Adapting the Zone of Proximal Development for Reporting Exam Results

• In Event: 75.016 - Symposium on Recent Developments in Medical Certification Score Reporting

Abstract

Introduction.
Examinees often complain that subscore results from blueprint categories reported in seemingly arbitrary scaled scores do not provide useful information to guide future study and learning. In order to make score reports more applicable to an individual, we adapted Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the Zone of Proximal Development to create a score report that shows an examinee’s probability of answering an item correctly and its corresponding developmental zone. Examinees can use this score report to identify test items that they should have answered correctly, but did not, and to more easily cluster these items into categories that are meaningful to them.
Methods.
Examinees were scored using the dichotomous Rasch model (Rasch, 1960). The Rasch model specifies the probability of a correct response to a given item based on a participant’s overall ability estimate. We plotted each exam item using an examinee’s probability of a correct response to that item along the Y-axis and the timeframe for participation along the X-axis. Adapting Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development, we created categories to assist examinees in understanding their individual likelihood of answering a particular question correctly. Items for which an examinee had a 0.00 - 0.55 probability of a correct response were classified into the “Too Hard” zone, 0.56 - 0.79 probability of a correct response were classified into the “Challenging” zone, and 0.80 - 1.00 probability of a correct response were classified into the “Mastery” zone.
Results and discussion.
An example chart for a single participant is shown in Figure 1. For this participant, 16 items were classified into the Mastery zone, of which 12 were answered correctly and 4 were answered incorrectly. The participant can use this information to examine the 4 items that s/he should have answered correctly to determine the disconnect between the item content and his/her response. This should allow the participant to more fully explore potential gaps in his/her knowledge and identify potential steps for remediation.

Authors

• Thomas R. O'Neill, American Board of Family Medicine

• Michael R Peabody, American Board of Family Medicine