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We Are All Learning Here: Cycles of Research and Application in Adult Development
Abstract
This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of a specific methodology-developmental maieutics-designed to bridge developmental research and practice by setting up an ongoing conversation between test takers and test developers. The approach involves building standardized, diagnostic educational assessments that also function as research instruments. After reviewing the research and theory behind developmental maieutics, we direct attention to a particular instance of current research and application involving the Lectical Decision Making Assessment™ (LDMA). The LDMA focuses on three aspects of decision making-perspective taking, argumentation, and the decision-making process. It has been used in a variety of contexts, most recently as an online assessment employed by researchers and management consultants to diagnose the learning needs of individual managers. Here, we show how data produced during the process of providing feedback to test takers has contributed to our understanding of an important aspect of perspective taking and perspective seeking, demonstrating how usable knowledge about human development can be constructed through an ongoing conversation between two groups of learners-test developers and test takers.
... In an earlier study employing the same method, Dawson and Stein (2011) investigated the relationship between perspectival capacity and hierarchical complexity in leaders. Findings revealed that perspective skill increased with developmental level with 28% to 61% of the variance in perspective skill being accounted for by skill level. ...
... Perspective taking is broadly understood as the act of inferring, anticipating, visualizing, or predicting the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, intentions, or viewpoints of another person (Gehlbach, 2004;Selman, 1980;Flavell, Botkin, Fry, Wright, & Jarvis, 1968) Perspective seeking is the behavioral act of directly or indirectly seeking out clarification or evidence concerning another person or group's thoughts, feelings, and intentions. (Dawson & Stein, 2011;Fuhs, 2013;Jarvela & Hakkinen, 2002). ...
... Perspective coordination is the ability to integrate perspectives into a more complex understanding that informs personal action (Dawson & Stein, 2011;Feffer, 1959;Martin, Sokol, & Elfers, 2008;Selman, 2003). References to perspective taking are quite common in the literature; references to perspective seeking and coordination are rare by comparison. ...
Problem: A range of developmental models have been applied in research on leader development. Such applications often advocate “whole” person approaches to leader growth. They seek to expand social, cognitive, and behavioral capacities, and often reference perspective taking. Many of these approaches define developmental levels in terms of specific content, ideas, and domain-specific capacities. In some models, people are said to be at a given level because they demonstrate a certain kind of perspective taking, and they are also expected to demonstrate that kind of perspective taking because they are at a given level. This circularity largely prevents the investigation of how different capacities change together (or not) over time.
Purpose: Using an approach that avoids this kind of circularity it was possible to examine perspectival skills and developmental level independently. I tested three hypotheses about the relationship between change in developmental level and change in perspective taking, seeking, and coordination. It was predicted that these constructs would exhibit patterns of synchronous and asynchronous change, with the former being most prominent.
Method: The sample consisted of 598 civil leaders who completed a developmental assessment called the LecticalTM Decision Making Assessment (LMDA) up to 4 times over a 9-month leadership development program. The LDMAs yielded separate scores for Lectical level—a domain-general index of hierarchical complexity—and perspective taking, seeking, and coordination. Perspective taking and seeking scores were disaggregated into component scores for salience, accessibility, and sophistication. Ten scores were analyzed with Latent growth modeling techniques. Four types of models were fit to these data: (a) Univariate latent growth curve models, (b) multivariate parallel process models, (c) univariate latent difference scores models, and (d) bivariate latent difference scores models.
Results: All hypotheses were partially confirmed. Change trajectories for most scores were non linear, characterized by dips and spurts. The rate of change in perspective scores was not related to rate of change for Lectical score or initial Lectical score. Initial Lectical score was positively related to initial perspective scores. Lectical score was a leading indicator of subsequent change in seeking and seeking salience. Lectical change positively impacted seeking change, whereas Lectical score positively impacted seeking salience change.
Conclusions: The relationship between change in these constructs is more complex than typically portrayed. Evidence suggests that these variables change more independently of each other than claimed in earlier research. Patterns of asynchronous change were three times more common than synchronous change, and Lectical score predicted change in only some aspects of perspectival capacity.Implications for theory, method, and pedagogy, along with study limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.
... Differentiation between seeking and taking has been explored by a few researchers (Dawson & Stein, 2011;Jarvela & Hakkinen, 2002;Simonneaux, 2007), but references are generally sparse. It is unlikely that counts for why seeking has not been discussed, or, perhaps, as Parker and colleagues (2008) seem to suggest, it is because seeking behavior requires more cognitive effort and behavioral resources. ...
