Cognitive diagnostic models to accompany individualized teaching and learning processes: New possibilities from an alternative approach?

Abstract

The categories of good teaching and the teaching standards both indicate a need for detailed information on learning and performance processes. This detailed information should support an efficient and effective support of learners (e. g., “competence to diagnose”). In daily business teachers mostly rely on many years of experience. In this article we first give an overview of the approach of cognitive diagnostic models. Especially we highlight and discuss the model’s potentials for an evidence-based individual, theoretically grounded and valid learning and performance support. Second, we exemplify the method of cognitive diagnosis models by measuring intrapreneurship competence within the vocational education training of industrial clerks. The example includes an explanation of underlying assumptions as well as their implementation through a technology-based performance assessment. Finally, the outcomes of the cognitive diagnostic model on intrapreneurship competence are presented and interpreted in terms of their potential to promote individual learning and performance processes.