unitary construct.

Validity is generally considered the most important issue in psychological and educational testing because it concerns the meaning placed on test results. Though many textbooks present validity as a static construct, various models of validity have evolved since the first published recommendations for constructing psychological and education tests.[6] These models can be categorized into two primary groups: classical models, which include several types of validity, and modern models, which present validity as a single construct. The modern models reorganize classical "validities" into either "aspects" of validity[3] or "types" of validity-supporting evidence

Test validity can itself be tested/validated using tests of inter-rater reliability, intra-rater reliability, repeatability (test-retest reliability), and other traits, usually via multiple runs of the test whose results are compared. Statistical analysis helps determine whether the differences between the various results either are large enough to be a problem or are acceptably small.

Different types of validity of test:

External Validity

External validity is about generalization: To what extent can an effect in research, be generalized to populations, settings, treatment variables, and measurement variables?

External validity is usually split into two distinct types, population validity and ecological validity and they are both essential elements in judging the strength of an experimental design.

Internal Validity

Internal validity is a measure which ensures that a researcher's experiment design closely follows the principle of cause and effect.

“Could there be an alternative cause, or causes, that explain my observations and results?”

Test Validity

Test validity is an indicator of how much meaning can be placed upon a set of test results.

Criterion Validity

Criterion Validity assesses whether a test reflects a certain set of abilities.

• Concurrent validity measures the test against a benchmark test and high correlation indicates that the test has strong criterion validity.
• Predictive validity is a measure of how well a test predicts abilities. It involves testing a group of subjects for a certain construct and then comparing them with results obtained at some point in the future.

Content Validity

Content validity is the estimate of how much a measure represents every single element of a

construct.

Construct Validity

Construct validity defines how well a test or experiment measures up to its claims. A test designed to measure depression must only measure that particular construct, not closely related ideals such as anxiety or stress.

• Convergent validity tests that constructs that are expected to be related are, in fact, related.
• Discriminant validity tests that constructs that should have no relationship do, in fact, not have any relationship. (also referred to as divergent validity)

Face Validity

Face validity is a measure of how representative a research project is ‘at face value,' and whether it appears to be a good project.

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Q 3: Describe the importance of table of specification also develop a two way table of specification for 50 marks paper by selecting any unit from 9th class general science.

Answer:

The purpose of a Table of Specifications is to identify the achievement domains being measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appear on the test. Teachers cannot measure every topic or objective and cannot ask every question they might wish to ask. A Table of Specifications allows the teacher to construct a test which focuses on the key areas and weights those different areas based on their importance. A Table of Specifications provides the teacher with evidence that a test has content validity, that it covers what should be covered.

Designing a Table of Specifications

Tables of Specification typically are designed based on the list of course objectives, the topics covered in class, the amount of time spent on those topics, textbook chapter topics, and the emphasis and space provided in the text. In some cases a great weight will be assigned to a concept that is extremely important, even if relatively little class time was spent on the topic. Three steps are involved in creating a Table of Specifications: 1) choosing the measurement goals and domain to be covered, 2) breaking the domain into key or fairly independent parts- concepts, terms, procedures, applications, and 3) constructing the table. Teachers have already made decisions (or the district has decided for them) about the broad areas that should be taught, so the choice of what broad domains a test should cover has usually already been made. A bit trickier is to outline the subject matter into smaller components, but most teachers have already had to design teaching plans, strategies, and schedules based on an outline of content. Lists of classroom objectives, district curriculum guidelines, and textbook sections, and keywords are other commonly used sources for identifying categories for Tables of Specification. When actually constructing the table, teachers may only wish to use a simple structure, as with the first example above, or they may be interested in greater detail about the types of items, the cognitive levels for items, the best mix of objectively scored items, open-ended and constructed-response items, and so on, with even more guidance than is provided in the second example.

How can the use of a Table of Specifications benefit your students, including those with special needs?

A Table of Specifications benefits students in two ways. First, it improves the validity of teacher-made tests. Second, it can improve student learning as well.

A Table of Specifications helps to ensure that there is a match between what is taught and what is tested. Classroom assessment should be driven by classroom teaching which itself is driven by course goals and objectives. In the chain below, Tables of Specifications provide the link between teaching and testing.