... The quadrants are derived from crossing two fundamental distinctions that can be made about reality: interior versus exterior and individual versus collective. This yields four dimensions, which adequately tional (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000), conceptual (Shantz, 1975;Flavell, 1968;Miller et al., 1970), intentional (Shantz & Voydanoff, 1973;Irwin & Ambron, 1973;Kugelmass & Breznitz, 1968), cognitive (Kegan 1982(Kegan , 1994Labouvie-Vief, 2005), affective domain (Feshbach & Roe, 1968;Borke, 1971;Burns & Cavey, 1957); 2) the exterior-individual, or spatial (Flavell et al., 1981;Ackermann, 1996;Piaget & Inhelder, 1956), perceptual (Kurdek & Rodgon,1975), behavioral domain (Sessa, 1996;Selman et al., 1986); 3) the interior-collective, or cultural, semantic domain (Calvard, 2010;Dawson & Stein, 2011); and 4) the exterior-collective, or social, systemic, syntactical domain (Williams et al., 2007;Dawson & Stein, 2011). ...
... The quadrants are derived from crossing two fundamental distinctions that can be made about reality: interior versus exterior and individual versus collective. This yields four dimensions, which adequately tional (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000), conceptual (Shantz, 1975;Flavell, 1968;Miller et al., 1970), intentional (Shantz & Voydanoff, 1973;Irwin & Ambron, 1973;Kugelmass & Breznitz, 1968), cognitive (Kegan 1982(Kegan , 1994Labouvie-Vief, 2005), affective domain (Feshbach & Roe, 1968;Borke, 1971;Burns & Cavey, 1957); 2) the exterior-individual, or spatial (Flavell et al., 1981;Ackermann, 1996;Piaget & Inhelder, 1956), perceptual (Kurdek & Rodgon,1975), behavioral domain (Sessa, 1996;Selman et al., 1986); 3) the interior-collective, or cultural, semantic domain (Calvard, 2010;Dawson & Stein, 2011); and 4) the exterior-collective, or social, systemic, syntactical domain (Williams et al., 2007;Dawson & Stein, 2011). ...
The concept of perspective-taking is variously defined and diversely utilized across a wide range of literature. Early developmentalists explored its unfolding in children, articulating a series of structural transformations, while present-day treatments in fields such as organizational psychology have focused on the translative dimensions of adult perspectival action. The integral community, encumbered by certain growth-to-goodness assumptions, uncritically views perspective-taking as both the cause and product of development, driving attention almost exclusively toward transformation and limiting the ability to operationalize research on perspective-taking in adult populations. In this article, I propose an approach to research that accounts for both the transformative and translative aspects of development. First, I argue in favor of investigating perspectival action via a taxonomy that includes eight translative dimensions: awareness, motivation, act, type, subtype, object, information, and accuracy. Then, well-established measures for investigating cognitive development can be recruited to uncover how these translative dimensions operate at different stages and how our efforts at supporting translative growth do or do not support transformative growth.
... Granott defines micro-development as development that occurs in the span of several minutes to several months. Whether micro-development builds to changes in general levels of hierarchical complexity, however, is debated (Dawson & Stein, 2012;Granott, 2002Granott, , 2011. More recently, Dawson (2015) demonstrated changes in hierarchical complexity of .05 of a developmental level in learning and development programs as short as 3 months. ...
... In theory-building and research, hierarchical complexity is more mature than transformative learning. It has undergone rigorous empirical testing (Commons, Goodheart, Pekker, Dawson, Draney, & Adams, 2008;Dawson & Stein, 2012;Fischer, 1980;Granott, 1993), whereas transformative learning theory is still in the early stages of construction. ...
