Abstract
Following criticisms by employers about academic graduates’ lack of 21st century skills, students need to develop skills such as professional knowledge, critical thinking and problem solving. Accordingly, there is a demand for suitable assessments of these skills. One approach is to develop a performance assessment using tasks adapted from real-world decision-making and judgment situations that students and graduates have to face in academic and professional domains. Such tasks employ real-life scenarios and require generic and domain-specific skills in different facets to handle a given problem adequately. In this paper, we present a newly developed performance assessment that aims to measure such skills among higher education economics students and graduates of economics and we report results from two validation studies.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Alexander, P. A., Singer, L. M., Jablansky, S., & Hattan, C. (2016). Relational reasoning in word and in figure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108 (8), 1140–1152.
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association and National Council on Measurement in Education (AERA, APA and NCME). (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: AERA.
Allgood, S., & Bayer, A. (2016). Measuring College Learning in Economics. MPRA Paper No. 85104. Online: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/85104/.
Allgood, S., Walstad, W. B., & Siegfried, J. J. (2015). Research on Teaching Economics to Undergraduates. Journal of Economic Literature, 53 (2), 285–325.
Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2010). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Browne, M. N., Hoag, J. H., & Boudreau, N. (1995). Critical Thinking in Graduate Economic Programs: A Study of Faculty Perceptions. The Journal of Economic Education, 26 (2), 177–181.
Facione, P. A. (2000). The disposition toward critical thinking: Its character, measurement, and relation to critical thinking skill. Informal Logic, 20 (1), 61–84.
Fives, H., & Dinsmore, D. L. (Eds.). (2017). The Model of Domain Learning: Understanding the Development of Expertise. New York, Abingdon: Routledge.
Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to Critical Thinking. New York: Psychology Press.
Happ, R., Nagel, M.-T., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., & Schmidt, S. (2019). How migration background affects master degree students’ knowledge of business and economics. Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1640670.
Hattie, J., & Cooksey, R. W. (1984). Procedures for assessing the validities of tests using the” known-groups” method. Applied Psychological Measurement, 8 (3), 295–305.
Hoyt G. M., & McGoldrick, K. (Eds.). (2012). International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics. Cheltenham, Northampton: Edward Elgar.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kobrin, J. L., Patterson, B. F., Shaw, E. J., Mattern, K. D., & Barbuti, S. M. (2008). Validity of the SAT® for Predicting First-Year College Grade Point Average. College Board Research Report (5). New York: The College Board.
Lai, E. R., & Viering, M. (2012). Assessing 21st Century Skills: Integrating research findings. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education. Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Liepmann, D., Beauducel, A., Brocke, B., & Amthauer, R. (2007). Intelligenz-Struktur-Test 2000 R (I-S-T 2000 R). Available on https://psychowissen.jimdo.com/psychologische-tests/intelligenztests/i-s-t-2000-r/
Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Current State and Directions for Next-Generation Assessments. ETS Research Report, 14 (10).
McGoldrick, K., & Garnett, R. (2013). Big Think: A Model for Critical Inquiry in Economics Courses. The Journal of Economic Education, 44 (4), 389–398.
Messick, S. (1989). Validity. In R. L. Linn (Ed.), Educational Measurement (3rd ed., pp. 13–103). New York: Macmillan Publishing.
Paul, R. W., & Elder, L. (2006). Critical thinking: The nature of critical and creative thought. Journal of Developmental Education, 30 (2), 34–35.
Pellegrino, J. W., & Hilton, M. L. (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (2001). Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Shavelson, R. J., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Beck, K., Schmidt, S., & Marino, J. (2019). Assessment of University Students’ Critical Thinking: Next Generation Performance Assessment. International Journal of Testing. doi: doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/15305058.2018.1543309
Shavelson, R. J., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., & Mariño, J. P. (2018). International Performance Assessment of Learning in higher education (iPAL) – Research and Development. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Walstad, W. B. (2001). Improving Assessment in University Economics. The Journal of Economic Education, 32 (3), 281–294.
Walstad, W. B., Rebeck, K., & Butters, R. B. (2013). Test of economic literacy: Examiner’s manual, 4th ed. New York: Council for Economic Education.
Walstad, W. B., Watts, M., & Rebeck, K. (2007). Test of Understanding in College Economics: Examiner`s manual, 4th ed. New York: National Council on Economic Education.
West, R. F., Toplak, M. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2008). Heuristics and biases as measures of critical thinking: Associations with cognitive ability and thinking dispositions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100 (4), 930–941.
Willingham, D. T. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Educator, 31 (2), 8–19.
Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Jitomirski, J., Happ, R., Molerov, D., Schlax, J., Kühling-Thees, C., Förster, M. & Brückner, S. (2019). Validating a Test for Measuring Knowledge and Understanding of Economics Among University Students. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 33(2), 119–133.
Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Shavelson, R. J., Schmidt, S., & Beck, K. (2019b). On the complementarity of holistic and analytic approaches to performance assessment scoring. The British Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12286
Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Shavelson, R. J., & Pant, H. A. (2018a). Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education – International Comparisons and Perspectives. In C. Secolsky and B. Denison (Eds.). Handbook on Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Toepper, M., Molerov, D., Buske, R., Brückner, S., Pant, H. A., Hofmann, S., & Hansen-Schirra, S. (2018b). Adapting and Validating the Collegiate Learning Assessment to Measure Generic Academic Skills of Students in Germany: Implications for International Assessment Studies in Higher Education. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, M. Toepper, H. A. Pant, C. Lautenbach, C. Kuhn (Eds.) Assessment of Learning Outcomes in higher education – Cross-National Comparisons and Perspectives (pp. 245–266). Cham: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nagel, MT., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Schmidt, S., Beck, K. (2020). Performance Assessment of Generic and Domain-Specific Skills in Higher Education Economics. In: Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Pant, H.A., Toepper, M., Lautenbach, C. (eds) Student Learning in German Higher Education. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27886-1_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27886-1_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-27885-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-27886-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)