instruction, and learning The rise in popularity of cognitive diagnostic assessments can be traced to two sources: assessment developers and assessment users. Assessment developers see great potential for cognitive diagnostic assessments to inform teaching and learning by changing the way current assessments are designed. Assessment developers also argue that to maximize the educational benefits from assessments, curriculum, instruction, and assessment design should be aligned and integrated. Assessment users, including teachers and other educational stakeholders, are increasingly demanding relevant results from educational assessments. This requires assessments to be aligned with classroom practice to be of maximum instructional value. The AHM to date, as a form of cognitive diagnostic assessment, addresses the path between curriculum and assessment design by identifying the knowledge, skills, and processes actually used by examinees to solve problems in a given domain. These cognitive attributes organized into a cognitive model becomes not only representation of the construct of interest, but also the cognitive test blueprint. Items can then be constructed to systematically measure each attribute combination within the cognitive model. The path between assessment design and instruction is also addressed by providing specific, detailed feedback about an examinee's performance in terms of the cognitive attributes mastered. This cognitive diagnostic feedback is provided to students and teachers in the form of a score report. The skills mastery profile, along with adjunct information such as exemplar test items, can be used by the teacher to focus instructional efforts in areas where the student is requiring additional assistance. Assessment results can also provide feedback to the teacher on the effectiveness of instruction for promoting the learning objectives. The AHM is a promising method for cognitive diagnostic assessment. Using a principled test design approach, integrating cognition into test development, can promote stronger inferences about how students actually think and solve problems. With this knowledge, students can be provided with additional information that can guide their learning, leading to improved performance on future educational assessments and problem solving tasks. Suggested reading Leighton, J. P., & Gierl, M. J. (Eds.). (2007). Cognitive diagnostic assessment for education: Theory and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. External links Center for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation References Educational research Educational evaluation methods Psychological tests and scales