Simulations of Student Thinking That Assess Teaching Skill and Knowledge in Use

• In Event: 72.044 - Teaching Simulations That Assess (the Use of) Teaching Knowledge and Skill

Abstract

Objectives
Although many teacher education programs use evidence from school based interactions with children to assess a teacher candidate’s skill with eliciting and interpreting student thinking, contextual differences can create unintended advantages or disadvantages, and interfere with making fair and reliable estimates of a candidate’s skills and readiness for independent practice. To address these challenges, we have developed an assessment using a simulated student.

Perspective(s)
In the context of mathematics instruction, we define these practices in the following ways:
• Eliciting student thinking includes inviting the student to share initial thinking; following up on what the student says and does; and probing key aspects of mathematics such as process/strategies and understandings. Tone and manner of the eliciting is also important.
• Interpreting student thinking entails selecting appropriate evidence from eliciting and using that evidence as a basis for describing the student’s method and mathematical understanding. Such descriptions need to be accurate, clear, properly qualified, and well-warranted. Interpreting also involves using evidence as the basis for anticipating a student’s method and understanding of a similar mathematical task.

Methods
In this assessment, candidates: (1) prepare for an interaction with a simulated student about one piece of student work; (2) elicit and probe the simulated student’s thinking to learn about her process for solving the problem and her understanding of key mathematical ideas; and (3) respond to questions about their interpretation of the student’s thinking, including predicting the student’s response to a similar task. To ensure consistency, the simulated student has rules for reasoning and responding.

Data sources
We have collected video records of teacher candidates’ performance on the assessment for four years. In this paper, we draw on video records of performance at the midpoint of our teacher education program, after coursework that involves eliciting and interpreting student thinking.

Results
Findings from the assessment and validation studies suggest that the assessment provides insight into important components of the focal practices. For example, for eliciting student thinking, we assess whether candidates (a) launch the interaction in a way that invites the student to share his/her mathematical thinking, (b) elicit the student’s process for solving the task, and (c) probe the student’s understanding of key mathematical ideas. We are learning about the specifics of our teacher candidates’ skills at mid-program, both the skills of individuals and the profile of the larger group. The ability to control for much of the contextual variability that occurs when such assessment is done with actual children (e.g., differences in understanding, willingness to share thinking) has been crucial as has the efficiency of this assessment. In the full paper, we report what we have been learning about candidates’ skill. Ongoing challenges have involved learning about the components of the practices that can be assessed through such an assessment, developing new versions of the assessment, and developing tools to train those administering the assessment.

Significance of the work
This assessment contrasts in productive ways with typical forms of assessment and presses on firmly held views of quality assessments of teaching practice.

Authors

• Meghan M. Shaughnessy, University of Michigan

• Timothy A. Boerst, University of Michigan

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Susanna Farmer, University of Michigan