Education Commons^™

Do Scaffolded Supports Between Aspects Of Problem Solving Enhance Assessment Usability?, Jan D. Mccoy, Leanne Bettesworth, Gerald Tindal, Jenelle Braun-Monegan Stone

Faculty Publications - College of Education

While problem solving as an instructional technique is widely advocated, educators are often challenged in effectively assessing student skill in this area. Students failing to solve a problem might fail in any of several aspects of the effort. The purpose of this research was to validate a scaffolded technique for assessing problem solving in science and social studies at the middle school level. This technique attempts to isolate three aspects of problem solving (data collection, analysis and display, and interpretation) and to measure each aspect separately. Problem solving measures were developed in both science and social studies. These were administered …