The Design Of Assessment System Of Learning Literacy Based On PISA

Nowadays, our society has been increasingly informationized, the total amount of knowledge has doubled about every five years, the renewing cycle of knowledge has become shorter and shorter, thus, how to learn is also one necessary part in our everyday life. It has become the calling of the times how to enable the future citizens to love learning, be good at learning and how to carry out the idea of education for all-around development and lifelong learning. The learning assessment is not only the summing up and appraising of the learner’s past learning process, learning status and learning performance, but also a re-adjusting and a re-optimizing aiming at the full utilizing of learning objectives, learning strategies and learning resources with an eye for the future. Its basic goal is to serve the decision-making in learning, and it essence is to improve continuously. OECD, one of internationally famous institutions of policy research and analysis, which was founded in1961, has been putting helping its member countries to promote their economy, employment and living standard. She first held its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in2000to find out how15-year-old students who will finish compulsory education have mastered necessary knowledge and skills in order to participate in social affairs in future. The assessing content is no longer limited to textbooks. Its emphases are laid on problem-solving abilities by applying what they have learned to everyday life and jobs flexibly. Its assessing methods are written test based on Item Response Theory as well as questionnaire which is used to gather information in learning context. The assessing idea is forward-looking, the method is advanced, and the process is well-organized, thus, the assessing mode has won acceptance and participation around more and more countries and regions. Shanghai is the first participating region in Chinese mainland, which participated in2009and2012. Although universally acknowledged achievements have been obtained, some deficiencies have also been found in the meantime. The outcomes pose great challenges to our three-dimensional assessing system that is always hesitating at the crossroad in the learning evaluation of our basic education. How should we refer to and digest the assessing idea and advanced assessing method in PISA to serve our basic education and learners’ lifelong development? For this purpose, the author put up the assessment of learning literacy.The whole dissertation is divided into two basic parts:theoretical research and empirical analysis. Such three main problems as behavioral mechanism of learning, evaluation, measurement and test are probed into in the part of theoretical research, and systematic analysis of PISA, design of assessing mode of learning literacy and its applications to mathematical curricula in junior high schools are included in the other part. The further particulars are briefly presented below:1. Firstly, how the learning mechanism is formed on macro-level is examined from the perspective of interdisciplinary in the aspect of behavioral mechanism of learning. It includes neuron as physical basis of learning and its biochemical activities, the function and features of plasticity of synapse in the forming of memory trace. Then, informational representation and its acquired characteristics of narrowly defined knowledge and skills, strategies in general and specific domain are analyzed respectively. After this, problem and problem-solving in learning are defined and classified, the common process of problem-solving, how to form the strategies in general and specific domain, creativity and its role in problem-solving, and the concise analysis of Complicated Problem-Solving (CPS) in real-life are involved in order. Furthermore, the five earlier theories of transfer such as formal discipline, identical elements and contemporary theories of transfer as Ausubel’s transfer of cognitive structure, transfer of production, meta-cognition and the forth are orderly discussed in order to know if students can apply what they have learned to unfamiliar situations flexibly. In addition, the essence of transfer and the advantageous requirements in learning are explored. In the part of situated learning and social construction, ecological systems theory and educational multiculturalism are introduced from the point of social culture, and interpersonal interaction is analyzed. Finally, feeling, emotion, interests and attitude are studied as key points in human nature on the basis of comparing and analyzing such the mainstream motivations to learn as humanism at the same time, the Keller’s integrated model of motivation to learn and interaction between individual and environment are also introduced and explored. As a summing up of how the above six factors influence learning, the author proposed one model of restrictive relations among learning mechanisms. 2. On the basis of scrutinizing several common English words concerning evaluation from perspective of etymology, its classical definition are introduced, the influences of connotation of knowledge and two different outlooks of knowledge are analyzed, the main features of evaluation in four different times are carefully examined, the reconstructing of evaluating mode in present circumstances is inquired into subsequently. In view of the fact that evaluation correlate with measurement and test, thus, measurement as a quantitative form and its resultant measuring target, rules, scales and indicators are discussed successively. Lastly, the relations between evaluation and measurement and test are concluded.3. Seeing that measuring theory for learning is still Classical Test Theory (CTT) in our standardization examination, therefore, basic assumptions, mathematical model, reliability and its computation are analyzed first. In comparison with it, the other two measuring theories for learning which rose in90s of the last century successively, they are Generalizability Theory (GT) and Item Response Theory (IRT), are discussed in the mean time. In GT, basic principles and their conceptions are explained first, and several common methods in random facet design are discussed. Then, applying situations and relative shortcomings are also pointed out. In IRT, its main characteristics are studied first, and the four