Objectives Teaching Testing

Tables of Specifications can help students at all ability levels learn better. By providing the table to students during instruction, students can recognize the main ideas, key skills, and the relationships among concepts more easily. The Table of Specifications can act in the same way as a concept map to analyze content areas. Teachers can even collaborate with students on the construction of the Table of Specifications- what are the main ideas and topics, what emphasis should be placed on each topic, what should be on the test? Open discussion and negotiation of these issues can encourage higher levels of understanding while also modeling good learning and study skills.

Table of Specifications for a Performance Task (Cells can be cleared to create your own. You can also add rows.)

Standards

1. Reading 3.0: Read and respond to historically or culturally significant works of literature and conduct in-depth analyses of recurring themes. Reading 3.2: Analyze how the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on life, using textual evidence to support the claim.

2. Writing 1.3: Structure ideas and arguments in a sustained, persuasive, and sophisticated way and support them with precise and relevant examples.

3. Writing1.9: Revise text to highlight individual voice, improve sentence variety and style, and enhance subtlety of meaning and tone in ways that are consistent with the purpose, audience, and genre.

4. Conventions 1.1: Demonstrate control of grammar, diction, and paragraph and sentence structure and an understanding of English usage.

Conventions 1.2: Produce legible work that shows accurate spelling and correct punctuation

Objectives

1. SWBAT:

• Draw conclusions about literature through textual analysis.
• Respond in writing to recurring themes
• Use examples and quotes from the text to support their viewpoint on themes in the literature.

2. SWBAT:

• Write an introduction that includes a hook, thesis, and background information.
• Write organized body paragraphs containing textual support.
• Write an effective conclusion.
• Write transitions to connect ideas.

3. SWBAT:

• Use appropriate and effective words in writing.
• Vary sentence length and complexity.
• Write in a formal essay tone – avoiding casual and slang expressions.

4. SWBAT:

• Write complete sentences with little-no grammatical errors.
• Produce legible work that shows accurate spelling and correct punctuation and capitalization.
• Use MLA format.

Task Prompts

1. Pick one recurring theme from The House on Mango Street. What do you think Cisneros is trying to communicate through this personal narrative? Write a 4 paragraph essay on this question and use textual evidence to support your thesis.

2. Your introduction should include a hook, thesis, and background information about the novel or novelist. Details within each paragraph should support the main idea of each paragraph, and these main ideas should contribute to your thesis. The conclusion should restate your thesis and provide insight into the novel. Transitions should be used to connect ideas between paragraphs.

3. Check over and revise your work, or ask for feedback from the teacher or peers. Make sure to use your own words in describing your interpretation of the novel. Vary your sentence structures and pick words that capture your ideas precisely.

4. Pay attention to grammar, and use correct spelling and punctuation. Make sure that you are using your words correctly. Use the MLA format in citing references from the text or other texts.

Assessment Criteria (rubric)

1. Ideas: Essay is focused and uses interesting, original details. Thesis is clear, convincing, and fresh. Supporting details are accurate and relevant. Quotations are carefully selected, thought-provoking, and support thesis. Essay analyzes literature and shows thorough understanding of the text.

2. Organization: Strong organization highlights key ideas. Introduction is engaging and provides a clear direction. Details and commentary are closely linked to the thesis. Body paragraphs are organized and contain a strong balance between concrete details and commentary. Transitions link ideas together smoothly and naturally. Conclusion is thought-provoking and reinforces important ideas.

3. Style: Well-chosen words convey the message in a precise way, adding new levels of understanding. Word choice is explicit and vivid, and phrasing is memorable and readable. Sentences are specific, strong, and vary in complexity and length. Words are not wasted. Writing is fluid and strong.

4. Conventions: Essay is essentially free from grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Errors are so few and minor they are easily overlooked. Essay is presented in the correct format.

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Q 4: a) Explain the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy of education objective.

Answer:

Bloom's Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.

The Three Domains of Learning

The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al. 1956):

• Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
• Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)
• Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Since the work was produced by higher education, the words tend to be a little bigger than we normally use. Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers, trainers, and educators often refer to these three categories as KSA (Knowledge [cognitive], Skills [psychomotor], and Attitudes [affective]). This taxonomy of learning behaviors may be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude. While the committee produced an elaborate compilation for the cognitive and affective domains, they omitted the psychomotor domain. Their explanation for this oversight was that they have little experience in teaching manual skills within the college level. However, there have been at least three psychomotor models created by other researchers.

