Problem Statement: In formal educational environments, the quality of student listening affects learning considerably. Students who are uninterested in a lesson listen reluctantly, wanting time to pass quickly and the class to end as soon as possible. In such situations, students become passive and, though appearing to be listening, will not use…

There is often confusion about distinctions between growth models and value-added models. The first half of this paper attempts to dispel some of these confusions by clarifying terminology and illustrating by example how the results from a large-scale assessment can and will be used to make inferences about student growth and the value-added…

Giftedness researchers have long debated whether there is empirical evidence to support a distinction between giftedness and attained level of achievement. In this paper we propose a general theoretical framework that establishes scientific criteria for acceptable evidence of superior reproducible performance, which any theory of exceptional…