Cognitive science, expert‐novice research, and performance assessment

The effects of POWERSOURCE©assessments on middle-school students’ math performance

“…In the POWERSOURCE Ó intervention, accordingly, we developed open-ended forms of explanation of math principles in formative assessment tasks, with the intention to develop students' pre-algebra schemas (Chi 2000;Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson 2003;Singley and Bennett 2002). Building on our previous research on model-based assessment of conceptual understanding and problem solving (e.g., Baker 1997;Niemi 1996Niemi , 1997Niemi, Baker, and Sylvester 2007), we have also developed problem-solving and symbolic representation tasks that require understanding and demonstration of concepts and principles. Figure 1 shows some items from one of the Checks for Understanding intended to elicit students' understanding of the use of the distributive property to simplify expressions and solve problems.…”

Formative Assessment: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Some data from this study shows the effects of FA are not so obvious with less experienced teachers" class. So without the guidance of systematically-developed cognitive theories, the design of teaching, learning and assessing activities is likely to ad hoc, unsystematic and ineffective in improving achievements for many students (Niemi, 1997). In other words, both theories and domains of knowledge and practice in which they are to be employed must be deeply understood.…”

The Effects of Activities and Approachments Intended Performance Improvement on the Students’ Performances in Mathematics

“…In a similar manner, Kitchen and colleagues define performance as "the approach adopted by the student in the process of thinking" (Kitchen, Cherrington, Gates, Hitchings, Majka, Merk& Trubow, 2002). There are some other people defining performance as "depth in understanding and high level of competence" (Niemi, 1997). On the other hand, Baker (1997) defines it as "the activities Given the delineations above, the safe conclusion is that performance is closely associated with the possession of some certain abilities and skills and their application by the individual.…”

“…In the problem solving process, the student is expected to conclude the solution, explain the stages of solution and prove the accuracy of solution (Baxter, 2001). Moreover, academic performance also involves the explicit demonstration of knowledge, the use of conceptual knowledge for comment and the skill of solving various problems and generalizing knowledge (Niemi, 1997). All of these show that academic performance is related to problem solving.…”

“…On the other hand, Baker (1997) defines it as "the activities Given the delineations above, the safe conclusion is that performance is closely associated with the possession of some certain abilities and skills and their application by the individual. These abilities and skills can be summarized as follows; "conceptual understanding, existence of prior knowledge, problem solving, the skill of being able to explain what has been done, individual differences arising from the education received and the skill of reflecting the content knowledge into application" (Niemi, 1997). When carefully examined, it is seen that with the definitions given in the literature and the conclusions derived from these definitions, the individual's performance level and actual achievement can be defined because "a person's knowing the conceptual field requires the possession of a series of skills to understand, reason and share.…”