A comparison of oral and written responses to a classroom simulation test

approved (Major Professor) The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of data obtained from individual oral and group written administration of a classroom simulation test. The individual oral procedure involved one group of subjects taking the simulator test individually and responding orally, while the group written procedure involved another group writing their responses to the simulator test under group conditions. The sample consisted of 34 women majoring in elementary education at Oregon College of Education at Monmouth, Oregon. These subjects were matched on the basis of age and years of teaching experience. In each of the two different test procedure. the subjects responded to 11 short filmed episodes of the claEsroun behavior of 22 sixth grade children. The subjects enacted the role of student teacher and were asked to respond at any time during the filmed episode where they felt some response or action was needed. Each subject was equipped with a stop watch. This was used to indicate the point in time in the sequence of events that a subject chose to initiate a response or formulate a judgment. In both test procedures the subjects were asked to respond as if they were actually the teacher talking to the children portrayed on the film. Y 'ift-s // Upon completion of each of the episodes, the subjects were asked to answer three questions: (1) What was it in this situation that made you, as the teacher, respond when you did? (2) Why did you say what you said or do what you did? and (3) What did you anticipate achieving, if anything, by the response you made? These questions were used to try and tap the rationale or reasoning for the particular response made. The protocols, which included responses to the filmed episodes and the answers to the three questions, from the two test procedures were compared in the following ways: (1) the number of words elicited by each method, (2) the point in the episode (time) at which the subject responded, (3) the degree of involvement in the response, (4) the homogeneity of content, and (5) the consistency between the rationale given for a response and the response itself. Analyses three, four and five involved placement of the protocols in category systems. Reliability of category classification was demonstrated by a measure of percent agreement between two sets of raters before the protocols were classified. The data were analyzed by the chi square analysis and the t -test for related samples to determine the similarity of data elicited by the two administrative procedures. In general, the results of the analyses indicated that the two methods of test procedure, individual oral and group written, elicited comparable data to a classroom simulation test. On the basis of these results, several conclusions seem justified: 1. The group written procedure is economically superior to the individual oral procedure because of its tendency to elicit significantly shorter protocols and because it can be administered to more than one person at one time. 2. Both methods are similar in terms of the time of initiation of response. 3. The group written procedure ana the individual oral procedure are similar in facilitating involvement in the simulator test. 4. Both methods are similar in terms of the nature of the content elicited. 5. Consistency between response and rationale for the response was independent of method of administration. The results of the present investigation cannot claim superiority for one method over the other, but it points to the equality of both. Additional research involving the use of simulation materials under various methodological conditions needs to be done in order to further explore the potential of this type of test. stimuli. A COMPARISON OF ORAL AND WRITTEN RESPONSES TO A CLASSROOM SIMULATION TEST