Some scholars have drawn links between transformative learning outcomes and hierarchical
complexity. Transformative learning is a process by which one actively confronts limiting
perspectives and constructs more open ways of understanding. Hierarchical complexity refers to
the series of integrations of cognitive structures, each building upon the previous, resulting in
more complex understanding. The structures that are integrated vary by individual, yet tend to
follow somewhat predictable sequences. The nature of the link between these two theories has
remained unclear. One place to explore this link is executive coach training. While coaching
research is building, there is a dearth of research on the impact of learning coaching skills. Many
coaches report their coach training as being transformational. Whether these reports equate to
transformative learning outcomes and/or lead to changes in hierarchical complexity has not been
explored. This exploratory study included 10 students in the 6-month Georgetown University
Leadership Coaching program. It combined two data-gathering methods: Transformative
Learning Survey and the Lectical® Leadership Decision Making Assessment. Results indicate
all participants experienced moderate transformative learning outcomes, and demonstrated
above-average changes in hierarchical complexity scores. Qualitative data revealed the benefits
of becoming a coach. Some included increased mindfulness and metacognition. A Spearman
rank order correlation indicated a surprising and counter-intuitive inverse relationship between
transformative learning outcomes and hierarchical complexity changes. Except for the inverse
BECOMING A COACH
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correlation, the results align with other studies on the positive impact of coach training. They
also support the recommendation to integrate teaching coaching skills in various settings, such as
in leadership development programs and college programs. This study contributes to coaching,
education, human development, and leadership literatures. It adds an original definition of
coaching, presents a case to include experiential and conversational learning as a theoretical
foundation for coaching, and argues for a new approach to scholar-practitioner research of
hierarchical complexity. The research design and methods of this study offer a replicable and
scalable methodology for both small- and large-scale research projects to study this and related
phenomena.
... Researchers on each of the above-mentioned theories developed their own scoring manuals and corresponding stage descriptions. Within the area of complex reasoning, two theories have developed in parallel: Dynamic skill theory, initiated by Fischer (Fischer, 1980;Fischer & Bidell, 2006) and further developed by Dawson and associates (Dawson, 2002;Dawson & Stein, 2011;Dawson & Wilson, 2003, and the general stage model (Commons & Richards, 1984a, 1984bCommons & Ross, 2008), later renamed the MHC by Commons and colleagues (Commons, 2008;Commons & Ross, 2008). These theories have been used as a foundation for creating detailed descriptions of different levels of complexity in domains like physics (Stålne, Commons, & Li, 2014), energy concepts (Dawson & Stein, 2008), leadership (Dawson & Gabrielian, 2003;Dawson & Heikkinen, 2009), and responsibility for health (Kjellström & Ross, 2011). ...
... From this, one can provide feedback to teachers and students to refine their understanding of conceptual development. It also enables practices that promote conceptual development (Dawson & Stein, 2011). ...
Adult development (AD) theories have a great potential for use in providing perspective and create new understanding of societal problems and challenges. The use of AD as a lens provides insights into people’s qualitative, different ways of thinking, talking, and acting. The theories are used by researchers and practitioners with various backgrounds in several different scientific domains. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of different approaches on how theories of AD are applied in research, with a focus on the potential of using it and how to eliminate the possibility of reproducing existing knowledge. The results consist of six approaches of how AD is currently presented and used in research: introductory work, creating and refining stages, making comparisons with established models, tracing the dynamics of promoting development, analysis of mismatches in adult life, and societal and organizational development. There are several promising avenues for future research by using a combination of these approaches as a way forward to promote the development of this scientific field.
... They are also more compatible with contemporary dynamic systems, information science, and social-constructivist theories vs. earlier developmental theories. They also address the integration of bio/neuro/psycho/social/eco factors in human development more fully than prior theories (Knight and Sutton 2004;Demetrio et al. 2005;Dawson and Stein 2011). ...
... His status within certain academic communities is on par with John Anderson's status in the Learning Sciences. Related and compatible frameworks include those from Commons (Commons and Richards 1984) and Dawson (Dawson and Stein 2011). 16 Fischer is not a behaviorist. ...
Intelligent Tutoring Systems authoring tools are highly complex educational software applications used to produce highly complex software applications (i.e. ITSs). How should our assumptions about the target users (authors) impact the design of authoring tools? In this article I first reflect on the factors leading to my original 1999 article on the state of the art in ITS authoring tools and consider some challenges facing authoring tool researchers today. Then, in the bulk of the paper, I propose some principled foundations for future authoring tool design, focusing on operationalizing the construct of complexity—for tool, task, and user. ITS authoring tools are major undertakings and to redeem this investment it is important to anticipate actual user needs and capacities. I propose that one way to do this is to match the complexity of tool design to the complexity of authoring tasks and the complexity capacity of users and user communities. Doing so entails estimating the complexity of the mental models that a user is expected to build in order to use a tool as intended. The goal is not so much to support the design of more powerful authoring tools as it is to design tools that meet the needs of realistic user audiences. This paper presents some exploratory ideas on how to operationalize the concept of complexity for tool, task, and user. The paper draws from the following theories and frameworks to weave this narrative: Complexity Science, Activity Theory, Epistemic Forms and Games, and adult cognitive developmental theory (Hierarchical Complexity Theory). This exploration of usability and complexity is applicable to the design of any type of complex authoring application, though the application area that motivated the exploration is ITS authoring.
