An empirical study on the relationship between teacher's judgments and fit statistics of the partial credit model

The main purpose of the study was to investigate empirically the relationship between classroom teacher's judgment and the item and person fit-statistics of the partial credit model. In this study, classroom teacher's judgments were made intuitively checking each item's consistency with the general response pattern and each student's need for additional treatment or advice. The item and person fit statistics of the partial credit model were estimated using the WINSTEPS program (Linacre, 2003). The subjects of this study were 321 sixth grade students in 9 classrooms within 3 elementary schools in Seoul, Korea. For this research, a performance assessment test for 6th grade mathematics was developed. It consisted of 20 polytomous response items and its total scores ranged between 0 and 50. In addition, the 9 classroom teachers made their judgments for each item of the test and for each student in their own classroom. They judged intuitively using 4 categories; (1) well fit, (2) fit, (3) misfit, and (4) badly misfit for each item as well as each student. Their judgments were scored from 1 to 4 for each item as well as each student. There are two significant findings in this study. First, there is a statistically significant relationship between the classroom teacher's judgment and item fit statistic for each item (The median correlation coefficient between the teacher's judgment and the item outfit ZSTD is 0.61). Second, there is a statistically significant relationship between the teacher's judgment and the person fit statistic for each student (The median correlation coefficient between the teacher's judgment and the person outfit ZSTD is 0.52). In conclusion, the item and person fit statistics of the partial credit model correspond with the teacher's judgments for each test item and each student.