Abstract

This study investigates the affordances of a novel assessment of students’ conceptual understanding of place value, The Video Evaluation Task, over and above two other typical measures of place value, the Place Value Word Problems task and the Place Value Relational thinking task. The Video Evaluation Task assesses a participant’s evaluation of another student solving an addition problem in real-time. We individually interviewed second grade students’ (N = 45) to assess their place value understanding and asked them to provide justifications for their responses. Participants’ justifications and/or written work was coded and scored for evidence of place value understanding. The Video Evaluation Task was significantly correlated with the Place Value Word Problems task (r = 0.347, p = 0.02) and the Place Value Relational Thinking task (r = 0.371, p = 0.012) indicating that these measures tap into similar constructs. However, I also developed a second level of coding to determine the nuances of students’ place value understanding, which allowed me to investigate the different affordances of each measure. Regardless of whether participants performed better or worst on the Video Evaluation Task as compared to the other two measures, it seems the Video Evaluation Task afforded more information about students’ conceptual understanding of place value. Not only did the Video Evaluation Task provide an opportunity for participants to evaluate another student in the context of a double-digit addition problem, but it also allowed participants to demonstrate place value knowledge and/or misconceptions that may not have been revealed on the other two measures. The Video Evaluation Task is a promising measure for both researchers and teachers, in a complex mathematical domain that cuts across the elementary curriculum.