How long does it take to administer?
Typically, it takes 45 to 90 minutes to administer the MDPI. The actual time of administration varies with the age, capabilities of the student, and the experience of the examiner with the test. The assessment may be administered in one or two sessions depending on the needs of the examiner and the student.
How is the MDPI different?
The MDPI is designed by mathematics educators, rather than my psychologists or psychometricians, and incorporates the authors' collective expertise in teaching and assessing students. Their continuing research efforts have resulted in an innovative approach to interpreting assessment findings, the MDPI Analytics, a computer based Expert System that incorporates the authors' expertise in interpreting as a students' skills well as the particular challenges faced by the student both mathematically and cognitively.
Most importantly, the MDPI incorporates neuropsychological considerations so that a student's Mathematics Learning Profile can be informed by and referenced to a student's overall cognitive profile. It helps teachers and special educators appreciate how students' approaches can influence their ability to generate appropriate solutions. The MDPI uncovers and describes the student's areas of weakness, but also reveals how a student learns and why the student is struggling.
The MDPI generates a student's Mathematics Learning Profile which includes a comprehensive portrait of a student's lills in mathematics as well as those cognitive features the student brings to the mathematics classroom that influence learning.
The MDPI moves beyond most standard instruments and offers an alternative way
to think about and to assess mathematical skills. It allows the examiner to get past right
or wrong answers to consider how those answers were achieved.
The MDPI is criterion referenced rather than norm based and compares a student's achievement not to grade level peers, but rather with the expectations set forth by the
Common Core Standards. It determines whether the student has the skills to meet the expectations of the curriculum and demands of the classroom.
Understanding a student's Mathematics Learning Profile will lead to the delineation of personalized instructional approaches and interventions so that the student can achieve maximum potential in mathematics.
How can the results make a difference?
And this is the major objective of the MDPI.