Reconceptualizing Validity for Classroom Assessment

This article explores the shortcomings of conventional validity theory for guiding classroom assessment practice and suggests additional theoretical resources from sociocultural theory and hermeneutics to complement and challenge conventional theory. To illuminate these concerns and possibilities in a concrete context, the author uses her own classroom experience in teaching a qualitative research methods course. The importance of examining cases of assessment practice in context for developing, teaching, and evaluating validity theory is discussed.     

Creativity and performativity: Counterpoints in British and Australian education

This article explores the complex interplay of power between performativity and creativity agendas—a mutual tension that resides in British and Australian education. Accountability constraints and conflicting policy debates are problematised against the wider imperatives of similar government agendas. This ‘counterpoint’ of freedom and control has significant implications for pedagogy and, through accommodating performativity, teacher agency and professionalism are under threat. The authors propose a ‘rebalancing’ where pedagogy transforms from a site of struggle for control, to one where a higher trust is placed in teacher professionalism. The idea of ‘rebalancing pedagogy’ offers a way for teachers to navigate and be supported through the opposing demands of performativity and creativity. It acknowledges the importance of teacher agency and where teaching is judged against the characteristics of a systemic approach that facilitates the building of creative learning communities capable of supporting any curricula or content‐focused programmes in and beyond schools.     

Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial

The effectiveness of the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum in improving the education of 3- and 4-year-old children was evaluated by means of a randomized trial. The Tools curriculum, based on the work of Vygotsky, focuses on the development of self-regulation at the same time as teaching literacy and mathematics skills in a way that is socially mediated by peers and teachers and with a focus on play. The control group experienced an established district-created model described as a “balanced literacy curriculum with themes.” Teachers and students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control classrooms. Children (88 Tools and 122 control) were compared on social behavior, language, and literacy growth. The Tools curriculum was found to improve classroom quality and children's executive function as indicated by lower scores on a problem behavior scale. There were indications that Tools also improved children's language development, but these effects were smaller and did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance in multi-level models or after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Our findings indicate that a developmentally appropriate curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development so as to improve both the social and academic success of young children. Moreover, it is suggested that to the extent child care commonly increases behavior problems this outcome may be reversed through the use of more appropriate curricula that actually enhance self-regulation.     

Question‐posing and question‐responding: the heart of ‘Possibility Thinking’ in the early years

Drawing on research that sought to explore the characteristics of ‘Possibility Thinking’ as central to creativity in young children's learning, this paper considers question‐posing and question‐responding as the driving features of ‘Possibility Thinking’ (PT). This qualitative study employed micro‐event analysis of peer and pupil–teacher interaction. Events were sampled from two early years settings in England, one a Reception classroom (4‐ to 5‐year olds) and the other a Year 2 classroom (6‐ to 7‐year olds). This article arises out of the second stage of an ongoing research programme (2004–2007) involving the children and practitioners in these settings. This phase considers the dimensions of question‐posing and the categories of question‐responding and their interrelationship within PT. Three dimensions of questioning were identified as characteristic of PT. These included: (i) question framing, reflecting the purpose inherent within questions for adults and children (including leading, service and follow‐through questions); (ii) question degree: manifestation of the degree of possibility inherent in children's questions (including possibility narrow, possibility moderate, possibility broad); (iii) question modality, manifestation of the modality inherent in children's questions (including verbal and non‐verbal forms). The fine‐grained data analysis offers insight into how children engage in PT to meet specific needs in responding to creative tasks and activities and reveals the crucial role that question‐posing and question‐responding play in creative learning. It also provides more detail about the nature of young children's thinking, made visible through question‐posing and responding in engaging playful contexts.     

Examining Online Instruction in Undergraduate Nursing Education

Web-based courses have increased in number as one of the primary modes of distance education in undergraduate nursing programs across the United States. An online survey of 171 nursing faculty in the United States with experience teaching Web-based courses served as the primary data source. Interviews and a review of course Web sites provided additional comparative information. Results of this study indicated online faculty spent significantly more time in planning and implementing a Web course than they did a traditional course. Despite this time commitment respondents perceived the teaching experience to be a successful and effective form of instruction that they felt could be used to deliver any type of nursing course. The online teaching experience was described as both collaborative and highly interactive. Most respondents indicated they preferred online teaching to traditional face-to-face instruction. This positive reaction to teaching online supports the future viability of Web-based instruction at colleges of nursing.     

Shifting the focus of validity for test use

The conventional focus of validity in educational measurement has been on intended interpretations and uses of test scores. Empirical studies of test use by teachers, administrators and policy-makers show that actual interpretations and uses of test scores in context are invariably shaped by local users’ questions, which frequently require attention to multiple sources of evidence about students’ learning and the factors that shape it, and depend on local capacity to use such information well. This requires a more complex theory of validity that can shift focus as needed from the intended interpretations and uses of test scores that guide test developers to local capacity to support the actual interpretations, decisions and actions that routinely serve local users’ purposes. I draw on the growing empirical literature on data use to illustrate the need for an expanded theory of validity, point to theoretical resources that might guide such an expansion, and suggest a research agenda towards these ends.     

Using ‘HOCS-Centered Learning’ as a Pathway to Promote Science Teachers' Metacognitive Development

An element of current reform in science education worldwide is the shift from the dominant traditional algorithmic lower-order cognitive skills (LOCS) teaching, to the higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS)-promoting learning; that is, the development of students' capabilities including those of question asking (QA), critical/system thinking (CST), decision making (DM), problem solving (PS), conceptualisation of fundamental concepts (CFC) and the transfer of these within both the science disciplines and real life interdisciplinary situations. Accordingly, an innovative metacognition-promoting science teacher professional development course, integrating formal and informal science education, was developed and implemented within a traditional model, focusing on the HOCS skills of QA, PS, and CFC. The HOCS promoting teaching and assessment strategies of this course not only enabled participants to reflect on their own learning, but also facilitated their self-reflective assessment, utilising a pre–post designed research-based methodology. The results suggest that such, or similarly appropriate, metacognition-oriented courses can contribute positively to the development of science teachers' HOCS capability.     

Portfolios, Accountability, and an Interpretive Approach to Validity

How can the results of classroom-based portfolio assessment be communicated outside the classroom? How might a portfolio-based assessment system be designed and implemented? How can we evaluate the merits of portfolio-based assessments?