Development of the Arithmetic Subtest of the School Achievement Test-Second Edition

Résumé 0

"The School Achievement Test (Teste de Desempenho Escolar, TDE) has been widely used in clinical and educationalcontexts for the past 22 years. Arithmetic disorders are frequent among children and teenagers, requiring new andupdated tasks to assess as accurately as possible school achievement. The last decade has witnessed a growingrecognition of the need for significant changes in educational assessment practices. Evidence provided by itemresponse theory (IRT) enabled the link of more detailed information improving assessment quality. The aim of thisstudy was to develop a revised and completely updated version of the Arithmetic Subtest for the School AchievementTest-Second Edition (Teste de Desempenho Escolar-Segunda Edição, TDE-II). To this end, two studies were conducted.The first study focused on item and test construction, while the second study assessed the preliminary version of theinstrument. The sample consisted of 302 students in grades 1 through 9 recruited from public and private schools.Factor analysis revealed two factors which explained 74 % of the variance in the data. Both dimensions were closelyrelated to item complexity and difficulty. The subtest was therefore divided into two versions: one for students ingrades 1 through 5 and the other for those in grades 6 through 9. Both versions were analyzed based on IRT models,which suggested that the items provided a comprehensive measure of the latent trait. The results provided satisfactoryevidence of internal structure and reliability. Results indicated that the Arithmetic Subtest of the TDE-II has adequatepsychometric properties for the assessment of arithmetic skills in primary education. Interpretation based on IRTanalyses can be helpful for future studies about math education, discriminating even better between learning difficultyand typical groups, with the data to be the basis of math cognition stimulation programs."