... Repeated engagement with this material may result in more hierarchically integrated cognitive structures. In turn, these structures are manifested in higher amounts of hierarchical complexity exhibited in samples of reasoning over time (Dawson & Stein, 2011). ...
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The 21st century is characterised by high levels of complexity. In order to influence organisational outcomes, leaders must enact leadership processes while contending with these complex conditions. This thesis aims to contribute to theory, empirical research, and practice pertaining to leaders’ ability to navigate organisational complexity. This aim was underpinned by three research questions which were addressed by four empirical studies.
Studies 1 and 2 address the first research question, which focuses on whether cognitive-developmental scores awarded by the Lectical Assessment System™ (LAS) and ego development scores awarded by the ego development scoring system, satisfy Kohlberg’s hard stage requirements (which define the primary form of complexity considered in this thesis). Hard stage requirements specify that developmental stages must be unidimensional, invariantly sequenced, qualitatively distinct, structured wholes, and hierarchically integrated. Hard stage requirements were operationalised for psychometric evaluation via the unidimensional Rasch model. Cognitive-developmental scores were provisionally demonstrated to satisfy all hard stage requirements. Ego development scores were demonstrated to satisfy the requirement of invariant sequence. However, they violated most other requirements even though they were tested on different samples and through various analytical procedures. Ego development scores seem to reflect a cumulative form of development that is more strongly related to the number of perspectives taken or unique words employed by test-takers. There are three potential implications. First, findings may suggest that one of the main theoretical postulates of cognitive-developmental theory has been successfully operationalised for the purpose of measurement. However, this does not appear to be the case for ego development. Second, findings may suggest that cognitive-developmental scores, but not ego development scores, may legitimately be used to make inferences about leaders’ ability to navigate complexity. Third, there are implications which are peculiar to cognitive and ego development, respectively.
Study 3 addresses the second research question, which focuses on whether the hierarchical complexity of leaders’ reasoning skills satisfies the task demands of their roles. Findings suggest a statistically significant increase in the hierarchical complexity of reasoning skills from mid-leaders to upper leaders to senior leaders but not from senior leaders to executive leaders. Findings also suggest a significant complexity gap between leaders’ reasoning skills and the task demands of their roles, particularly for senior and executive-level leaders.
Study 4 addresses the third research question, which focuses on whether the hierarchical complexity of leaders’ reasoning skills develops during participation in various leader development programs. Findings suggest leaders develop their reasoning skills, even though direct causal attributions could not be made. The rate of development appears to increase with more frequent and formative use of cognitive-developmental assessments but not with increased contact time. Given the size of the complexity gap and the rate at which hierarchical complexity appears to develop, leader development may need to be augmented by collective leadership development processes to reduce the impact of the complexity gap in individuals.
... Insights from domain setting process. First, the approach taken to identify important domains shared some similarities to that used by other human development researchers (Dawson & Stein, 2011 A second significant insight was that the domain setting process was a slow and challenging process which required more than a novice degree of understanding of each domain. ...
This research addressed the problem that currently there is no adult developmentally informed pre-engagement diagnosis instrument for change efforts available. Jaques’s (1996, 2002; Jaques & Clement, 1994) Requisite Organization theory was used as design approach for the creation of such a tool. This study aimed to describe what is involved in creating an instrument for assessing the individual stage of performance on select change effort tasks and for designing a set of guidelines to support consultants and change agents using the diagnostic results.
Based on an action learning approach, an attempt was made to answer a set of research questions that focused on developing a developmentally informed pre-engagement diagnosis for change efforts and relevant use guidelines. To answer these questions, first, a task analysis was conducted to identify essential task domains. Next, it was necessary to learn how to score complexity based on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC). Third, it was essential to investigate what is involved in writing context specific vignettes. Finally, it was necessary to consider how RO theory could be used to develop a set of preliminary use guidelines.
Detailed descriptions are provided for each step of the process used for creating a partial prototype of a developmentally informed pre-engagement diagnosis instrument and a set of preliminary use guidelines. Included are descriptions of the task analysis process, the domain setting process, the vignette, the hierarchical task item development process, and the use guidelines development process. Difficulties encountered and insights gained from each of these process steps are presented. Finally, process specific suggestions are provided for researchers interested in forwarding this research agenda.
