The rapid advancement of educational technologies worldwide and the ubiquitousness of technology-integrated teaching and learning have posed great challenges to teachers. Technology leadership is an emerging focus among educators, it involves using technologies to lead learners' knowledge, abilities, and values development. However, there are few…

Purpose: Primary education (PE) forms the foundation of high-quality education systems, but it is often underestimated. This paper aims to develop and empirically validate a measurement instrument to study the current stage of total quality management (TQM) implementation in PE. Design/methodology/approach: This study developed a seven-dimensional…

The goal of this study was to extend research on scale contextualization (i.e., frame-of-reference effect) to the decision making styles construct, compare the effects of contextualization across three unique decision style scales, and examine the consequences of scale contextualization within an item response theory framework. Based on a mixed…

Background and Aims: A literature review of both Eastern and Western literature regarding families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) revealed limited empirical research that examines ASD in China. Furthermore, most research in this area comes from a deficit model and there is a lack of research that comes from a strengths background.…

This book addresses the validity of think-aloud protocols (TAPs) in L2 writing research through a mixed methods study and proposes effective approaches for their valid implementation. The book uncovers the reactive effects that TAPs have on L2 writing performance and processes, and examines how individual factors moderate this reactivity. It…

The goal of this paper is to examine the psychometric properties of a live-coded behavioral measure of joint attention, the "Attention-Following and Initiating Joint Attention Protocol" (JA Protocol), in order to assist researchers and clinicians in identifying when this measure may meet their joint attention assessment needs. Data from…

School climate measurement is a long-standing topic in educational research. This review article provides an overview and appraisal of school climate measures published between 2003 and 2013 in scientific journals. A search for published school climate instruments for secondary school students was made in three databases. Twelve articles meeting…

Purpose: This policy brief discusses validity and fairness issues that could arise when test-based information is used for making "high stakes" decisions at an individual level, such as, for the certification of teachers or other professionals, or when admitting students into higher education programs and colleges, or for making…

Background: Youth programs often rely on self-reported data without clear evidence as to the accuracy of these reports. Although the validity of self-reporting has been confirmed among some high school and college age students, one area that is absent from extant literature is a serious investigation among younger children. Moreover, there is…

While there has been some increasing interest in external validity, most work to this point has been in assessing the similarity of a randomized trial sample and a population of interest (e.g., Stuart et al., 2010; Tipton, 2011). The goal of this research is to calculate empirical estimates of the external validity bias in educational intervention…

Purpose: This policy brief, the second AERI-NEPC eBrief in the series "Understanding validity issues around the world", focuses on validity as it applies to test-based models of evaluation employed for schools, instructional programs, and teachers around the world. It discusses validity issues that could arise when data from student…

Although definitions of validity have evolved considerably since L. J. Cronbach and P. E. Meehl's classic (1955) review, contemporary validity research continues to emphasize correlational analyses assessing predictor-criterion relationships, with most outcome criteria being self-reports. The present article describes an alternative way of…

This study was designed to determine the number of days of pedometer monitoring necessary to achieve reliable and valid estimates of a 1-year average of step counts in adults based on either consecutive days (CD) or random days (RD) of data collection. Twenty-three participants (16 women; M age = 38 years, SD = 9.9) wore a Yamax SW 200 pedometer…

Donald Campbell's approach to causal inference (D. T. Campbell, 1957; W. R. Shadish, T. D. Cook, & D. T. Campbell, 2002) is widely used in psychology and education, whereas Donald Rubin's causal model (P. W. Holland, 1986; D. B. Rubin, 1974, 2005) is widely used in economics, statistics, medicine, and public health. Campbell's approach focuses on…

Research has consistently shown that principal leadership matters for successful schools. Evaluating principals on the behaviors shown to improve student learning should be an important leverage point for raising leadership quality. Yet principals are often evaluated with the use of instruments with no theoretical background and little, if any,…