NSF Award
1621117
The project will design an assessment based on learning progressions for the concept of function. A learning progression describes how students develop understanding of a topic over time. Function is a critical concept for algebra learning and understanding. The goal of the assessment and learning progression design in this project is to specifically incorporate findings about the learning of students traditionally under-served and under-performing in algebra courses. The project will include accounting for the social and cultural experiences of the middle and high school students when creating assessment tasks. The resources developed should impact mathematics instruction (especially for algebra courses) by creating a learning progression which captures the range of student performance and appropriately places them at distinct levels of performance. The important contribution of the work is the development of a learning progression and related assessment tasks that account for the experiences of students often under-served in mathematics. The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.<br/><br/>The learning progression development will begin by comparing and integrating existing learning progressions and current research on function learning. This project will develop an assessment of student knowledge of function based on learning progressions via empirical recovery (looking for the reconstruction of theoretical levels of the learning theory). Empirical recovery is the process through which data will be collected that reconstruct the various levels, stages, or sequences of said learning progression. The development of tasks and task models will include testing computer-delivered, interactive tasks and rubrics that can be used for human and automated scoring (depending on the task). Item response theory methods will be used to evaluate the assessment tasks' incorporation of the learning progression.
