skip to main content skip to footer

New Views of Student Learning: Implications for Educational Measurement

Author(s):
Masters, Geofferey N.; Mislevy, Robert J.
Publication Year:
1991
Report Number:
RR-91-24-ONR
Source:
ETS Research Report
Document Type:
Report
Page Count:
48
Subject/Key Words:
Office of Naval Research, Achievement Tests, Cognitive Psychology, Learning Processes, Test Theory

Abstract

Recent research in cognitive psychology has drawn attention to the important role that students' personal understandings and representations of subject matter play in the learning process. This paper briefly reviews some of this research, and contrasts the kind of learning that results in an individual's changed conception or view of a phenomenon with the more passive, additive kind of learning assessed by most traditional achieve-ment tests. To be consistent with a view of learning as an active, constructive process, educational tests are required which focus on key concepts in an area of learning, and which take into account the variety of types and levels of understanding that students have of those concepts. In these tests, scoring responses right and wrong is likely to be less appropriate than using students' answers to infer their levels of understanding. This will require not only imaginative new types of test items, but statistical models that permit inferences about students' understandings once their responses have been observed. Psychometric approaches are sketched to construct measures of achievement from such tests. (48pp.)

Read More