The Simulated Classroom: A Tool to Study Teachers’ Diagnostic Abilities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Challenging Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions and Practices of Student Assessment and Evaluation

Abstract

Teachers’ judgments about students’ academic achievement significantly affect students’ academic careers. Research on teachers’ judgment accuracy shows large interindividual differences between teachers’ ability to assess their students’ performance accurately. The aim of this paper is to introduce a computer simulation (the Simulated Classroom) designed to study teachers’ judgment accuracy in an experimental setting. We conducted a study with N = 111 pre-service teachers. Opposing to our expectation, we did not find higher judgment accuracy for cooperating participants. In line with our expectation, we found an anchoring effect of previous information about students in the judgments. We intend to develop our simulation further, so that it can be used as a training tool for (pre-service) teachers to enhance their diagnostic abilities.

Authors

• Johanna Kaiser, University of Kiel

• Katja Schwartz, University of Kiel

• Pinar Sario

• Jens Moeller, University of Kiel