Validation of the Pre-licensure Examination for Pre-service Teachers in Professional Education Using Rasch Analysis

摘要

Teachers play a crucial role for students to demonstrate the expected learning outcomes. Teachers are curriculum planners, assessors and curriculum implementers (McTighe and Wiggins 2005). Teachers need to establish a strong nexus between the content that they are giving to their learners, the methods they used and the assessment they employ. One of the roles of teachers is to assess the learning process and outcomes. Tests are widely used as a form of assessment in universities of many countries to measure student learning, to rank students and issue certification. Literature also outlines arguments on how validity issues of tests. There are critics about tests but there are also groups who argued that tests can be used as long as they are reliable and valid. This prompted the researcher to look into her own context specifically in teacher education and examine the test used for the pre-service teachers in preparation for the Licensure Examination for Teachers in the Philippines and look into its psychometric qualities. Using a Mock LET instrument, this paper discusses the strengths of the Rasch model as a psychometric tool and analysis technique, referring to person-item maps and differential item functioning.