Abstract—Most of current tests only report students’ total
test scores, or T-scores, which are almost no use for providing
diagnostic information to inform teachers of their students’
strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, it has been shown that
most teachers have difficulty in using assessment to improve
their teaching. Recently, cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA)
which is designed to measure specific knowledge structures and
processing skills in students has attracted a great deal of
attentions. In this paper, we apply a CDA approach in fraction
problems to 144 sixth grade students in an elementary school in
Japan. We show how CDA can provide detailed information
about students’ strengths and weaknesses and discuss the
applicability of CDA for providing effective feedback for
teachers to improve their teaching practice.
Index Terms—Cognitive diagnostic assessment, attribute
mastery probability, effective feedback, fraction problems.
The authors are with the National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2
Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: yuan@nii.ac.jp,
m-suzuki@nii.ac.jp).
Cite:Yuan Sun and Masayuki Suzuki, "Diagnostic Assessment for Improving Teaching Practice," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 607-610, 2013.