ABSTRACT
The psychological paradigm emerging from cognitive psychology suggests new models for students’ capabilities—a potentially powerful framework to plan instruction, evaluate progress, and provide feedback to students and teachers (Snow & Lohman, 1989). As in traditional test theory, however, we face problems of inference: Just what kinds of things are to be said about students, by themselves or others? What evidence is needed to support such statements? How much faith can we place in the evidence, and in the statements? How do we sort out elements of evidence that are overlapping, redundant, or contradictory? When do we need to ask different questions or pose additional situations to distinguish among competing explanations of what we see?