Their compilation divides the three domains into subdivisions, starting from the simplest cognitive process or behavior to the most complex. The divisions outlined are not absolutes and there are other systems or hierarchies that have been devised, such as the Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO). However, Bloom's taxonomy is easily understood and is probably the most widely applied one in use today. 

Cognitive Domain

The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills (Bloom, 1956). This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills. There are six major categories of cognitive an processes, starting from the simplest to the most complex (see the table below for an in-depth coverage of each category):

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

The categories can be thought of as degrees of difficulties. That is, the first ones must normally be mastered before the next one can take place.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the three most prominent ones being (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):

• changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms
• rearranging them as shown in the chart below
• creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix

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Q 4: b) Compare the Blooms taxonomy with SOLO Taxonomy of educational objectives.

Answer:

The reasons why we prefer to use SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982), provides a measure of cognitive learning outcomes or understanding of thinking, that, in my experience, teachers have felt comfortable 

adopting. This hierarchical model is comprehensive, supported by objective criteria, and used across different subjects and on differing types of assignments (Hattie & Purdie, 1998). Teachers enjoy the way that SOLO represents student learning of quite diverse material in stages of ascending structural complexity, and that these stages display a similar sequence across tasks. Furthermore, surface or deep levels of understanding can be planned for and assessed by coding a student’s thinking performance against unistructural, multistructural, relational, or extended abstract categories, as shown in Table 1. Using visual symbols to represent levels of understanding in SOLO means that coding for complexity of thinking can be undertaken by both student and teacher, allowing “where should we go next?” decisions and thinking interventions to more accurately target student learning needs. Hook, P. 2006 A Thinking Curriculum NZCER p100

Notes from Professor John Hattie

Course 224: Assessment in the Classroom (The University of Auckland)

"Creating best tests using Bloom's taxonomy or the SOLO classification."

Critique of Bloom's taxonomy

The taxonomy was published in 1956, has sold over a million copies, has been translated into several languages, and has been cited thousands of times. The Bloom taxonomy has been extensively used in teacher education to suggest learning and teaching strategies, has formed the basis of many tests developed by teachers (at least while they were in teacher training), and has been used to evaluate many tests. It is thus remarkable that the taxonomy has been subject to so little research or evaluation.

Most of the evaluations are philosophical treatises noting, among other criticisms, that there is no evidence for the invariance of these stages, or claiming that the taxonomy is not based on any known theory of learning or teaching.

• The Bloom taxonomy presupposes that there is a necessary relationship between the questions asked and the responses to be elicited, whereas in the SOLO taxonomy both the questions and the answers can be at differing levels. 
• Whereas Bloom separates 'knowledge' from the intellectual abilities or process that operate on this 'knowledge' , the SOLO taxonomy is primarily based on the processes of understanding used by the students when answering the prompts. Knowledge, therefore, permeates across all levels of the SOLO taxonomy.
• Bloom has argued that his taxonomy is related not only to complexity but also to an order of difficulty such that problems requiring behaviour at one level should be answered more correctly before tackling problems requiring behaviour at a higher level. Although there may be measurement advantages to this increasing difficulty, this is not a necessary requirement of the SOLO method. It is possible for an item at the relational level, for example, to be constructed so that it is less difficult than an item at the unistructural level. For example, an item aiming to elicit relational responses might be 'How does the movement of the Earth relative to the sun define day and night'. This may be easier (depending on instruction, etc.) than a unistructural item that asks 'What does celestial rotation mean?'
• Bloom’s taxonomy is not accompanied by criteria for judging the outcome of the activity (Ennis, 1985), whereas SOLO is explicitly useful for judging the outcomes. Take for example, a series of art questions suggested by Hamben (1984).

Knowledge. Who painted Guernica?

Comprehension. Describe the subject matter of Guernica.

Application. Relate the theme of Guernica to a current event.

Analysis. What compositional principles did Picasso use in Guernica?

Synthesis. Imagine yourself as one of the figures in Guernica and describe your life history?

Evaluation. What is your opinion of Picasso’s Guernica?

When using Bloom’s taxonomy, the supposition is that the question leads to the particular type of Bloom response. There is no necessary relationship, however, as a student may respond with a very deep response to the supposedly lower order question: 'Describe the subject matter of Guernica?' Similarly, a student may provide a very surface response to 'What is your opinion of Picasso’s Guernica'? When using the SOLO taxonomy, either the questions would be written in a different manner, or the test scorer would concentrate on classifying the responses only. An example of re-writing to maximise the correspondence between the question asked and the answer expected is:

Unistructural. Who painted Guernica?

