Principled Science Assessment Design for Students with Disabilities

Geneva Haertel, Britte Haugan Cheng, Mingyu Feng, Ron Fried, Tom Gaffney, Amy Hafter, Angela Haydel DeBarger, Liliana Ructtinger

By using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, Principled Science Assessment Design for Students with Disabilities (PADI-SE) aims to improve the design of assessments by identifying any and all assumptions and expectations of assessments that are distinct from the key objectives of measurement.

Our initial domains are biology and economics, fields chosen for their appeal to large numbers of undergraduates and contrasting qualities as domains. A fundamental step in our work involves identifying those ideas from the domains of biology and economics that fundamentally change reasoning. These ideas are nonintuitive and hard-won through generations of study and refinement.

UDL is an idea that emerged from accessibility efforts to remove barriers. UDL generally seeks to make educational materials and assessments as accessible as possible to the widest variety of people while seeking to minimize separate-but-equal situations. For example, a written test of math seeks to test math skills, but the reading sections of a timed, paper test may cause difficulty for some populations even if those examinees have all the math skills in question. Universal design strives to be a broad-spectrum solution that helps everyone, not just people with disabilities.

PADI-SE uses UDL principles as a way to systematically identify and mitigate "Additional Knowledge, Skills or Abilities" that are distinct from the objectives of measurement. In this way, PADI-SE attempts to improve the design of assessments in general.

This project builds on the technology established through the Principled Assessment Designs for Inquiry (PADI) project, a patented online technology that methodically structures the design of complex multi-step and open-ended assessment tasks. The precursor PADI project provided a practical, theory-based approach to developing quality assessments of science inquiry by combining developments in cognitive psychology and research on science inquiry with advances in measurement theory and technology.

Teams of researchers at our partner institutions bring different but complementary skills and expertise to PADI-SE. They include researchers from the Department of Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation (EDMS) at the University of Maryland, and leaders from the Center for Applied Special, Codeguild, and several states' Department of Education. Together these partners are integrating their knowledge, advancing a powerful new assessment design, and demonstrating its scalability at several implementation sites.

3/2008 - 1/2012 (current)

Funders & Clients 

U.S. Department of Education

Partners 

Research Areas

Assessment

Keywords 

assessment design
design patterns
large-scale assessment
principled assessment design
Universal Design for Learning

Contact 

padi-contact@ctl.sri.com