assumptions are analyzed later. The selected model and its parameters are discussed in the end.4. In the part of assessing system in PISA and its analyses, the assessing idea and model are analyzed first. And then, this word literacy is interpreted from the perspective of multidiscipline, and point out that literacy is one complex which is associated with cognitive level, learning strategy, engagement in learning and the like, and which stresses learners’ abilities to solve situated problem and the ability to engage in lifelong learning. For the purpose of one all-around and intensive understanding with PISA, the basic assessment framework, target, contents, process in reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy and problem-solving ability as well as data standardization and data generalisability in technical standard of PISA are analyzed in turn. Furthermore, proficient levels, scales to use, the design of written test and questionnaire to gather information in contexts are studied one by one. At last, the advantages of this assessing mode and its transplantability are thought through as a whole.5. In the part of systematic design of learning literacy, at first, the concept of learning literacy is put forward by virtue of the perception, analysis and judgement of PISA and as well as the combination with the idea of quality in education for all-around development in our country. After that, the basic features and primary elements what learning literacy should be involved in are analyzed. A one-loop flow chart in quasi-automatic learning and a formative model of learning literacy are raised successively in reference to Marzano’s controlling model in learning behavior to further describe the basic relations among the above elements. On the basis of above analyses, the author put up one assessing content framework and the corresponding indicators. Finally, the author design and develop testing items and item bank based on IRT, and interpret how to gather learners’ information in relevant contexts by questionnaire.6. In the chapter of case studies of learning literacy, the cognitive characteristics with students in junior high schools and basic features of mathematical subject are analyzed first, then, content-goal analyses are carried out in accordance with textbook and the mathematical curriculum standard in the stage of compulsive education that is newly issued by Ministry of Education, and try to develop testing item bank based IRT for teaching materials for the first term of grade three in junior middle schools. After doing that, a formal test is implemented in a certain class by way of random extracting items from the item bank, questionnaire-survey is also finished in the meanwhile. At last, after finishing the check of reliability about last two testing in the same term in the same class, the author apply the software of SPSS to analyze those first-handed data through the computing of central tendency, magnitude of deviation, Pearson correlation analysis, Spearman correlation analysis, partial correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and factor analysis, the following primary conclusions are reached:(1) After the check of reliability, it is found that the testing scores can be accepted at the significant level of0.05.(2) Among all the nine indicators of learning literacy investigated at this time, the better are memory strategy, communication and collaboration and learning control strategy, but elaborative strategy, transfer of knowledge and utilization of learning resources are relatively worse. The standard deviations of testing scores are biggest among them, however, the differences of frequency in using memory strategy, and students use too often.(3) All the nine factors involved in learning literacy can be divided into three relatively independent common factors, namely literacy factor, score factor and utilization factor of resources. Among them, literacy factor gives a contribution ratio over50%, nevertheless, there is not positive correlation between score common factor and literacy common factor. More precisely, the former primarily reflects testing scores, but the latter is primarily influenced by elaborative strategy, transfer of knowledge and reflection&innovation.(4) The indicators of communication&collaboration, engagement in learning and reflection&innovation significantly influence testing scores in mathematical subject. The six indicators of engagement in learning, memory strategy, elaborative strategy, learning control strategy, communication&collaboration and reflection&innovation do the indicator of transfer of knowledge. Lastly, the six indicators of engagement in learning, memory strategy, elaborative strategy, learning control strategy, transfer of knowledge, communication&collaboration, reflection&innovation.(5) Between the two basic learning strategy of memory strategy and elaborative strategy, most students prefer using of memory strategy to using elaborative strategy, but medium-score-achievers tend to use elaborative strategy, in contrast, memory strategy is used by most high-score-achievers. Approximately, one-third of the whole students never use the above two learning strategies.(6) Among the four hot spot issues of testing scores, engagement in learning, transfer of knowledge and reflection&innovation, the order of ranking superiority are: testing scores> reflection&innovation> engagement in learning> transfer of knowledge, which demonstrates that students pay greater attention to testing scores as before, ignore the ability of transfer of knowledge and reflection&innovation, and students have less degree of engagement in learning widely.Finally, the author suggest that such measures as transforming the assessing idea of thinking better of testing scores to stressing learners’ real literacy and development, choosing those basic knowledge and basic skills which are close to learners’ real life as learning contents with great care, not only cultivating the ability to solve situated problem but also intensifying the integrating degree between vertical knowledge and transverse knowledge, exploring new testing methods be advantageous to arouse learners’ initiative and to support their coordinative and sustainable development.In short, it is an effective way to carry out the assessment of curriculum learning based on literacy in the stage of compulsory education undoubtedly.