Discussion Question
Decision Time Group-Influenced Grading
A junior high school English teacher, Cecilia Celina, has recently installed cooperative learning groups in all five of her classes. The groups are organized so that, although there are individual grades earned by students based on each student’s specific accomplishments, there is also a group-based grade that is dependent on the average performance of a student’s group. Cecilia decides 60 percent of a student’s grade will be based on the student’s individual effort and 40 percent of the student’s grade will be based on the collective efforts of the student’s group. This 60–40 split is used when she grades students’ written examinations as well as when she grades a group’s oral presentation to the rest of the class.
Several of Cecilia’s fellow teachers have been interested in her use of cooperative learning because they are considering the possibility of employing it in their own classes. One of those teachers, Fred Florie, is uncomfortable about Cecilia’s 60–40 split of grading weights. Fred believes that Cecilia cannot arrive at a valid estimate of an individual student’s accomplishment when 40 percent of the student’s grade is based on the efforts of other students. Cecilia responds that this aggregated grading practice is one of the key features of cooperative learning because it is the contribution of the group grade that motivates the students in a group to help one another learn. In most of her groups, for example, she finds students willingly help other group members prepare for important examinations.
As she considers Fred’s concerns, Cecilia concludes he is most troubled about the validity of the inferences she makes about her students’ achievements. In her mind, however, she separates an estimate of a student’s accomplishments from the grade she gives a student.
Cecilia believes she has three decision options facing her. As she sees it, she can (1) leave matters as they are, (2) delete all group-based contributions to an individual student’s grade, or (3) modify the 60–40 split.
If you were Cecilia, what would your decision be?
off-putting to you. But let’s strip away the glossy labels and here’s what’s really involved when test developers (for their own tests) or test users (usually for someone else’s tests) set out to whomp up a winning validity argument. In turn, we need to (1) spell out clearly the nature of our intended interpretation of test scores in relation to the particular use (that is, decision) those scores will be put; (2) come up with propositions that must be supported if those intended interpretations are going to be accurate; (3) collect as much relevant evidence as is practical bearing on those propositions; and (4) synthesize the whole works in a convincing validity argument showing that score-based interpretations are likely to be accurate. Sure, it is easier said than done. But now you can see that when the exotic nomenclature of psychometrics is expunged, the basics of what needs to be done really is not that intimidating.
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