LEARNING-BASED ASSESSMENTS OF HISTORY UNDERSTANDING

Research undertaken to develop measures of deep understanding of Ameri can history for secondary school students serves as a method to study performance assessment in general. The assessment-policy context condi tions conceptual and technical choices in design, reinforcing the impo rtance of linking large-scale performance assessment and classroom use s. Using design perspective constraints such as desired instructional change, the state of agreement in the field of history and the practic ality of assessment for wide-scale use are considered. A model of unde rstanding adapted from Kintsch's (1992) construction-integration theor y underlies the assessment. Performance differences between expert and novice explanations of primary historical sources were used as the ba sis of the development of a general scoring rubric. The task syntax-in cluding a measure of prior knowledge, literal comprehension of primary texts, and an extended written explanation-has been applied to six di fferent history topics with comparable results. Technical research is briefly summarized, including the development and validation of the sc oring rubric, and its application to different history topics.