An Evidence-Centered Assessment Design for Historical Thinking

• In Event: Assessment of Complex Thinking in Mathematics, Reading, Science, and History

Abstract

Similar to other disciplinary areas such as mathematics, science and reading, assessment of complex thinking in history learning is lagging behind the copious body of research on learning and cognition in historical thinking. History education researchers have made progress in defining and describing complex thinking in history education, influencing history curricula in many education contexts. There is now a rough consensus about this complex thinking—labeled as historical thinking—with respect to its cognitive components and its integrated development within history content knowledge (Stearns, Seixas, & Wineburg, 2000; VanSledright & Limon, 2006). Based on this previous research, we define elements of historical thinking as students’ ability to: (1) establish historical significance; (2) use primary source evidence; (3) identify continuity and change; (4) analyze cause and consequence; (5) take historical perspective; and (6) understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations (Seixas, 2009; Peck & Seixas, 2008).
This presentation will report on an ongoing project on designing, developing and validating assessments of historical thinking. The objectives are (1) to describe and discuss designing and developing assessments of historical thinking; (2) to describe and share findings from validation of an assessment of historical thinking; (3) to demonstrate the use of validation investigations to refine the cognition and student learning model of complex constructs.
The assessment design and development was based on the evidence centered design approach (Ercikan & Seixas, 2011; NRC, 2001). In our paper, we will describe how the construct definition of historical thinking (cognition and student model) was used to guide the task development process (evidence model) and how the cognition and student model was used to develop the scoring (interpretation model) rules. Elaboration of these three models is essential for communicating how to develop similar assessments as well as how to use assessments to guide student learning and progression in the student model. The assessment development in this phase of the project focuses on three of the six elements of historical thinking: Evidence, Perspective-taking and the Ethical dimension.
The validation research will involve in-depth investigation of cognitive processes students engage in responding to the historical thinking tasks using think-aloud protocols (TAPs), as well as psychometric analyses based on large-scale administration of the assessments to 500 students in grade 10. Data from TAPs will be used to examine the degree to which the tasks capture intended complex thinking. The large-scale data will be used to conduct exploratory factor analyses to investigate the relationship among the tasks, and the three concepts of historical thinking assessed by the tasks.
This research makes significant contributions to methodologies used in designing, developing and validating assessments of complex constructs and specifically to assessing and better understanding historical thinking.

Authors

• Kadriye Ercikan, The University of British Columbia

• Peter C. Seixas, The University of British Columbia

• Juliette Lyons-Thomas, The University of British Columbia

• Lindsay S. Gibson, The University of British Columbia