Diagnosis of science cognitive attributes of Iranian fourth grad students in TIMSS 2015

Nowadays, cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) is highly attended due to attain deeply information about examinees. In present study, CDA is used to provide more information about science responses of Iranian fourth graders who participated in TIMSS 2015.

11 science attributes were identified and the Q matrix was created. Then, responses of 3823 students to 206 items was analyzed by G-DINA model.

The results showed that the model can produce suitable diagnostic evidences. Also, three attributes including: Recognize, Providing examples, and Describe had higher attribute probabilities than others and their mastery probabilities were more than 0.50. Whereas, only probability of Recognize was higher than 0.65 and this is considered as mastered attribute. In other hand, Predict and Scientific inquiry had lowest attribute probabilities.

In general, the results revealed that there are sizable deference between knowledge-based attributes and higher-order thinking attributes in students, that can associated to distance between intended and implemented curricular.