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Measuring conceptual understanding using comparative judgement
journal contribution
posted on 2016-03-03, 11:48 authored by Marie-Josee Bisson, Camilla GilmoreCamilla Gilmore, Matthew InglisMatthew Inglis, Ian JonesIan JonesThe importance of improving students’ understanding of core concepts in mathematics
is well established. However, assessing the
impact of different teaching interventions
designed to improve students’ conceptual understanding requires the validation of
adequate measures. Here we propose a novel
method of measuring conceptual understanding
based on comparative judgement (CJ). Contrary
to traditional instruments, the CJ approach
allows test questions for any topic to be
developed rapidly. In addition, CJ does not
require a detailed rubric to represent conceptual understanding of a topic, as it is
instead based on the collective knowledge of
experts. In the current studies, we compared
CJ to already established instruments to measure three topics in mathematics: understanding the use of p-‐values in statistics, understanding derivatives in calculus, and understanding the use of letters in algebra. The results showed that
CJ was valid as compared to established instruments, and achieved high reliability. We conclude that CJ is a quick and efficient
alternative method of measuring conceptual
understanding in mathematics and could therefore be particularly useful in intervention studies.
Funding
The studies reported in this manuscript were funded by a Nuffield Foundation grant.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics EducationCitation
BISSON, M-J., 2016. Measuring conceptual understanding using comparative judgement. International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education, 2 (2), pp.141-164.Publisher
© SpringerVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2016Notes
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40753-016-0024-3.ISSN
2198-9745eISSN
2198-9753Publisher version
Language
- en
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