Multistructural. Outline at least two compositional principles that Picasso used in Guernica.

Relational. Relate the theme of Guernica to a current event.

Extended Abstract. What do you consider Picasso was saying via his painting of Guernica?

Advantages of the SOLO model for evaluation of student learning

• There are several advantages of the SOLO model over the Bloom taxonomy in the evaluation of student learning.
• These advantages concern not only item construction and scoring, but incorporate features of the process of evaluation that pay attention to how students learn, and how teachers devise instructional procedures to help students use progressively more complex cognitive processes.
• Unlike the Bloom taxonomy, which tends to be used more by teachers than by students, the SOLO can be taught to students such that they can learn to write progressively more difficult answers or prompts.
• There is a closer parallel to how teachers teach and how students learn.
• Both teachers and students often progress from more surface to deeper constructs and this is mirrored in the four levels of the SOLO taxonomy.
• There is no necessary progression in the manner of teaching or learning in the Bloom taxonomy.
• The levels can be interpreted relative to the proficiency of the students. Six year old students can be taught to derive general principles and suggest hypotheses, though obviously to a different level of abstraction and detail than their older peers. Using the SOLO method, it is relatively easy to construct items to assess such abstractions. 
• The SOLO taxonomy not only suggests an item writing methodology, but the same taxonomy can be used to score the items. The marker assesses each response to establish either the number of ideas (one = unistructural; _ two = multistructural), or the degree of interrelatedness (directly related or abstracted to more general principles). This can lead to more dependability of scoring.
• Unlike the experience of some with the Bloom taxonomy it is relatively easy to identify and categorise the SOLO levels.
• Similarly, teachers could be encouraged to use the 'plus one' principle when choosing appropriate learning material for students. That is, the teacher can aim to move the student one level higher in the taxonomy by appropriate choice of learning material and instructional sequencing.

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Q 5: Briefly describe the procedure for development of multiple choice tests items and assembling the test prepare ten multiple choice items from subject of your choice.

Answer:

Multiple choice test questions, also known as items, can be an effective and efficient way to assess learning outcomes. Multiple choice test items have several potential advantages:

Versatility: Multiple choice test items can be written to assess various levels of learning outcomes, from basic recall to application, analysis, and evaluation. Because students are choosing from a set of potential answers, however, there are obvious limits on what can be tested with multiple choice items. For example, they are not an effective way to test students’ ability to organize thoughts or articulate explanations or creative ideas.

Reliability: Reliability is defined as the degree to which a test consistently measures a learning outcome. Multiple choice test items are less susceptible to guessing than true/false questions, making them a more reliable means of assessment. The reliability is enhanced when the number of MC items focused on a single learning objective is increased. In addition, the objective scoring associated with multiple choice test items frees them from problems with scorer inconsistency that can plague scoring of essay questions.

Validity: Validity is the degree to which a test measures the learning outcomes it purports to measure. Because students can typically answer a multiple choice item much more quickly than an essay question, tests based on multiple choice items can typically focus on a relatively broad representation of course material, thus increasing the validity of the assessment.

The key to taking advantage of these strengths, however, is construction of good multiple choice items.

A multiple choice item consists of a problem, known as the stem, and a list of suggested solutions, known as alternatives. The alternatives consist of one correct or best alternative, which is the answer, and incorrect or inferior alternatives, known as distractors.

Constructing an Effective Stem

1. The stem should be meaningful by itself and should present a definite problem. A stem that presents a definite problem allows a focus on the learning outcome. A stem that does not present a clear problem, however, may test students’ ability to draw inferences from vague descriptions rather serving as a more direct test of students’ achievement of the learning outcome. 
2. The stem should not contain irrelevant material, which can decrease the reliability and the validity of the test scores (Haldyna and Downing 1989).
3. The stem should be negatively stated only when significant learning outcomes require it. Students often have difficulty understanding items with negative phrasing (Rodriguez 1997). If a significant learning outcome requires negative phrasing, such as identification of dangerous laboratory or clinical practices, the negative element should be emphasized with italics or capitalization.
4. The stem should be a question or a partial sentence. A question stem is preferable because it allows the student to focus on answering the question rather than holding the partial sentence in working memory and sequentially completing it with each alternative (Statman 1988). The cognitive load is increased when the stem is constructed with an initial or interior blank, so this construction should be avoided.

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