Julian Williams & Maria Pampaka The University of Manchester ‘Mathematical modelling and problem solving’ Evaluation of Instruments for HE-STEM projects Julian Williams & Maria Pampaka The University of Manchester
Aims to provide evaluation documents and instruments, materials reflective video on a website for new projects to benefit their own developments.
Pilot Instrument development Attitudes towards modeling Awareness Content of this presentation: How we validated the measures and what it means? How we can use them to inform practice or progress?
The ‘Attitudinal’ Instrument
How we validate? [AKA methodology] Rasch measurement Rating Scale Model (Likert type items) Partial Credit Model (mixture of items) Winsteps software Evidence for validity: Fit statistics Differential Item Functioning Person-Item Maps
Some evidence of validity Fit statistics […ensuring unidimensionality?] After deleting these two misfiting items
Some evidence of validity Fit statistics […ensuring unidimensionality?]
Some evidence of validity DIF analysis […ensuring measure invariance …across time] No statistically significant difference hence measures can be used to compare before and after scores
Some evidence of validity DIF analysis […ensuring measure invariance …across contexts]
The Map
End result of validation A measure of disposition to mathematical modeling A single item for ‘writing a report’
Using these measures/item Matched before and after scores of students in the disposition scale
‘Writing a report’ Item
Overall improvement…
The ‘Awareness’ Instrument Descriptive statistics of the ‘items’
The ‘Awareness’ Instrument Some results from preliminary validation Fit Statistics…OK
Validation… DIF across DPs and courses (significant differences) OR is it because of marking?
Conclusion The dispositions instruments have some validity for measuring outcomes of disposition towards mm&ps and report-writing (across subsamples/contexts) The 'awareness' instrument has potential, but needs development: e.g. in how it is used and in the contexts that are used in items.