Artifact Packages for Measuring Instructional Practice: A Pilot Study

A number of educational researchers are currently developing alternatives to survey and case study methods for measuring instructional practice. These alternative strategies involve gathering and analyzing artifact data related to teachers’ use of instructional materials and strategies, classroom learning activities, and students’ work, and other important features of practice. “The Impact of Accountability Systems on Classroom Practice” is one such effort. The goals of this 5-year project, funded through CRESST, is to develop artifact collection and scoring procedures designed to measure classroom practice in mathematics and science; validate these procedures through classroom observations, discourse analysis, and teacher interviews; and then use the procedures, in conjunction with other CRESST projects, to conduct comparative studies of the impact of different approaches to school reform on school and classroom practices. The first phase of the project was a set of pilot studies, conducted in a small number of middle school science and mathematics classrooms, to provide initial information about the reliability, validity, and feasibility of artifact collections as measures of classroom practice. This report presents results of these pilot studies.