The Defiant Parents: Testing’s Discontents – Response to Hunt

Some blog followers might be interested in a discussion list post “The Defiant Parents: Testing’s Discontents – Response to Hunt” [Hake (2014)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a post “Re: The Defiant Parents: Testing's Discontents” [Hake (2014)] at http://bit.ly/1mYwWoa, I pointed to the “vigorous leadership, voluminous messaging, and pro-public-/anti-private-education positions of (a) Diane Ravitch and (b) FairTest http://www.fairtest.org/. Then I commented that neither appeared to be informed regarding the virtues of rigorous measurement of students' higher-order learning by means of zero-stakes formative evaluation “designed and used to improve an intervention, especially when it is still being developed” [JCSEE, copied onto p. 132 by Frechtling et al. (2010) at http://bit.ly/1aYcgYn.

In response, Russ Hunt (2014) at http://bit.ly/1hSsq6L wrote: “The virtues of rigorous testing aren't really the point: it's how the tests are administered and what uses they’re put to that Ravitch and Fair Test (and I) are concerned with.”

However, it IS to the point for many of those who wish to enhance students’ higher-level learning, as I have emphasized in, e.g.:

1. “Lessons from the Physics Education Reform Effort” [Hake (2002)] at http://bit.ly/aL87VT;

2. “The Physics Education Reform Effort: A Possible Model for Higher Education” [Hake (2005)] at http://bit.ly/9aicfh;

3. “Should We Measure Change? Yes!” [Hake (2007a)] at http://bit.ly/d6WVKO (2.5 MB);

4. “Re: pre-to-post tests as measures of learning/teaching” [Hake (2008a)] at http://bit.ly/MmPxwp;

5. “Design-Based Research in Physics Education Research: A Review” [Hake (2008b)] at http://bit.ly/9kORMZ (1.1 MB);

6. “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and Its Relevance For Engineering Education” [Hake (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/nmPY8F (8.7 MB);

7. “SET's Are Not Valid Gauges of Students' Higher-Level Learning #2” [Hake (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/jLZaz5;

8. “The NRC Finally Comes to Its Senses on Improving STEM Education” [Hake (2013a)] at http://bit.ly/154M5yf; and

9. “Can the Cognitive Impact of Calculus Courses be Enhanced?” Hake (2013b)] at http://bit.ly/1loHgC4 (2.7 MB).
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To access the complete 66 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/1lqiR4u.


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University; Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands; President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII); LINKS TO: Academia http://bit.ly/a8ixxm; Articles http://bit.ly/a6M5y0; Blog http://bit.ly/9yGsXh; Facebook http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm; GooglePlus http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE; Google Scholar http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3; Linked In http://linkd.in/14uycpW; Research Gate http://bit.ly/1fJiSwB; Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs http://bit.ly/9nGd3M; Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52.

“Physics educators have led the way in developing and using objective tests to compare student learning gains in different types of courses, and chemists, biologists, and others are now developing similar instruments. These tests provide convincing evidence that students assimilate new knowledge more effectively in courses including active, inquiry-based, and collaborative learning, assisted by information technology, than in traditional courses.” - Wood & Gentile (2003).


REFERENCES [URLs shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 31 Jan 2014.]
Hake, R.R. 2014. “The Defiant Parents: Testing's Discontents – Response to Hunt,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/1lqiR4u. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Wood, W.B., & J.M. Gentile. 2003. “Teaching in a research context,” Science 302: 1510; 28 November; online as a 213 kB pdf http://bit.ly/SyhOvL, thanks to Ecoplexity http://bit.ly/152aFQ9.

No Standard Outcome Measures For Science Education? #2

Some blog followers might be interested in “No Standard Outcome Measures For Science Education? #2” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Robin Millar and Jonathan Osborne in Chapter 3, “Research and Practice: A Complex Relationship” of Shelley et al. (2009). claimed that: (a) NO STANDARD OR COMMONLY AGREED OUTCOME MEASURES EXIST FOR ANY MAJOR TOPIC IN SCIENCE EDUCATION. . . . [[my CAPS]]. . . ; (b) the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) reflects a choice of values that is arguable; and (c) the FCI has not been subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny of factorial structure and content validity as have standard measures in psychology.

That no standard outcome measures exist for any major topic in science education is negated by the existence of Concept Inventories for astronomy, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, geoscience, and math.

That the FCI reflects values that are arguable is correct only if the arguers think that there’s little value in students’ learning the basic concepts of Newtonian mechanics.

