The effect of adaptivity on the reliability coefficient in adaptive comparative judgement

Comparative Judgement (CJ) is an increasingly widely investigated method in assessment for creating a scale, for example of the quality of essays. One area that has attracted attention in CJ studies is the optimisation of the selection of pairs of objects for judgement. One approach is known as adaptive comparative judgement (ACJ). It has been claimed in the literature that ACJ produces very high reliability, often higher than can be obtained by conventional marking. Bramley showed by simulation that adaptivity can substantially inflate the apparent reliability in ACJ. The empirical study described here compared an adaptive with a non-adaptive CJ study using GCSE English essays. An all-play-all set of comparisons of a subset of the essays allowed the extent of scale inflation to be quantified: the reported adaptive reliability was 0.97 whereas the deflated value was 0.84. The value from the non-adaptive study was 0.72. However, the scale from the non-adaptive study correlated slightly higher with external variables, suggesting the non-adaptive study was no less valid than the adaptive one.     

Richard Meister 80 Jahre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Communicating feedback in teaching practice supervision in a learning-oriented field experience assessment framework

This article seeks to understand the ways in which feedback was communicated in post-observation conferences in teaching practice supervision within the learning-oriented field experience assessment (LOFEA) framework. 32 post-observation conferences between 21 pairs of supervisors and participants of in-service teacher education programmes, and interviews with supervisors and participants were analyzed, with findings revealed in four themes:

1.

The distribution of content and nature of feedback in post-observation conferences;     

Play-based Occupational Therapy

In this paper, we will provide an overview of how occupational therapists view play, illustrate how occupational therapists' view of play has evolved, generating a shift in focus for intervention, introduce a model of play as occupation to illustrate how children's ability to play may be influenced by developmental disabilities, outline occupational therapy assessment and treatment using play as the basis for intervention, and finally, identify aspects of best practice. The term developmental disabilities refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders. It is not within the scope of this paper to provide detailed discussion of play-based occupational therapy intervention for all the children who comprise this group. Therefore, we have chosen to illustrate various points made with examples of different types of children with various types of disability.     

Which tier? Effects of linear assessment and student characteristics on GCSE entry decisions

In England, students obtain General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) qualifications, typically at age 16. Certain GCSEs are tiered; students take either higher‐level (higher tier) or lower‐level (foundation tier) exams, which may have different educational, career and psychological consequences. In particular, foundation tier entry, if inappropriate, risks capping students' achievement because of the restricted range of attainable grades and reduced learning that may occur. Tiering decisions may be affected by other aspects of the education system in which they take place, such as by the timing of assessment. The move to linear assessment in 2012 provided a unique opportunity to compare tiering decisions for the same GCSE specifications when taken in a linear system, where students are exclusively assessed at the end of the course, with tiering decisions in a modular system, where students are assessed at different time points. Multilevel logistic regression was used to examine students' likelihood of being entered for the foundation tiers of GCSEs in science, language and mathematics in two exam sessions: June 2013, which allowed modular assessment, and June 2014, which required linear assessment. The analyses also investigated whether these effects depended on student characteristics. Results showed that foundation tier entry was less likely in the linear than modular system for GCSEs in science and languages, but more likely for one mathematics GCSE. This pattern contrasts with concerns that linear assessment may encourage general risk‐aversion, and instead indicates that effects on tiering decisions are more complicated, varying by subject and student factors.     

Reflections on Hegemony: towards a model of teacher competence

This article considers the gap between teaching theory and teaching practice in the context of recent calls for reform in teacher education. It argues that leaping into radical reforms without any apparent understanding of present difficulties is a mistake. It considers current models of teaching, highlighting some of their strengths and weaknesses, and asks what kind of model of teaching competency might narrow the gap between theory and practice. The second section concludes that a competency model which situates teaching in its social context, which takes account of the political nature of teaching and its professional power structures might more appropriately describe the activities of teachers. The third section considers a model of hegemony which provides insights into teaching which do not exist in present models.