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Spatial reasoning comprises a set of skills used to mentally visualize, orient, and transform objects or spaces. These skills, which develop in humans through interaction with our physical world and direct instruction, are strongly associated with mathematics achievement but are often neglected in early grades mathematics teaching. To conceptualize ways to increase the representation of spatial reasoning skills in the classroom, we examined the outcomes of cognitive interviews with kin- dergarten through grade two students in which they engaged with one spatial reasoning task. Qualitative analyses of students’ work samples and verbal reasoning responses on a single shape de/composition task revealed evidence of a continuum of sophistication in their responses that supports a previously articulated hypothetical learning progression. Results suggest that teachers may be able to efficiently infer students’ skills in spatial reasoning using a single task and use the results to make instructional decisions that would support students’ mathematical development. The practical implications of this work indicate that additional classroom-based research could support the adoption of such practices that could help teachers efficiently teach spatial reasoning skills through mathematics instruction. 

This article illustrates and differentiates the unique role cognitive interviews and think-aloud interviews play in developing and validating assessments. Specifically, we describe the use of (a) cognitive interviews to gather empirical evidence to support claims about the intended construct being measured and (b) think-aloud interviews to gather evidence about the problem-solving processes students use while completing tasks assessing the intended construct. We illustrate their use in the context of a classroom assessment of an early mathematics construct – numeric relational reasoning – for kindergarten through Grade 2 students. This assessment is intended to provide teachers with data to guide their instructional decisions. We conducted 64 cognitive interviews with 32 students to collect evidence about students’ understanding of the construct. We conducted 106 think-aloud interviews with 14 students to understand how the prototypical items elicited the intended construct. The task-based interview results iteratively informed assessment development and contributed important sources of validity evidence. 

The early development of spatial reasoning skills has been linked to future success in mathematics (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009), but research to date has mainly focused on the development of these skills within classroom settings rather than at home. The home environment is often the first place students are exposed to, and develop, early mathematics skills, including spatial reasoning (Blevins-Knabe, 2016; Hart, Ganley, & Purpura, 2016). The purpose of the current study is to develop a survey instrument to better understand Kindergarten through Grade 2 students’ opportunities to learn spatial reasoning skills at home. Using an argument-based approach to validation (Kane, 2013), we collected multiple sources of validity evidence, including expert review of item wording and content and pilot data from 201 parent respondents. This manuscript outlines the interpretation/use argument that guides our validation study and presents evidence collected to evaluate the scoring inferences for using the survey to measure students’ opportunities to learn spatial reasoning skills at home. 

Cognitive interviews play an important role in articulating the intended construct of educational assessments. This paper describes the iterative development of protocols for cognitive interviews with kindergarten through second-grade children to understand how their spatial reasoning skill development aligns with intended constructs. We describe the procedures used to gather evidence of construct relevance and improved alignment to task-based interview items through multiple pilot rounds before conducting cognitive interviews. We found improved alignment and reduced construct irrelevant variance after protocol revisions.