This research is significant in that it is the first attempt to develop an instrument for evaluating an individual’s stage of performance for essential task domains to match in-house resources to change efforts. Further, this study illustrates the complexity and resources required to develop a developmentally informed instrument based on the MHC. Finally, the finding put forth in this study will support further research aimed at understanding the influence of task domain stage of performance on change efforts.
... Responses are scored with low-inference rubrics in which each choice is associated with a phase (one-fourth of a developmental level) on the skill scale. Previous research has shown that the RFJ is sensitive to developmental differences, and reliably measures complex reasoning skills that are distinguishable from literacy skills (Dawson, 2014; Dawson & Stein, 2012). Based on the results of a confirmatory Rasch item response analysis of 3,754 performances spanning nine phases, Dawson (2014) has reported a person separation reliability of .91 with an estimated alpha of .94. ...
Deep reading comprehension refers to the process required to succeed at tasks defined by the Common Core State Literacy Standards, as well as to achieve proficiency on the more challenging reading tasks in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) framework. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that three skill domains not frequently attended to in instruction or in theories of reading comprehension – academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning – predict outcomes on an assessment of deep reading comprehension. The Global Integrated Scenario-based Assessment (GISA; O'Reilly, Weeks, Sabatini, Steinberg & Halderman, 2014) is designed to reflect students' abilities to evaluate texts, integrate information from an array of texts, and use textual evidence to formulate a position, all features of deep reading comprehension. We tested the role of academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning in explaining variance in end-of-year GISA scores, controlling for beginning-of-year scores and student demographics. All three predictors explained small, but significant, amounts of additional variance. We suggest that these three skill domains deserve greater attention in theories of reading comprehension and in instruction.
This project examines the shape of conceptual development from early childhood through adulthood. To do so we model the attainment of developmental complexity levels in the moral reasoning of a large sample (n= 747) of 5- to 86-year-olds. Employing a novel application of the Rasch model to investigate patterns of performance in these data, we show that the acquisition of successive complexity levels proceeds in a pattern suggestive of a series of spurts and plateaus. We also show that there are six complexity levels represented in performance between the ages of 5 and 86; that patterns of performance are consistent with the specified sequence; that these findings apply to both childhood and adulthood levels; that sex is not an important predictor of complexity level once educational attainment has been taken into account; and that both age and educational attainment predict complexity level well during childhood, but educational attainment is a better predictor in
late adolescence and adulthood.
Social role-taking is examined psychometrically through a review of the constructs, measures developed to represent the constructs, and the reliability and validity of the measures. The construct is described in several different ways in the literature. Most measures show adequate interrater reliabilities, but there is less evidence regarding temporal stability or internal consistency of the scales. The validation efforts have primarily been on the age-stage relationship rather than on other aspects of the construct, although a more expanded focus has begun within the last few years. The review shows that Chandler’s cognitive, Selman’s sociomoral, and Flavell’s nickel-dime tasks possess the best psychometric properties. Recommendations for improving measurement in the social role-taking area are discussed.
The evaluation of developmental interventions has been hampered by a lack of practical, reliable, and objective developmental assessment systems. This article describes the construction of a domain-general computerized developmental assessment system for texts: the Lexical Abstraction Assessment System (LAAS). The LAAS provides assessments of the order of hierarchical complexity of oral and written texts, employing scoring rules developed with predictive discriminant analysis. The LAAS is made possible by a feature of conceptual structure we call hierarchical order of abstraction, which produces systematic quantifiable changes in lexical composition with development. The LAAS produces scores that agree with human ratings of hierarchical complexity more than 80% of the time within one-third of a complexity order across 6 complexity orders (18 levels), spanning the portion of the lifespan from about 4 years of age through adulthood. This corresponds to a Kendall’s tau of.93.
Of 48 male subjects in an initial 2-year-interval follow-up interview study of social perspective taking levels, 41 subjects were reinterviewed 3 years later with the same interview procedures. Results supported the hypothesized sequential order of developmental levels. In addition, children who advanced only one sublevel or less from time 1 to time 2 were more likely to advance 2 or more sublevels in the subsequent assessment. Followup gains for subjects who made larger initial gains were less predictable.
