A Study Of Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment In The Cultivation Of College Students' Higher Order Thinking Skills

Cognitive diagnostic assessment is a diagnostic evaluation designed to measure the attributes such as individual knowledge structure,processing skills or cognitive process,etc(Leighton & Gierl,2007).Cognitive diagnostic assessment is the product of the combination of cognitive psychology and modern measurement theory.The proposing of this concept marked the development of psychological and educational measurement theory entered a new stage after the Classical Test Theory,Item Response Theory and Generalizability Theory(Mislevy,1993).Compared with the traditional test,cognitive diagnostic assessment can diagnose students' cognitive strengths and weaknesses in detail from a more micro perspective and provide diagnostic feedback information,remedial teaching suggestions and improving measures.The studies on cognitive diagnostic assessment abroad began in 1960 s and 1970 s.At that time researches at abroad began to concern the combination of cognitive psychology and psychometrics.In 1980 s,there were applied researches besides the basic researches on cognitive diagnostic assessment.In 1990 s,there were plenty of researches which became mature gradually in both theory and practice and the cognitive diagnostic assessment albums were published,for example,Cognitively Diagnostic Assessment(Nichols,1995).In the 21 st century,the research entered a rapid development period.More than 60 cognitive diagnosis models were developed(Fu,2005)and many academic essays were published.In 2007,Leighton and Gierl published Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment for Education: Theory and Practice,in which the theoretical basis,the principle of test design and analysis and the issue of statistical procedure and application of cognitive diagnostic assessment were introduced.Countries such as Britain and America were the first to apply cognitive diagnostic assessment in the education practice.The studies on cognitive diagnostic assessment at home were later than that at abroad and have been increasing rapidly since 2004 but the literature amount is lower than that of abroad and the main research type is basic research(Dai Haiqi,Xie Meihua,Ding Shuliang,2013).At present domestic researchers are attaching more and more importance to the application of cognitive diagnostic test in education practice field.Bloom's taxonomy(1956)divided learners' cognitive skills into lower order thinking skills(knowledge,comprehension,application)and higher order thinking skills(HOTS)(analysis,synthesis,evaluation).Higher order thinking skills mainly presents in the problem solving ability,decision making ability,critical thinking ability and creative thinking ability,etc(Zhong Zhixian,2005).This study takes the cultivation of college students' higher order thinking skills as the breakthrough point and conducts a preliminary discussion from learners' perspective to explore cognitive diagnostic assessment in cultivating college students' higher order thinking skills.This study mainly focuses on the following issues:Q1: What are college students' attitudes towards cognitive diagnostic assessment?Q2: What influences does cognitive diagnostic assessment have on the cultivation of college students' higher order thinking skills?The study chose 18 students from “the pilot program of top-notch students cultivation in basic disciplines” of a “985 project” university as research participates and adopted mixed research methods with questionnaire and two round semi-structured in-depth interviews as research instrument and Aptis as cognitive diagnostic assessment instrument.Aptis test is designed as an international English assessment tool by the British Council.It can measure the candidates' attributes such as individual knowledge structure,processing skills or cognitive process,etc.This study first made a cognitive diagnostic assessment to the participates' English language competence with Aptis test and analyzed the test results.The questionnaire and the first round interview were completed immediately after Aptis test to explore participates' attitude towards cognitive diagnostic assessment,perceptions of their English language skills and their strategies to improve knowledge structure and cognitive process in future English study.After a semester of study,the second round interview was conducted to participates to explore cognitive diagnostic assessment's influence on their cultivation of higher order thinking skills during the half-year study.Through collecting and analyzing data,the study results showed that first,college students have a positive and approbatory attitude towards cognitive diagnostic assessment,which can provide diagnostic feedback for them to reflect in detail each examinee's true ability on different English application layer.Therefore,there is a great need for a diagnostic test whose cognitive tasks can diagnose learners' strengths and weaknesses in the tested skills.There is much development scope for cognitive diagnostic assessment to apply in education filed.Second,cognitive diagnostic assessment also has positive influences on the cultivation of college students' higher order thinking skills.It can measure college students' higher order thinking skills and influences their attitude and motivation towards higher order thinking skills,and stimulate their self-consciousness to improve higher order thinking skills in college English courses.Finally,the author proposed some ways and strategies for cultivating students' higher order thinking skills in college English class.