That the FCI has not been subjected to rigorous scrutiny of factorial structure ignores the 1995 factor analyses of Huffman & Heller and Heller & Huffman; and responses to those analyses by Hestenes & Halloun and Halloun & Hestenes.

That the FCI has not been as not been subjected to rigorous scrutiny of content validity ignores section IIB. “Validity and reliability of the mechanics test” (Mechanics Diagnostic) in Halloun & Hestenes (1985a) - that verification of validity applies also to the FCI since it's almost the same as the Mechanics Diagnostic.
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To access the complete 24 kB article please click on http://bit.ly/rfyamc.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi
http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com
http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“50 years of research, curriculum development, and implementation have not presented consistent and compelling patterns of outcomes.”
Shelley et al. (2009, p. 4), summarizing a claim by Osborne (2007)

“Physics educators have led the way in developing and using objective tests to compare student learning gains in different types of courses, and chemists, biologists, and others are now developing similar instruments. These tests provide convincing evidence that students assimilate new knowledge more effectively in courses including active, inquiry-based, and collaborative learning, assisted by information technology, than in traditional courses.”
Wood & Gentile (2003) "Teaching in a research context"


REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 16 Oct 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “No Standard Outcome Measures For Science Education? #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/rfyamc . Post of 16 Oct 2011 11:04:41-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists.

Osborne, J. 2007. “In praise of armchair science education,” contained within E-NARST News 50(2), online as a 3.2 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/qsRwaK . The talk itself is online as a 112 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/r4Khl7.

Shelley, M.C., L.D. Yore, & B. Hand, eds. 2009. Quality Research in Literacy and Science Education: International Perspectives and Gold Standards. Springer, publisher's information at http://bit.ly/b58vbP. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/97OVJx, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature. Barnes & Noble information at http://bit.ly/p40bKu. An expurgated (teaser) version is online as a Google “book preview” at http://bit.ly/qK8T9P.

Wood, W.B., & J.M. Gentile. 2003. “Teaching in a research context,” Science 302: 1510; 28 November; online as a 209 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/oK46p7.

The ‘Teacher Effect’ - Response to Hansen #2

Some blog followers might be interested in discussion-list post “The ‘Teacher Effect’ - Response to Hansen #2” [Hake (2011b)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011a)], Math-Teach’s Robert Hansen wrote (paraphrasing):

“Is there a complete high-school assessment endorsed by PER [Physics Education Research]? The FCI [Force Concept Inventory] assesses only one component of physics and I think that keeps people, especially physicists, from getting too excited over normalized gains on the FCI.”

Hansen is either dismissive or oblivious of the fact that PER is concerned with (a) students’ conceptual understanding, (b) students’ ability to solve non-algorithmic problems, and (c) at least 10 other capabilities listed in this post. I suggest over 30 references to the PER literature that might reduce Hansen’s confusion.

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To access the complete 24 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/eh6sge.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which

Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRI)

rrhake@earthlink.net

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“The premium so often put in schools upon external ‘discipline,’ and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.”

John Dewey (1916)

REFERENCES [All URL's accessed on 14 April 2011 and shortened by http://bit.ly/.]

Dewey, J. 1916. “The Nature of Realization or Appreciation” in Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, online at http://bit.ly/evICPb, Chapter 18, Educational Values, Section 1.1.

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ. Post of 7 Apr 2011 17:51:59-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/ifvkSz.

Hake, R.R. 2011b. “The ‘Teacher Effect’ - Response to Hansen #2,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/eh6sge. Post of 16 Apr 2011 13:43:41 -0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

More Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better Retention

Some blog followers may be interested in a post "Re: More

Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better Retention" [Hake (2010)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: PhysLrnR's Bill Goffe alerted subscribers to

an Economist report http://bit.ly/bfpdaB on an article

"Fortune Favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of

Disfluency on Educational Outcomes" (Oppenheimer et al.

(2010, http://bit.ly/cATcBK ).

In research conducted both in the lab and in chemistry,

physics, English, and history classrooms, Oppenheimer

et al. found that information made "disfluent" with

difficult-to-read fonts (12-point Comic Sans MS 75%

greyscale and 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale) enhanced

"learning" over more fluent information in easy-to-read

16-point Arial pure-black font.

But classroom "learning" was measured by "normal

assessment tests" which usually gauge only lower-level

learning such as rote-memorization, recipe following,

and algorithmicproblem-solving.

