The Study On Dynamic Assessment Of Figure Reasoning Ability Of Elementary School Children Based On Cognitive Diagnose

Dynamic assessment is an interactive measurement model which puts emphasis on the individual psychological development in the future.Dynamic assessment,which combines individual's leaning process and learning results through teaching and intervention,can take both individual's future level and learning potential into consideration.Compared with static testing,dynamic assessment can provide more information,such as the process of learning(Brandsford.etc,1987).With Piaget's cognitive theory and the concept of the zone of proximal development(ZPD) from Vygotsky as theoretical base,the dynamic assessment take disable children and sub-culture children as its subjects.The traditional dynamic assessment quantifies the learning potential by comparing the difference of scores between the pre-test and the post-test,which fails to explain the individuals who have extreme scores.It is a more challenging work when the pretest and the posttest are not parallel test.In addition,as the CTT is based on the distribution of the sample,it is unsuitable for dynamic assessment.Consequently,Embretson.etd.put forward the psychometric model based on IRT to solve these problems.Although the dynamic assessment based IRT has overcome many shortcomings of the traditional dynamic assessment,it still has the same problem as the latter,that is,the final report of the measurement is the modifiability between the pretest and the post-test instead of the psychological processes underlying the ability to change.Cognitive Diagnosis,however,according to the psychological processes,designs measurement tools and interprets the results of measurement by combining cognitive psychology and psychometrics.Therefore,the design of dynamic assessment based on the cognitive diagnosis by the combination of the ideas and methods of cognitive diagnosis and dynamic assessment can be developed to analyze the results of the program from both macro-and micro- level.The study,which initiated from cognitive diagnosis MLTM for MS and MRMLC of the dynamic assessment model,developed a dynamic assessment design based on cognitive diagnosis to measure the learning potential of the figure reasoning of the elementary school children according to the characteristics of the cognitive development of figure reasoning of the general elementary school children.The model of the dynamic assessment in the study is:pretest-intervention 1-posttest 1-intervention 2-posttest 2.There are two measurements and three interventions during the whole process,with 1-2 week interval between every two consecutive measurements.Prior to each post-test,a standard teaching intervention based on the characteristics of figure reasoning of the elementary school children was performed.Meanwhile,a series of studies on the design have been done,including compiling of the items,performing of the design,analysis of the results and even the quality of the results.They are listed in the following:First,according to the cognitive development of the figure reasoning of the elementary school children,the author put forward five principles of compiling the test, including the objective of the assessment,the data structure design and etc.Next,three sets of the standard figure reasoning tests were compiled after the cognitive analysis of these principles and figure reasoning.Then,230 elementary school students ranging from Grade Two to Grade Six,all of whom have not any experience in answering the item of the figure reasoning from the rural elementary schools in the north part of Jiangxi province were chosen as subjects to verify whether the three sets of tests are in line with the basic principles of data structure.The results of CFA analysis show that the three sets of tests are equivalent in structure and up to the basic principles.Finally,the author compiled the cognitive tests for each set of the tests based on the MLTM for MS based on the cognitive development of the figure reasoning of the elementary school children.Secondly,according to the characteristics of MRMLC,the author designed two methods for estimating the parameter of ability.They are one-off estimation and respective estimation.The results of the comparative study of computer simulation show that,the accuracy and the stability of the one-off estimation are better than the respective estimation method.Therefore,the former one was used to estimate the ability in the subsequent study.Next,182 children ranging from grade four to grade six coming from the rural elementary schools in the northern part of Jiangxi Province were chosen as sample to participate the study of the implementation of the design.The author analyzed the results of the implementation from marco- and micro- level after combining MRMLC with MLTM for MS.The results of the Macro-analysis show that:(1)there is significant difference between zero and the learning potential measured by the posttest 2(p＜0.05), and the learning potential measured by the posttest 2 is is significantly higher than that measured by the posttestl(p＜0.05);(2) on the current level of the standard figure reasoning test,there is significant difference among the students from the fifth grade and fourth grade(p＜0.05);(3) on the total learning potential,there are no significant differences(p＞0.05).The results of the Micro-analysis show that:(1) the design in this study,by combining MRMLC with MLTM for MS,can measure individual's change during the cognitive process of figure reasoning successfully.(2)The comparisons of the cognitive component among the three grades show that,on the current level of figure reasoning, the fifth grade students are more accomplished in using rule application than the fourth grade students;while the subjects from the sixth grade are more accomplished in using the rule construction and rule application than the fifth and fourth grade student;on the total learning potential,the students of the fourth grade can become more accomplished in using the visual perceptual cognition and rule application than the fifth and sixth grade,while the students from the sixth grade can be more accomplished in using rule construction;(3)as to the cognitive process strategies,the learning potential of the fourth grade students manifest mainly in the fact that they can use the perceptual analytic strategy to answer the item in a more accurate way;while the fifth and sixth grade students do better in using the analytic strategy.Finally,both the reliability and validity of the results of the implementation of the design have been tested.The results show that the internal consistency of every standard test is high and the learning potential of figure reasoning assessed by the design is valid.