Chilean Students’ Problem-Solving Abilities Cross Subjects: A Generalizability Study (Poster 47)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 5:10 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Designing Learning Environments for Science Technology Engineering and Math Learning

Abstract

Developing problem-solving skills is an important goal of the curricula and educational standards in many countries around the world. This research investigates students’ problem-solving performance in language arts, history, and science classrooms in Chile. Drawing on a subject-generic conceptual framework, students’ solutions to problems were scored with respect to three abilities (communication, creativity, and critical thinking) on a newly developed rubric. We conduct Generalizability Studies to explore the quality of the measurement, as well as variation across subjects. We find that scores vary systematically across students and grades, as well as adequate reliabilities in most cases. Interestingly, differences between subjects are largely marginal. We discuss our findings with respect to our generic framework and modern validity theory.

Authors

• Armin Jentsch, University of Oslo

• Patricio Cabello, Universidad de Chile

• Pia Barahona, Universidad de Chile

• Patricio Felmer, Universidad de Chile