Picturing student progress : teachers' comprehension of curriculum-based measurement progress graphs

Abstract

This dissertation focused on teachers’ comprehension of

student progress graphs from a progress-monitoring system called

Curriculum-based Measurement (CBM). CBM is designed for teachers to monitor

the progress of students with learning disabilities and to evaluate instructional effectiveness for these students (Deno, 1985, 2003). Within CBM, short measures are administered to students frequently, and scores on those measures are depicted in individual progress graphs. Teachers inspect the graphs to evaluate student progress and effects of instruction. When teachers use CBM to monitor student progress and when they respond to the data by making instructional changes, student achievement improves; however, teachers often do not use the data (Stecker, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2005). One potential reason might be that teachers have difficulty reading and interpreting the graphs. This dissertation focused on teachers’ ability to read and interpret – to comprehend – CBM graphs. We employed think-aloud and eye-tracking methodologies to examine how teachers described and inspected CBM graphs. We also examined approaches for improving teachers’ CBM graph comprehension. Results revealed that teachers experience difficulties with inspecting CBM graphs, and with reading, interpreting, and linking CBM data to instruction, but that teachers’ CBM graph comprehension can be improved via relatively short CBM instructional videos.