The author uses a cognitive developmental approach to investigate educational conceptions, addressing the question, How does evaluative reasoning about education change over the course of cognitive development? The author conducted independent analyses of the developmental level and conceptual content of 246 interview performances of individuals aged 5 to 86 years. The developmental level of the interview performances was assessed with a content-general scoring system, the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System. A Rasch analysis of the results revealed 6 developmental levels and provided support for invariant sequence, developmental spurts and plateaus, and similar developmental patterns for childhood and adulthood levels. The results of the subsequent analysis of the propositional content of the same interview texts were used to produce qualitative descriptions of changes in evaluative reasoning about education across the 6 levels identified in the data. Finally, descriptions constructed in this way, although richer and less prone to reification, were shown to be conceptually analogous to the stage definitions produced by other cognitive developmental researchers. The implications of the method and findings are discussed.
The questions Piaget raised, and his concepts and observations for addressing them, have shaped virtually all research and theory in cognitive development over the last 50 years. Even those who rejected Piaget’s conclusions shaped their work in terms of his questions. Some approaches built upon his work directly whereas others sought to oppose it. The focus of this chapter is primarily on the former - research and theory that has built directly on Piaget to address new, revised, and expanded questions. The primary question raised in neo-Piagetian work is variability: the dynamic ways that people’s actions differ and change. At all ages and in all cultures, people’s actions vary dramatically across contexts, tasks, and emotional states. For example, in class Christina, a fifth-grade student, can read and explain a paragraph about how the eye works, but she cannot give the same explanation at home on her own. Seth, a high school freshman, can solve a math problem about the cost of schoolbooks when he does it with his mother’s support, but in class the next day he is unable to solve the same problem. On the other hand, for a similar problem about the cost of new jeans, he solves it easily across all situations. This sort of variation can be frustrating, but it is normal, and it happens every day with everyone. Modern neo-Piagetian research and theory embrace this variability, using it to create better explanations of the complexity and diversity of human knowledge and action.
The aim of this study is to examine the quality of asynchronous interaction in web-based conferencing among pre-service teachers. Because all successful communication presumes perspective-taking skills and reciprocal understanding among the participants, we study whether the students are able to reach in reciprocal interaction and thus create educationally relevant high-level web-based discussion. The research project has its foundation in socio-constructivist learning theories, one of the most important principles of which is the idea of apprenticeship in thinking. To create a learning project in web-based conferencing we developed pedagogical practices, which enhance higher-level networked communication and make use of theoretical and expert knowledge. The study combines the power of asynchronous conferencing with peer and mentor collaboration to electronically apprentice student learning. The subjects of the study are pre-service teachers in the United States (N ?=?40) and Finland (N ?=?30) who use an asynchronous web-based tool called Conferencing on the Web (COW) to collaborate in creating joint case-based descriptions in different areas of teaching and learning. The results point out different levels of web-based discussion. Three kinds were found: higher-level discussion, progressive discussion and lower-level discussion. More specific analysis of the quality of each discussion level focused on perspective taking in communication. The results support our hypothesis that higher-level perspective taking was related to higher-level discussion.
ABSTRACT— We begin this article by situating a methodology called developmental maieutics in the emerging field of mind, brain, and education. Then, we describe aspects of a project in which we collaborated with a group of physical science teachers to design developmentally informed activities and assessments for a unit on energy. Pen-and-paper assessments, called teasers, were employed, along with interviews, to study how students learned about the physics of energy. Results were used to describe students’ learning pathways and to design a scoring rubric for teacher use. We hypothesized that (a) teasers, by themselves, could be used effectively to evaluate the developmental level of students’ reasoning about energy and (b) teachers could employ the scoring rubric with minimal instruction. Encouraged by our findings, we went on to create a freely available online version of the energy teaser, including a new rubric designed to improve the accuracy with which teachers can assess the developmental level of students’ energy conceptions.
In social psychological research the stage metaphor has fallen into disfavor due to concerns about bias, reliability, and validity. To address some of these issues, I employ a multidimensional partial credit analysis comparing moral judgment interviews scored with the Standard Issue Scoring System (SISS) (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987b), evaluative reasoning interviews scored with the Good Life Scoring System (GLSS) (Armon, 1984b), and Good Education interviews scored with the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System (HCSS) (Commons, Danaher, Miller, and Dawson, 2000). A total of 209 participants between the ages of 5 and 86 were interviewed. The multidimensional model reveals that even though the scoring systems rely upon different criteria and the data were collected using different methods and scored by different teams of raters, the SISS, GLSS, and HCSS all appear to measure the same latent variable. The HCSS exhibits more internal consistency than the SISS and GLSS, and solves some methodological problems introduced by the content dependency of the SISS and GLSS. These results and their implications are elaborated.