The Center for Educational Technology will develop a diagnostic tool to help mathematics teachers examine students’ progress in real-time
Many teachers find it difficult to determine if their students are fully prepared to the five-units track in high school, in terms of knowledge, skill, learning habits and emotional readiness. The reason is that the middle school curriculum was created independently from the high school curriculum, and that these two schools are operated separately, with different teachers and management. Moreover, the curriculum and instructional practice tend towards mathematical technique and procedural fluency, and less emphasis is given to high order thinking and advanced problem solving skills.
The Ministry of Education is aware of this issue. In the past year it has been working on the development of new learning material for 9th grade that are more aligned with the demands of high school. A knowledge test is now administered by the Ministry (Mafmar Test) as a summative assessment tool. Still, the materials nor the test aim to reach the excellence levels of PISA. In addition, there are no formative diagnostic tools available to teachers to monitor the learning progress of students.
To fill these gaps, we approached the Center for Educational Technology (CET), Israel’s largest research and development education organization. One of CET’s specializations is the development of large scale and in-school assessments. CET are proposing to develop a set of 40 assignments that would be given to students by their teachers along the ninth grade year. These assignments would provide the teachers with real-time indication about the progress of each student, and allow them to take action and assist their students in overcoming difficulties.
The assignments will be aligned with the content of the curriculum and with the PISA skill levels and would provide the teachers with data on both of these elements. Students will be able to use their smart phones in order to solve the tasks, in school and at home. Teachers will be able to access the system and to generate reports with maximal flexibility.
The development process will be guided by experts in mathematics teaching and diagnostics, with specific acquaintance with the Israeli curriculum and the PISA framework. In addition, the development team will conduct a study visit to meet with OECD/PISA development experts. Following this learning process, the development team will prepare the first 10 assignments. These 10 assignments will be pilot tested by 20 mathematics teachers who teach high ability classes of mathematics in middle schools.
In the second year, following feedback and modifications, 30 additional assignments will be developed. Eighty teachers will undergo professional development to use the tasks on a routine basis in their classes. In the third year, the program will scale up to include an additional 200 teachers. The foundation advised CET that if the program is successful, the foundation intends to approach its partners in municipalities and school networks and ask them to consider using this diagnostic tool in their schools. Therefore, CET is expected to create a support service that would assist the users in utilizing these diagnostics tools.