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In this study we use latent class analysis, distractor analysis, and qualitative analysis of cognitive interviews of student responses to questions on an algebra concept inventory, in order to generate theories about how students’ selections of specific answer choices may reflect different stages or types of algebraic conceptual understanding. Our analysis reveals three groups of students in elementary algebra courses, which we label as “mostly random guessing”, “some procedural fluency with key misconceptions”, and “procedural fluency with emergent conceptual understanding”. Student responses also revealed high rates of misconceptions that stem from misuse or misunderstanding of procedures, and whose prevalence often correlates with higher levels of procedural fluency.
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Describing the Development of the Assessment of Biological Reasoning (ABR)
Assessments of scientific reasoning that capture the intertwining aspects of conceptual, procedural and epistemic knowledge are often associated with intensive qualitative analyses of student responses to open-ended questions, work products, interviews, discourse and classroom observations. While such analyses provide evaluations of students’ reasoning skills, they are not scalable. The purpose of this study is to develop a three-tiered multiple-choice assessment to measure students’ reasoning about biological phenomena and to understand the affordances and limitations of such an assessment. To validate the assessment and to understand what the assessment measures, qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed, including read-aloud, focus group interviews and analysis of large sample data sets. These data served to validate our three-tiered assessment called the Assessment of Biological Reasoning (ABR) consisting of 10 question sets focused on core biological concepts. Further examination of our data suggests that students’ reasoning is intertwined in such a way that procedural and epistemic knowledge is reliant on and given meaning by conceptual knowledge, an idea that pushes against the conceptualization that the latter forms of knowledge construction are more broadly applicable across disciplines.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1720587
- PAR ID:
- 10329723
- Editor(s):
- Krell, M.; Vorholzer, A.; Nehring, A.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Education sciences
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2227-7102
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 669-689
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110669
