R&D: Diagnosing Teachers' Multiplicative Reasoning

诊断教师的乘性推理(DTMR)解决了DR-K12情境挑战链的评估部分。调查教师使学生能够学习所需的知识，并对这些知识进行评估，是数学教育面临的主要挑战。一种方法强调教师知识量与学生成绩之间的相关性，以达到问责的目的。另一种是以数学思维研究为基础的，经常使用案例研究来调查教师在学生解决问题的策略中发现和利用机会的能力。这些方法之间存在着紧张关系，因为便于评估大量教师的工具对推理能力不敏感，而用于调查教师推理的案例研究方法在大样本情况下并不实用。DTMR项目正在建立一种示范工具，既适合于大样本教师使用，又能提供有关他们以支持学生思维的方式对内容进行推理的能力的信息。特别是，DTMR项目正在开发和评估一种测试表，用于诊断教师在两个密切相关的关于数量之间乘法关系的推理案例中的能力。第一个是测量，在划分给定量时，通常依赖于乘法嵌套的单位级别。第二种是协变，通常依赖于不同量之间的乘法关系。该项目将重点放在这种推理的各个方面，这些方面与数量的加减、数量的乘法、数量的报价和分割以及数量的比率是相互关联和基本的。该项目将考虑分数、小数和比率。该项目的一个主要目标是在足够深入的情况下处理示范表格的内容和构建其有效性，以便随后开展更大规模的工作和预测有效性研究。该项目正在开发使用一种名为认知诊断模型(CDMS)的新型心理测量模型的仪器。使用CDMS包括在特定领域中指定推理的组成部分，然后系统地构建试题(通常是多项选择题)，以便每个选项对应于使用这些组成部分的不同组合的推理。在学生和教师乘法推理研究的基础上，该项目正在开发一种包含30到40个试题的测试表。清洁发展机制评估和等值方法的模拟研究也是该项目的重要组成部分。

Diagnosing Teachers' Multiplicative Reasoning (DTMR) addresses the assessment component of the DR-K12 Contextual Challenges strand. Investigating knowledge that teachers need to enable students' learning and developing assessments of that knowledge are central challenges for mathematics education. One approach emphasizes correlations between amounts of teachers' knowledge and students' achievement for accountability purposes. Another, grounded in research on mathematical thinking, often uses case studies to investigate teachers' capacities for identifying and building upon opportunities in students' problem-solving strategies. Tensions exist between these approaches because instruments convenient for assessing large numbers of teachers are insensitive to capacities for reasoning, while case study methods used to investigate teachers' reasoning are not practical with large samples. The DTMR project is building a demonstration instrument both suitable for use with large samples of teachers and informative about their capacities to reason about content in ways that support students' thinking. In particular, the DTMR project is developing and evaluating a test form that diagnoses teachers' capacities in two closely connected cases of reasoning about multiplicative relations among quantities. The first is on on measurement that often relies on multiplicatively nested levels of units when partitioning a given quantity. The second is on covariation that often relies on multiplicative relations between distinct quantities. The project is focusing on aspects of such reasoning that are interconnected and fundamental to addition and subtraction of quantities, multiplication of quantities, quotative and partitive division of quantities, and ratios of quantities. The project will consider fractions, decimals, and ratios. A main goal of the project is to address content and construct validity of the demonstration form in sufficient depth so that larger scale work and predictive validity studies may follow. The project is developing instruments using a new class of psychometric models called cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs). Using CDMs involves specifying components of reasoning in a particular domain and then constructing test questions (typically multiple-choice) systematically so that each choice corresponds to reasoning with a different combination of those components. Drawing on the research on students' and teachers' multiplicative reasoning, the project is developing one test form of 30 to 40 items. CDM simulation studies of estimation and equating methods are also an important component of the project.