Key considerations in test construction, scoring and analysis: A guide to pre-service and in-service teachers (original) (raw)
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As a novice testing teacher, I was mainly concerned with bridging two gaps: that between testing practitioner and testing teacher, and that between writing testing articles and talking a bout testing. I then articulated my experiences as a learner of testing and described the influence those experiences had on the initial design of my testing course in the U.S. This second and last installment will document the formative course evaluation I conducted. I will outline the types of data I gathered, when and how I gathered them, and for what purpose. Finally, I will comment on whether, and how, these different data helped me with short-and long-term teaching and course planning issues. The Course and the Students The course was an M.A. level course intended for students of a variety of ages and levels and types of teaching experience. There were ten students, nine of whom were Applied Linguistics majors, and one of whom was an Interdisciplinary Studies major. Two students were public elementary and junior high school teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language, ESL, and deaf education. Two students were Japanese, teaching Japanese as a Second Language at Texas Tech. One student was Brazilian with EFL teaching experience. The remaining students had one to fifteen years teaching experience in ESL, EFL, Spanish as a Foreign Language, and American Sign Language. The course met 80 minutes twice a week for one semester for a total of 37 hours of instruction. To peruse the syllabus, goals, and objectives of the course, please refer to Part One of this article. The Course Evaluation Program I gathered three general types of information: First, information that would help guide my efforts while I was teaching the course (short term formative evaluation); second, information that would suggest content directions I might wish to go in or changes I might wish to make in terms of developing my knowledge and teaching skills for future testing courses (long term formative evaluation); and third, estimating the extent of my students' achievement (summative assessment). I will focus on short-and long-term formative evaluation only due to space limitations. I planned data collection procedures based on a variety of sources, including past experience, course evaluation research (Griffee, 1999) and a newly published teacher research education book, Doing Teacher Research: From Inquiry to Understanding (Freeman, 1998).
International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research
Assessment of prospective teachers is seen as the most practical technique to improve and assess teacher candidates' abilities to make judgments to help their students learn when presented with diverse scenarios in the classroom. This study assesses teachers' knowledge in objective test construction procedures in the Teacher Education programs using descriptive – correlational research method with an adapted and modified questionnaire to determine the respondents' profile and their knowledge in objective test construction procedure. Results show that the ages of most of the respondents were from 20 to 29 years old and mostly female with 1 to 5 years of teaching experience and attended local pieces of training. Furthermore, it was revealed that they tend to place little value on the relevance of test items and has found no significant relationship between the respondents’ gender and professional training attended and their knowledge in objective test construction procedur...
Teachers' Perspectives towards Validity of Teacher-Made Test
2020
Some studies that had been conducted showed that teacher-made tests were good and satisfactory. However, the majority of teachers do not validate their tests administering them to the students. This study would describe the perspective of teachers towards their-own.-made (teacher-made) tests they have made to know that to what extent their agreement regarding their attitudes, quality, and use of the tests. Five English teachers participated in this research. Their view on the test they have made would be analyzed and described. The results showed that (1) the teachers agreed about the appropriateness of the test they administered; (2) the teachers believed that the data quality obtained during research was useful and meaningful, and; (3) the teachers used the test to identify and to evaluate their learning objectives, students’ learning needs, students’ learning difficulties, and school evaluation
Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 1998
The techniques of constructing tests is the central focus of this book. Conventional assessment items such as multiple choice (Chapter 4), short answer and essay format questions (Chapter 5) are compared and contrasted. Extensive examples are included throughout the text to indicate how to implement the various test items. The advantages and disadvantages of each item type is examined. This book is designed to be a practical guide to test planning and construction and the interpretation of test results. It also provides educators with important fundamental information about assessment and measurement. While in one chapter (Chapter 2) it gives clear and precise advice on the technical aspects of measurement, including descriptive statistics, standard scores, reliability and validity, other chapters consider test planning (Chapter 3), grading techniques (Chapter 7), standardized testing (Chapter 8), and the ethics of student assessment (Chapter 9).
Testing To Improve the Quality of Our School Teachers
Capital Ideas, 1987
This newsletter issue focuses on the subject of mandatory testing of prospective teachers prior to certification. The following questions are discussed: (1) What are the major types of teacher tests? (2) How prevalent are teacher tests? (3) What are the major teacher tests? (4) What problems do teacher testing programs address? (5) What are the potential drawbacks? (6) What are some of the arguments against teacher tests? (7) What legal precedents have been established? (8) What is involved in implementing a teacher testing program? (9) How is teacher testing viewed by various organizations and groups? and (10) Where is teacher testing headed in the near future? A summary of the states requiring testing is presented in a table. (JD)
Matching Teacher Training with Teacher Needs in Testing
1984
This study matched teacher and professor perspectives of preservice educational measurement courses. Twenty-eight professors from different colleges in seven states and 377 teachers from elementary and secondary schools in one midwestern state responded via mailed questionnaire in which: professors were asked to assess the emphasis they give to topics in preservice educational measurement courses, and precollege teachers were asked to state the emphasis they believe should be given to the topics. Results of the survey show that both groups gave high ratings to items on preparation of exams and low ratings related to the legal aspects of educational measurement. In other categories, their priorities differed. Teacher priorities were testing activities (the practical concerns of testing), nontest evaluative activities, and application of test results. Professor priorities were statistics, standardized test issues, and general use cq. !xam results. Implications of these results are discussed. (Author/BW)
1993
In April 1991, the Board of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) voted to accept a grant from the Kellogg Foundation to: (1) measure teacher competency levels in the educational assessment of students; (2) identify a topic for the development of a training prototype; and (3) prepare a prototype training module on the selected topic. Efforts toward meeting these goals are summarized. Goal 1 was achieved through a national survey of teacher competencies in the area of educational assessment of students responded to by 555 teachers (48 percent response rate) and 286 administrators (51 percent response). On the basis of that survey and other relevant data, the topic "Interpreting and Communicating Test Results" was selected for development of a training prototype. Efforts toward Goal 3 are in progress. The training modules will consist of several components, designed to be delivered in either a 1-day or 2-day inservice program or through a series of 2-hour training sessions. The training modules will consist of a context-orienting vignette, course training materials, practice exercises, hands-on experiences, small group discussion questions, and homework problems. This prototype could serve as model for future development efforts for training teachers in educational assessment. (Author/SLD)
Item analysis is essential in improving items which will be used again in later tests; it can also be used to eliminate misleading items in a test. The study focused on item and test quality and explored the relationship between difficulty index (p-value) and discrimination index (DI) with distractor efficiency (DE). The study was conducted among 247 first-year students pursuing Diploma in Education at Cape Coast Polytechnic. Fifty multiple-choice questions were administered as an end of semester examination in Educational Measurement course. Internal consistency reliability of the test was 0.77 using Kuder–Richardson 20 coefficient (KR-20). The mean score was 29.23 with a standard deviation of 6.36. Mean difficulty index (p) value and DI were 58.46% (SD 21.23%) and 0.22 (SD 0.17), respectively. DI was noted to be a maximum at a p-value range between 40 and 60%. Mean DE was 55.04% (SD 24.09%). Items having average difficulty and high discriminating power with functional distractors should be integrated into future tests to improve the quality of the assessment. Using DI, it was observed that 30 (60%) of the test items fell into the reasonably good or acceptable value ranges.