Background: This study builds on a series of studies that examined how augmented reality and various other learning scaffolds can promote deeper conceptual and cognitive understanding among visitors in a science museum. Purpose: We focus specifically on determining the exact affordances of different genres of scaffolds that include augmented…

Disability simulation is an educational approach to modify attitudes and behaviors toward persons with disabilities by allowing participants to experience simulated life activities of individuals with disabilities. Despite the controversy regarding the effectiveness of disability simulations and its potential counterproductive effects, however,…

Little is known about methods to address gender-based bias against male elementary educators. Framed by social role and role congruity theories, this study explored the effects of gendered traits and teacher gender on perceptions of elementary educators. Participants (N = 246) were randomly assigned to view websites that varied gendered traits…

An aggregation strategy is proposed to potentially address practical limitation related to computing resources for two-level multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) models with large data sets. The aggregate model is derived by integration of the normal ogive model, and an adaptation of the stochastic approximation expectation maximization…

This study defines subpopulation item parameter drift (SIPD) as a change in item parameters over time that is dependent on subpopulations of examinees, and hypothesizes that the presence of SIPD in anchor items is associated with bias and/or lack of invariance in three psychometric outcomes. Results show that SIPD in anchor items is associated…

In recent years, software operating skills, the ability in computer literacy to solve problems using specific software, has become much more important. A great deal of research has also proven that students' software operating skills can be efficiently improved by practicing customized virtual and simulated examinations. However, constructing…

Understanding chemistry includes the ability to think on three levels: the macroscopic level, the symbolic level, and the level of particles--sub-microscopic level. Pupils have the most difficulty when trying to understand the sub-microscopic level because it is outside their range of experience. A virtual laboratory enables a simultaneous…

This exploratory study examined the influence of different virtual manipulative (VM) types on the nature of student pairs' techno-mathematical discourse (TMD). Three fifth-grade student pairs participated in 9 sessions of mathematics instruction using VMs. The study compared three VM types: linked, pictorial, and tutorial. Students' levels of…

Background: Even infants can recognize whether patterns of motion are or are not natural, yet an acknowledged challenge for science education is to promote adequate reasoning about such patterns. Since research indicates linkage between the conceptual bases of recognition and reasoning, it seems possible that recognition can be engaged to support…

Teachers' judgments of students' academic achievement are not only affected by the achievement themselves but also by several other characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, and minority status. In real-life classrooms, achievement and further characteristics are often confounded. We disentangled achievement, ethnicity and minority status and…

Augmented reality (AR) offers potential advantages for intensifying environmental context awareness and augmenting students' experiences in real-world environments by dynamically overlapping digital materials with a real-world environment. However, some challenges to AR learning environments have been described, such as participants' cognitive…

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading (CBM-R) progress monitoring data is used to measure student response to instruction. Federal legislation permits educators to use CBM-R progress monitoring data as a basis for determining the presence of specific learning disabilities. However, decision making frameworks originally developed for CBM-R…

This investigation sought to identify patterns in elementary science teachers' computer simulation use, particularly implementation structures and instructional supports commonly employed by teachers. Data included video-recorded science lessons of 96 elementary teachers who used computer simulations in one or more science lessons. Results…

Two objectives guided this research. First, this study examined how well teachers' tracking decisions contribute to the homogenization of their students' achievements. Second, the study explored whether teachers' tracking decisions would be outperformed in homogenizing the students' achievements by statistical models of tracking decisions. These…

This study set out to examine two important aspects of the use of eWriters by early elementary students. First, it explored the impact of eWriters on literacy motivation and self efficacy of students in Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and First grade. Second, it explored if and how the technology implementation would affect parent and teacher…