Promoting Diagnostic Competence when Assessing Written Solutions of School Students

Abstract

Diagnostic competence is a significant part of teachers’ professional competencies that influences the quality of teaching and students’ learning. Therefore, developing teachers’ diagnostic competence has become a relevant topic of educational research. In this regard, we present a quasi-experimental study that investigates the effect of an intervention on the promotion of diagnostic competence in prospective elementary teachers. The study follows a pre-post design. It comprises a treatment group and a control group (N = 75). The intervention takes place as part of a university seminar and includes components that are known to be effective for promoting diagnostic competence. We measure prospective teachers’ diagnostic competence regarding so-called epistemic activities when assessing students’ solutions to problem-oriented tasks. The results reveal our treatment to be effective, particularly regarding generating and reasoning hypotheses about students’ abilities. With the specific focus on epistemic activities in the diagnostic process, our research contributes to developing and measuring diagnostic competence in a multi-perspective way.