Many educational and psychological studies have shown that the development of students is generally step-by-step (i.e. ordinal development) to a specific level. This study proposed a novel longitudinal learning diagnosis model with polytomous attributes to track students' ordinal development in learning. Using the concept of polytomous attributes…

Educational testing has been criticized for its disconnect from modern cognitive science and its limited role in improving instruction and student learning. Reform efforts emphasize the need for testing to provide specific diagnostic insights into students' skills and knowledge. Cognitive diagnosis (CD), an emerging paradigm in educational…

The present study aims to examine gender differential item functioning (DIF) in the reading comprehension section of a high stakes test using cognitive diagnosis models. Based on the multiple-group generalized deterministic, noisy "and" gate (MG G-DINA) model, the Wald test and likelihood ratio test are used to detect DIF. The flagged…

This study compares five cognitive diagnostic models in search of optimal one(s) for English as a Second Language grammar test data. Using a unified modeling framework that can represent specific models with proper constraints, the article first fit the full model (the log-linear cognitive diagnostic model, LCDM) and investigated which model…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the adequacy of three cognitive models, one developed by content experts and two generated from student verbal reports for explaining examinee performance on a grade 3 diagnostic mathematics test. For this study, the items were developed to directly measure the attributes in the cognitive model. The…