About the TEL Assessment

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) assessment at grade 8 is a completely digitally based assessment that includes interactive scenario-based tasks and selected-response questions that measure TEL concepts and skills. To allow students to demonstrate the wide range of knowledge and skills detailed in the three TEL assessment areas and three practices, they are asked to perform a variety of problem-solving tasks based on interactive scenarios reflecting realistic solutions. Results are reported for the nation overall.

Assessment Framework and Design

The TEL Assessment Framework

The National Assessment Governing Board oversees the development of NAEP frameworks that describe the specific knowledge and skills to be assessed in each subject and how the assessment questions should be designed and scored.

Because of an increasing emphasis on technology and engineering skills inside and outside the classroom, in 2008 the Governing Board set out to develop a framework for a national assessment of students’ knowledge and skills in technology and engineering. Completing this work involved the collaboration of technology and engineering experts, business leaders, educational policymakers, teachers, parents, and the general public who provided input via regional forums, webinars, and committee meetings to draft and refine the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework.

Given the importance of technology and engineering literacy for all individuals in a world of increasingly rapid technological change, the Governing Board developed a framework for TEL that articulated the domain of technology and engineering knowledge and skills that are important for all students, not just those pursuing STEM-related careers. As shown in the graphic below, the TEL domain consists of three major interconnected content areas—Technology and Society, Design and Systems, and Information and Communication Technology—and three practices that cut across the content areas—Understanding Technological Principles, Developing Solutions and Achieving Goals, and Communicating and Collaborating. Within and across all of these areas, students are also expected to be able to apply each of the TEL practices when approaching a problem. The graphic also shows how the combination of content areas and practices is used to classify the types of reasoning and thinking expected of eighth-grade students to show their ability to understand and apply technology and engineering knowledge and skills in a variety of problem-solving contexts. These reasoning and thinking skills, which are specified in the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework, are organized into assessment targets for test questions that provide direct and scorable evidence of what students know and can do in technology and engineering literacy.

Click on the columns containing the TEL content areas to see a description of each one. Click on the rows containing the TEL practices to see a description of each one and to view related TEL assessment targets for each combination of TEL content area and TEL practice.

TEL Content Areas and Practices
 
3 TEL Content Areas
3 TEL Practices
i

Technology
& Society

x

Technology
& Society

Technology and Society deals with the effects that technology has on society and the environment as well as the ethical questions raised by those effects.

i

Design
& Systems

x

Design
& Systems

Design and Systems focuses on the nature of technology and the processes used to develop technologies, as well as basic principles for dealing with everyday technologies.

i

Information &
Communication
Technology

x

Information &
Communication
Technology

Information and Communication Technology covers software and systems used for accessing, creating, and communicating information, and for facilitating creative expression.

  • Know sustainability and environmental impacts of technology
  • Understand social impact of information and communication technology
  • Know how social forces influence development of and access to technology
  • Know how science, technology, and engineering differ
  • Understand concepts in invention and innovation
  • Know features of the engineering process
  • Understand goals and functions of technological systems
  • Recognize how tools are used to address needs
  • Know that products require maintenance and troubleshooting
  • Understand that design requirements have success criteria, constraints, and trade-offs
  • Know how to select appropriate digital tools to support a specific purpose
  • Use style guides to show how to properly credit others for their work
  • Know how to check electronic sources of information
  • Know that collaboration can take many forms and be supported by different types of technologies
  • Reason about causal relationships among technology, society, and the environment
  • Evaluate alternative solutions and costs/benefits
  • Process information for decision-making
  • Predict the consequences of design decisions
  • Troubleshoot a malfunctioning device or system
  • Analyze as an initial step in design or troubleshooting
  • Design a device or system to address a need
  • Understand and use models to solve engineering and design problems
  • Create text, visualizations, or models to solve a problem
  • Gather information through browsing and searching
  • Generate data using simulations or instruments
  • Identify distortion, misinterpretation, or exaggeration of information
  • Analyze materials, information, or data to solve a problem
  • Present and justify decisions, recommendations, or analyses
  • Evaluate qualification, credibility, or objectivity of experts
  • Explain and justify design decisions
  • Recognize forms of collaboration and collaborative technologies
  • Adjust communicative content based on knowledge of audience and communication method being used
  • Create presentations and other products to support a communication goal

TEL Assessment Design

As with all NAEP assessments, the TEL framework provides guidance for the types of tasks and questions that should be included. TEL is completely computer-based and includes interactive, multimedia scenario-based tasks (SBTs). SBTs engage students to solve technology and engineering problems in a variety of real-world contexts and are designed to allow students to demonstrate the range of knowledge and skills detailed in the three TEL content areas and three practices. Some tasks measure students’ abilities in one content area and practice while other tasks measure more than one content area or practice.

Because the questions making up a task are part of the same scenario, the number of measures in the assessment may be reduced because of interdependency between measures. To counterbalance this interdependency and to ensure reliability, the assessment also includes discrete questions that are standalone questions designed to provide independent measures of students’ knowledge and skills.

While the complete pool of the 2018 TEL assessment included 15 SBTs and 77 discrete questions, individual students responded to only a portion of the entire assessment. The total assessment time for each student was 60 minutes. Students responded to tasks and discrete questions in two separate 30-minute sections. Individual 30-minute sections were configured in various ways consisting of one long task (about 30 minutes), three 10-minute sets of discrete questions, or a combination of discrete question sets and a short task (about 10-20 minutes) totaling 30 minutes. While some students received two 30-minute task sections, none of the students received two sections of only discrete questions.

TEL tasks are designed to be accessible to all students so they can progress through each task to completion. Individual task questions are designed so that students who have partial understanding can still respond and students who answer a question incorrectly still have an opportunity to answer subsequent questions correctly.

Because students’ experiences with technology and engineering are not limited to school, the TEL assessment is accompanied by a questionnaire focusing on students’ opportunities to learn about technology and engineering both in and outside of school, as well as a questionnaire for school administrators focusing on resources and school demographics. Explore the TEL student and school questionnaires. Learn more about NAEP survey questionnaires including how NAEP ensures the privacy of questionnaire respondents.