The Psychometric Properties of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS)

• In Event: 35.032 - Applications of Computerized Scoring in Assessment

Abstract

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is an observational instrument assessing the nature of everyday interactions in educational settings spaning early years to secondary school. The instrument has strong theoretical groundings; however some psychometric weaknesses are observed. Using a large dataset including observations of 993 classrooms, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is used to replicate findings from the few published validation studies in a new national context. Item response modelling (IRM) is used to examine individual indicator behaviour. Multiple indicator latent growth models (LGM) are used to produce a new methodological approach to estimating factor scores that are more authentic to the CLASS data collection protocols, yielding measures of both level and stability of adult-child interaction quality.

Authors

• Dan Cloney, University of Melbourne

• Cuc Nguyen, The University of Melbourne

• Raymond J. Adams, Australian Council for Educational Research

• Collette Tayler, Univeristy of Melbourne

• Gordon Cleveland, University of Toronto