Development of Assessment Instruments for Students with Special Educational Needs (Assistive Technologies)

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Development of Assessment Instruments for Students with Special Educational Needs

Coordinator: Éva Molnár

Increasing integration and inclusion of students with special educational needs, (SEN) in the Hungarian school system has further highlighted the need for an integrated system of measures in the assessments of jointly educated student groups that would provide comparable results—at least in the area of basic skill development. In response to this need, diagnostic instruments and test banks for the regular evaluation of students with SEN will be developed by using the same principles as those outlined above and integrated into the mainstream measures. Special care, however, must be taken to address the differing requirements that come into play when assessing students with SEN.

Formerly constructed measures suitable for assessing students with SEN also contain several items that might be utilized or adapted to develop a diagnostic evaluation system. The new framework developed within this present project, however, requires that there be elaboration of new methods of evaluation as well as new tasks. To satisfy these expectations, experts in the education of students with SEN will take an active role as members of the project team.

The extension of the system for diagnostic assessments of SEN students requires developmental work in two essential areas. On the one hand, the item pool should be broadened to include items adapted to the special learning diffi culties of the children being assessed. These modifi ed tasks would not only allow students with special needs to solve most of the given tasks successfully but it would also facilitate having their achievements show up on unified scales. On the other hand, the benefi ts of computerized testing allow physically challenged students, who are not be able to participate in paperbased assessment, to solve the tasks by themselves. As part of the project, special technical devices with adaptive functions would need to be developed to enable some SEN students to interact with computers.