Instructional Sensitivity: Using Assessment Results to Transform Teaching

1. Instructional Sensitivity: Using Assessment Results to Transform Teaching Barbara King Kyle Perkins Florida International University Carmen Petrick Smith University of Vermont

2. Today’s Plan • Background on the project • The current study • Questions and feedback • Insightful ideas from the audience

3. Theories of Cognition the mind and body work closely together within the environment to make sense of the world (Glenberg, 2010).

4. How can the body be used to help students build mathematical understanding?

5. Body-based Angle Task

6. Body-based Angle Task

7. Body-based Angle Task

8. Body-based Angle Task

9. Body-based Angle Task

10. Assessment • Pre-test and post-test • 11 questions about angle and angle measurement • Draw an angle that is a different measure than a given angle (Clements and Battista, 1990). • Estimate the measure of a given angle, • Draw an angle of a specific measure.

11. Research Questions • Is performing body-based actions related to angles associated with improvement between pre- and post-test? • What “critical actions” during body-based learning sessions might be conducive to supporting learning gains?

12. The Current Study Overall, the activity helps students learn. But we want EVERYONE to learn EVERYTHING.

13. Assessment Predominantly used to make judgments about student performance. How well is an individual student performing? How well are students performing?

14. Instructional Sensitivity Items with high instructional sensitivity indicate good instruction and a high-quality test. Items receiving a low sensitivity measure may be a result of a defect in the test item or poor instruction. -- (Polikoff, 2010)

15. Research Goals • Measure the instructional sensitivity of each assessment item. • Explore possible reasons why certain items are not sensitive to instruction. • Suggest improvements for a new learning activity.

16. Method • Participants • Thirty-six, 8 to 10 year-old third and fourth grade students participated in this study, 18 boys and 14 girls • one-on-one structured, task-based interview while completing the learning activity • Pre-test and post-test

17. Method • Pre- and Post-test Results were used to create two measures of instructional sensitivity • Pre-to-post Difference Index (PPDI) • typically range from .10 to .60 (Roidand Haladyna, 1982) • Popham Index • Percentage of people who answered the pre-test item incorrectly and the post-test item correctly

18. Results

19. PPDI by Assessment Item Number

20. Popham Index

22. Discussion • Question 2: Given a 75° angle, draw a larger angle. • Question 3: Given a 75° angle, draw a smaller angle.

23. Possible Explanations It is common for students to attribute the size of an angle to the length of the line segments making up the angle (Fyhn, 2008).

24. Learning Activity Stage 4 Stage 3

25. When we asked students, why is the angle bigger? • “Because it has more-- the lines are a lot longer, instead those lines are a lot shorter.” • “Because it's like a bigger shape.” • “Because it's a bigger size.”

26. Proposed Changes • Two-player game (different arrow size) • Ask the two-players to create two angles with the same angle measures 40° 40°

27. Discussion • Question 5: Draw an angle that is 30° • Question 8: Estimate the size of this angle

28. Possible Explanations

29. How can you make the screen pink? • 80% - correct body position • However, only half of these students made an accurate drawing on paper.

32. Discussion • Question 5: Draw an angle that is 30° • Question 8: Estimate the size of this angle

33. Proposed Changes • Two-player game (making angles with different orientations) • Ask player one to make the screen pink • Ask player two to make the screen pink in a different way

34. Conclusion Fix Explore Identify

35. Thank you! Questions / Feedback