The Instructional Sensitivity of the Test of Gross Motor Development-3 to Detect Changes in Performance for Young Children With and Without Down Syndrome

The Test of Gross Motor Development is among the most commonly used measures of gross motor competency in children. An important attribute of any developmental assessment is its sensitivity to detect change. The purpose of this study was to examine the instructional sensitivity of the Test of Gross Motor Development—third edition (TGMD-3) performance criteria to changes in performance for 48 children (age 4–7 years) with and without Down syndrome following 10 weeks of physical education. Paired t tests identified significant improvements for all children on locomotor (p < .01) and ball skills (p < .01). These significant differences were associated with moderate to large effect sizes. SEM was low relative to the maximum raw score for each subtest, indicating high confidence in the scores. These findings provide evidence that the TGMD-3 is sensitive to change in performance for children with and without Down syndrome.

When Academic Achievement (Also) Reflects Personality: Using the Personality-Achievement Saturation Hypothesis (PASH) to Explain Differential Associations Between Achievement Measures and Personality Traits

Students’ academic achievement is a key predictor of various life outcomes. The two most prominent measures of academic achievement are grades and standardized test scores. Both measures are commonly used during selection processes as well as for educational monitoring and accountability. Research has suggested that grades and test scores are strongly related to students’ characteristics (e.g., cognitive abilities) but might differentially reflect personality. In order to better explain differential personality-achievement associations, it is important to move beyond the dichotomy of grades versus test scores. To this end, we propose the personality-achievement saturation hypothesis (PASH), which suggests that associations between personality and achievement vary, depending on four main features of the achievement measure used: level of standardization, relevance for the student, curricular validity, and instructional sensitivity. The PASH suggests that conscientiousness should typically be more strongly associated with grade point average, followed by course grades and final examination grades, whereas openness should be more strongly associated with test scores. We used data from three large-scale studies (total N = 14,953) and aggregated our findings. In line with the PASH, conscientiousness was most strongly related to grades, which have lower standardization, moderate to high relevance, high curricular-validity, and high instructional sensitivity, whereas it had substantially weaker associations with more highly standardized, less curriculum-valid, and less instructionally sensitive measures. In addition, openness was most strongly related to highly standardized, less relevant, less curriculum-valid, and less instructionally sensitive measures in English. Implications for the ways in which achievement measures can be used are discussed.

What About the “Instruction” in Instructional Sensitivity? Raising a Validity Issue in Research on Instructional Sensitivity

In instructional sensitivity research, it is important to evaluate the validity argument about the extent to which student performance on the assessment can be used to infer differences in instructional experiences. This study examines whether three different measures of mathematics instruction consistently identify mathematics assessments as being sensitive to instruction. Mixed findings across fourth-grade ( n = 8,298) and fifth-grade ( n = 9,336) students and their teachers across three school districts raise questions as to whether different ways of measuring instruction provide similar inferences about the instructional sensitivity of assessments. This raises validity concerns about the quality of inferences based on different measures of instruction.