Teachers’ perspectives on assessing students’ reading skills. A Design Research study on the development of a web-based instrument for practitioners
Submitted by:
Frederike Schmidt
Abstract:
The assessment of reading skills is a basic dimension of teaching quality in the literature classroom to structure and modify teaching and learning activities (e.g. Afflerbach/Cho 2011). While existing literature and research suggests a need of assessments that “turn […] attention to informal assessment of reading comprehension” and take “the needs, knowledge and expertise of practitioners” (Leslie/Caldwell 2009, 419) into account, examples for this claim are scarce in German literature education. My aim was therefore the development of an informal web-based instrument for the assessment of students’ reading skills that is designed collaboratively with teachers: the theoretical conceptualization of the tool was empirically underlaid with data of a qualitative study. I conducted interviews to assess the perspectives of teachers on diagnosing students’ reading skills and their feedback on the tool “JuDiT-L” (Youth Diagnostic Tool in Reading Skills) after using the instrument in their teaching practice over half a year (n=10 secondary teachers, teaching German language and literature). The collected data were analysed by using the documentary method as method for investigation. Against this background, the outcome of the study is an assessment tool for reading comprehension, which was designed, proved and elaborated in an iterative process (Schmidt 2018).
The results and implications of the study will be presented on the poster, with respects to potential and challenges of Design Research (Plomp/Nieveen 2013) and ways of communication in the dialogue of research and practitioners.
References
- Afflerbach, P./Cho, B.-Y. (2011): Classroom assessment of reading. In: Kamil, M. L. (Ed.): Handbook of reading research. Volume 4. London: routledge, 487-514.
- Leslie, L./Caldwell, J. (2009): Formal and informal measures of reading comprehension. In: Israel, S. E./Duffy, G. G. (Eds.): Handbook of research on reading comprehension. New York, NY: Routledge, 403-427.
- Plomp, T./Nieveen, N. (Eds.) (2013): Educational Design Research: Illustrative Cases. Enschede: SLO.
- Schmidt, F. (2018): Diagnose von Lesekompetenz aus Sicht von Lehrpersonen im Fach Deutsch. Berlin et al.: Peter Lang.
Key words: assessment of reading, practices of teachers, beliefs of teachers, literature education, design research