One of the greatest challenges for schools is to identify effective and ineffective teachers in a classroom. Teacher evaluation is an expensive process in both time and resources. It is important that evaluations provide data to improve teaching and learning. Therefore, each evaluation needs to communicate opportunities for growth. This…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if, and to what extent, a relationship existed between teachers' perceptions of their evaluator's instructional leadership and the teachers' evaluation scores at the middle and high school levels in one Florida school district. Ozcan's theory of teacher motivation states that…

Research indicates that teacher performance is a critical focus for school districts, administrators, and teachers. Pre-service teacher preparation, teacher retention, job satisfaction, mentoring, continuous feedback, and onboarding support for new teachers are all factors that influence teacher performance (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond,…

This study examined how L2 English speakers interpreted the notion of native English speakers (NESs) and nonnative English speakers (NNESs) and whether nativeness would influence their self-perception and speech production. It aimed at filling the following research gaps. First, limited studies have explored how L2 English speakers view the other…

Since researchers investigated automatic scoring systems in writing assessments, they have dealt with relationships between human and machine scoring, and then have suggested evaluation criteria for inter-rater agreement. The main purpose of my study is to investigate the magnitudes of and relationships among indices for inter-rater agreement used…

A fundamental issue in speech science concerns the extent to which speech sounds are mentally represented by articulatory-motor and/or auditory-acoustic features. This dissertation aims to expand upon the current literature by investigating changes in production and perception following visual feedback training with either articulatory or acoustic…

This quantitative correlational research explored the potential association between the levels of organizational trust and the software testing estimation. This was conducted by exploring the relationships between organizational trust, tester's expertise, organizational technology used, and the number of hours, number of testers, and time-coding…

Foreign educational credential assessment is responsive to assessors' social, economic, and cultural stimuli. Academic institutions, industries, and governmental bodies treat placement specialists' recommendations as signals of cross-cultural productive capacity, giving significance to the methodology of foreign education-system analysis. A…

Speaking assessments for second language learners have traditionally been expensive to administer because of the cost of rating the speech samples. To reduce the cost, many researchers are investigating the potential of using automatic speech recognition (ASR) as a means to score examinee responses to open-ended prompts. This study examined the…

This dissertation research describes an investigation that explores the nature of the relationship between participation in evaluation and the use of evaluation findings and processes within three large-scale multisite evaluations. The purpose of this study is to test whether assumptions and theories about participation translate into evaluation…

Speaking performance tests typically employ raters to produce scores; accordingly, variability in raters' scoring decisions has important consequences for test reliability and validity. One such source of variability is the rater's level of expertise in scoring. Therefore, it is important to understand how raters' performance is influenced by…

This study employed Bachman and Palmer's (2010) Assessment Use Argument framework to investigate to what extent the use of a second language oral test as an exit test in a Hong Kong university can be justified. It also aimed to help test developers of this oral test identify the most critical areas in the current test design that might need…