One might wonder, for example, if, after textbook coverage

of Newtonian mechanics, there would be an increase of

posttestscores on the conceptually oriented "Force Concept

Inventory" (FCI) [Halloun & Hestenes (1992)] for text material

with more:

(a) difficult-to-read fonts,

(b) "Fog" as measured by the "Gunning Fog Index", or

(c) structural complexity [as studied by e.g., McNamara,

Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch (1996) in "Are good texts always

better? Text coherence, background knowledge,and levels of

understanding in learning from text."]

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To access the complete 20 kB post please click on

http://bit.ly/cZ9xHe

rrhake@earthlink.net>

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

"Easy reading is damned hard writing."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The single biggest problem in communication is

the illusion that it has taken place."

- George Bernard Shaw

REFERENCES

Hake, R.R. 2010. "Re: More Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better

Retention." online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at

http://bit.ly/cZ9xHe. Post of 27 Oct 2010 17:14:33-0700 to

AERA-L, Net-Gold, and PhysLrnR. The abstract and link to the

complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?

Some blog followers might be interested in a post of the above title [Hake (2010)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: PhysLrnR's Noah Podolefsky (2010) cited "Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?'' [Michelle (2008)] and "Beyond romantic versus sceptic: a microanalysis of conceptual change in kinematics" [Roschelle (1998)] to clarify his questions about "whether the FCI (and other instruments) are 'quantitative'." In my opinion, neither of above references nor Robert Mislevy's “sociocognitive” perspective contradict the premise that the *normalized* pre-to posttest gain on the Force Concept Inventory is a valid and consistently reliable quantitative gauge of the effectiveness of an introductory mechanics course in promoting students conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics.

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To access the complete 11 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/9Fp6QS .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize theInvention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

REFERENCES [[URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ .]

Hake, R.R. 2010. "Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?" online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/9Fp6QS . Post of 17 Jun 2010 15:34:11-0700 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and PhysLrnR. The abstract and URL are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Re: Quality Research in Literacy and Science Education: International Perspectives and Gold Standards

Some blog followers may be interested a post [Hake (2010)] of the above title. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Stimulated by a physicist's request for information on “Quality Research in Literacy and Science Education: International Perspectives and Gold Standards” [Shelley, Yore, & Hand, eds. (2009a) - hereafter “SYH]”, I mined the internet for information on the SYH's: I - editors; II - contents, subject & author indices; III - theme; IV - treatment of Randomized Control Trials; and V - allusions to Physics Education Research. The resultant information, relayed in this post, may be of interest to some discussion-list subscribers.

Most of the contributors to SYH are skeptical of the U.S. Dept. of Education's enthronement of Randomized Control Trials (RCT's) as the “Gold Standard” of education research, consistent with the views of most evaluation experts.

On the other hand, the authors contributing to SYH appear to be either dismissive or oblivious of physics education research, inconsistent with the generally positive opinions of most observers.

For example, Millar and Osborne(2009) make the following erroneous claims (paraphrasing): “No standard or commonly agreed outcome measures exist for any major topic. Published assessment tools such as the 'Force Concept Inventory' have not been subjected to the kind of rigorous scrutiny of factorial structure and content validity that would be standard practice for measures of attainment or learning outcome in other subject areas.”

Despite SYH's cavalier dismissal of physics education research, I think some discussion-list subscribers might consider scanning a begged, borrowed, or stolen copy of SYH, before paying Springer's piratical $215 for a personal copy.

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To access the complete 45 kB post please click on http://tinyurl.com/yhhbu72.

REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy http://tinyurl.com/create.php .]

Hake, R.R. 2010. “Re: Quality Research in Literacy and Science Education: International Perspectives and Gold Standards,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://tinyurl.com/yhhbu72 . Post of 22 Feb 2010 14:04:43-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract is being sent to various discussion lists.

Millar, R. & J. Osborne. 2009. “Research and Practice: A Complex Relationship?” Chapter 3, pages 41-62, of Shelley et al. (2009a). Surprisingly, the Google book preview of Shelley et al. (2009a) at http://tinyurl.com/yddphh3 contains all of pages 41-62. To see click repeatedly on the “>” at the top of the first page to go to page vi and then click on chapter 3.

Shelley, M.C., L.D. Yore, & B. Hand, eds. 2009a. Quality Research in Literacy and Science Education: International Perspectives and Gold Standards.” Springer, publisher's information at http://www.springerlink.com/content/g2447682464446x2/. Amazon.com information at http://tinyurl.com/yf7efra, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature. Barnes & Noble information at http://tinyurl.com/y8n9pe9. An expurgated (teaser) version is online as a Google “book preview” at http://tinyurl.com/yddphh3.