Integrating diagnostic assessment into curriculum: a theoretical framework and teaching practices

Tingting Fan,Jieqing Song,Zheshu Guan

doi:10.1186/s40468-020-00117-y

Tingting Fan, Jieqing Song + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-020-00117-y

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Abstract

Currently, much research on cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) focuses on the development of statistical models estimating individual students’ attribute profiles. However, little is known about how to communicate model-generated statistical results to stakeholders, and how to translate formatively diagnostic information into teaching practices. This study proposed an integrative framework of diagnosis connecting CDA to feedback and remediation and, meanwhile, demonstrated empirically the application of the framework in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Particularly, the empirical study presented procedures of integrating diagnostic assessment to EFL reading curriculum through four phases of planning, framing, implementing, and reflecting. The results show that these procedures, influenced by the teacher’s orientation to diagnostic assessment and approach to EFL teaching, affected students’ perceptions of diagnostic assessment, their attitudes toward remedial instructions, as well as their learning outcomes on EFL reading. The results also provide evidence to the effectiveness of the integrative framework proposed in this study, showing that the framework could serve as practical guidance to the implementation and use of diagnostic assessment in the classroom.Overall, this study indicates that the diagnostic approach is a more effective way to provide instructionally useful information than other test and assessment approaches that do not differentiate strengths and weaknesses among students with the same total score.

Highlights

In contrast to standardized testing that measures the educational level of students on a broad scale and reports the measurement results in a summative manner, Cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA), rooted in the cognitive psychology of problem solving (Snow & Lohman, 1989), makes explicit the test developer’s assumptions about the finegrained attributes a test taker would use in a content domain, how the attributes develop, and how test takers of higher proficiency differ from those of lower proficiency (Mislevy et al, 2003)
To respond to the paucity of research in this respect, we proposed a framework of cognitive diagnosis integrating feedback, remedial teaching, and learning to diagnostic modeling procedures in the CDA system and reported an empirical study demonstrating the application of the proposed framework, the diagnosis-based remediation specified in the framework, in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context
Implementing the interpretive framework of diagnosis in the English as Foreign Language (EFL) course on reading comprehension To demonstrate how the integrative framework of diagnosis can be implemented under classroom settings, in the following, we present an experimental study demonstrating the application of UDig diagnostic assessment issued by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in a 12-week EFL reading course for first-year graduate students at a Chinese university

Summary

Introduction

In contrast to standardized testing that measures the educational level of students on a broad scale and reports the measurement results in a summative manner, CDA, rooted in the cognitive psychology of problem solving (Snow & Lohman, 1989), makes explicit the test developer’s assumptions about the finegrained attributes a test taker would use in a content domain, how the attributes develop, and how test takers of higher proficiency differ from those of lower proficiency (Mislevy et al, 2003). Previous research suggests that the fine-grained information generated from CDA could help promote students’ learning and guide further instruction (e.g., Lee, 2015). Only little is known about how to communicate the model-generated statistical results to stakeholders, and how to translate formatively diagnostic information into teaching practices both theoretically and empirically (Mislevy et al, 2003; Stout, Henson, DiBello, & Shear, 2019)

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