Project COINS

Construction of instruction-sensitive test items

Tests or test items are said to be instruction-sensitive if they are able to capture the effects of instruction on student performance. If tests are not sufficiently instruction-sensitive, it is possible to spend a lot of time and effort teaching students without this being reflected in their test performance.
To date, little is known about how to develop instructionally sensitive test items specifically for a performance test. In particular, there is a lack of knowledge about which characteristics of a test item are crucial for its instructional sensitivity. The aim of the COINS project is to identify key features of instruction-sensitive test items that can be considered in the development of standardised achievement tests.
The COINS project builds on the findings of the DFG project ‘Instructional Sensitivity of Test Items in Educational Psychological Diagnostics (InSe)’. While the InSe project focused on measuring the instructional sensitivity of existing tests, the COINS project is concerned with the construction of instructionally sensitive test items.
The project aims to,

(1) identify item characteristics that influence instructional sensitivity, and

(2) investigate the relationships between instructional sensitivity (at test and item level) and characteristics of teaching quality.

The aim of the project is to develop a mathematics test for the lower secondary level and to test its sensitivity to teaching using an empirical sample. The test will be administered to students in Hessen and the canton of St. Gallen (Switzerland). The results on teaching sensitivity will then be correlated with characteristics of teaching quality.