Description

You are part of an educational unit of four educators. The item analysis of the recent examination is being reviewed. During this process, one test question in particular upsets you. From the item analysis, you can see that the question has a discrimination index of .15 and several of the upper-level learners selected the same incorrect distractor. You believe that the distractor is worded poorly and is confusing to these students. You want to remove the item and give the students who missed it credit for the correct answer. You become upset when the majority of the educators vote to leave the test question within the examination. In fact, you become so upset that you raise your voice and the chair of the group calls for a 15-minute break for everyone “to calm down.”

Later that night, while self-reflecting, you suddenly recall that as a student, you were upset over a test question that you thought was confusing and “tricky.” However, the faculty member would not change your score, resulting in you failing the exam. You realize that this experience has impacted your work as an educator in reviewing test questions. Tomorrow, you must work with the same group of individuals on a task force.

How would you approach tomorrow’s meeting? Would you bring up your memory to the members of the task force? Would you decide to discuss it in a few days over lunch?

What actions would you use so that this previous event does not impact your current work? How would you be fair to the learners who answered correctly as well as to those who answered incorrectly?