1. Yan Zhang
EDCI 5372

2. Literature Review
 Purpose: provide assessors with students’ conceptual
knowledge and reasoning during problem solving
(Huinker, 1993)
 Conflict in paper-and-pencil test:
 students get the right answer, but have basic
misunderstanding
 students make computational errors, but reveal a better
conceptual understanding of procedure (Labinowicz,
1987)

3. Literature Review (cont.)
 Advantages (Huinker, 1993) :
 delve deeply into student’s thinking and reasoning
 better determine their level of understanding
 diagnose misconceptions and missing connections
 assess their verbal ability to communicate mathematical
knowledge

4. Literature Review (cont.)
 Questioning techniques (Ralph, 1999a, 1999b) :
 preparing important questions ahead of time
 delivering questions clearly and concisely
 posing questions to children that stimulate thought
 giving children enough time to think about and prepare
an answer

5. Literature Review (cont.)
 Three different levels of questioning techniques
(Moyer and Milewicz, 2002)
 checklisting: jump from one question to another with
little regard to student’s response
 instructing rather than assessing: use leading questions
that directed student’s response, or they disregard the
strategy of questioning and attempt to teach the
solution
 use probing and follow-up questions: competent
questions that specifically and consistently probe
student’s answer

6. Clinic Interview Reflection
 Interviewee: a 7th Grade student
 Purpose: assess student’s understanding of perimeter
and area
 Process:
 describe perimeter and area in his own word
 find the perimeter and area for two different rectangles
 build a new rectangle with different perimeter/ area but
same area/ perimeter
 make judgment on a statement: the rectangle with large
area also will have a large perimeter

7. Clinic Interview Reflection (cont.)
 Student’s strength:
 confident of mental arithmetic skills
 develop appropriate strategies for different problems
 good understanding of perimeter and area
 Student’s weakness:
 lack of verbal ability to communicate mathematical
knowledge
 find factors
 Using mathematical tools to work through problems

8. Clinic Interview Reflection (cont.)
 Self-reflection on design and process of the interview
 I interrupted the student several times during the
interview. When the student had difficulty to express
himself, I did not give him enough time to think and
tried to provide the answer.
 The entire interview looks more like a teaching process
instead of assessing. Although the student’s response
indicated that his understanding was quite decent, it
seemed that I leaded him to the right answer step by
step.