Reducing implicit diagnostic criteria - Fostering preservice teachers' expertise

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Diagnostic judgment forms the basis for performance assessments of students, grades, and transition recommendations, and is thus a decisive factor in the academic development of students and their educational careers. In this respect, diagnostic judgment has an important role that must be given special attention when the professionalize teachers. In order to evaluate students' products such as solutions to mathematical tasks, teachers must be enabled to apply explicit criteria oriented to normative standards or learning goals in the diagnostic judgments, required for this purpose. According to empirical findings, implicit criteria can affect diagnostic judgments and thus compete with existing explicit criteria. Accordingly, teachers' performance expectations and assessments can be affected by stereotypes about students with a migration background, about students’ gender, and about their social background, and therefore can reinforce inequitable opportunities in the educational system. In order to reduce disparities between students with and without a migration background as well as different genders and social backgrounds, the aim of the project is to strengthen the diagnostic judgment skills of prospective teachers and to reduce the effect of implicit criteria in diagnostic judgments, already during the teacher training program. It will be tested whether a) knowledge about explicit subject-related diagnostic criteria and their application as well as b) knowledge about implicit criteria, which are caused by stereotypes, their influence on diagnostic judgment and self-awareness can influence the judgment of students' solutions to mathematics tasks. For this purpose, a randomized-controlled trial with 300 preservice teachers with the following factor levels will be conducted: 3 (waiting) control group/experimental group I/experimental group II) x 2 (expected/unexpected student solution from the field of stochastics) x 2 (female/male first name) x 2 (first name implying high/low socioeconomic status of parents) x 2 (first name implying Turkish/no Turkish origin). As an intervention, two digitally deliverable workshops will be designed to address (a) explicit subject-based diagnostic criteria and their practical application and (b) implicit stereotype-based criteria and their influence on diagnostic judgment, each with a particular focus on reflection and self-awareness. In order to test the effects of the interventions, an instrument developed in a pre-study will be used, which shows student solutions of stochastic tasks combined with first names implying different characteristics, to be judged by the participants on the basis of closed items. Additionally, the preservice teachers will be asked for transition predictions for selected cases. The data will be analysed using inferential statistical procedures.