A Model of Classroom Assessment in Action: Using Assessment to Improve Student Learning and Statistical Reasoning

Recent years have seen a shift in the focus of introductory statistics courses, emphasizing skills such as the ability to interpret, evaluate, and apply statistical ideas rather than procedural calculations. Calls for reform also emphasize that instruction should fully incorporate genuine data, technological tools, and active learning (e.g. Cobb, 1992). As instructional goals change, so must the assessment techniques used to evaluate progress toward these goals, both for evaluation of student performance and for research studies on the effectiveness of new instructional techniques. Traditional assessment too often emphasizes the final answer over the process (Garfield, 1993) and may not reflect the desired outcomes of the statistics reform movement. Instead, assessment techniques must also measure how student learning is affected by new approaches. In this paper, we discuss an alternative conceptualization of assessment and its role in statistics education research. This alternative framework is based on a theory of conceptual change. We provide an example of a collaborative classroom study on the effectiveness of computer simulations in guiding student construction and visualization of sampling distribution behavior utilizing this framework.