South Africa participated in TIMSS from 1995 to 2015. Over these two decades, some positive changes have been reported on the aggregated mathematics performance patterns of South African learners. This paper focuses on the achievement patterns of South Africa's high-performing Grade 9 learners (n = 3378) in comparison with similar subsamples of…

The results of international assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are often reported as rankings of nations. Focusing solely on national rank can result in invalid inferences about the relative quality of educational systems that can, in turn, lead to negative consequences for teachers and students.…

Students identified as at-risk of non-academic continuation have a propensity toward lower academic self-efficacy than their peers (Lent, 2005). Within engineering, self-efficacy and confidence are major markers of university continuation and success (Lourens, 2014 Raelin, et al., 2014). This study explored academic learning self-efficacy specific…

This dissertation comprises three papers that propose, discuss, and illustrate models to make improved inferences about research questions regarding student achievement in education. Addressing the types of questions common in educational research today requires three different "extensions" to traditional educational assessment: (1)…

With increased accountability attached to students' results on national testing in Australia, teachers feel under pressure to prepare students for the tests. However, this can lead to shallow teaching of a narrowed curriculum. An alternative approach involves using data to identify common errors and misconceptions, discussing strategies aimed at…

This study is an exploratory study of the relationship between collaboration and mathematics and game outcomes in a video game aimed at teaching concepts related to rational numbers. The sample included 243 middle school students who played the video game either with one partner or individually for 40 minutes. Results suggest that participants…

Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. They inform citizens about the nature of students' comprehension of the…

Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. The NAEP Assessment in mathematics has two components that differ in…

As currently practiced, value-added assessment relies on a strong assumption about the scales used to measure student achievement, namely that these are interval scales, with equal-sized gains at all points on the scale representing the same increment of learning. Many of the metrics in which test results are expressed do not have this property…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, which take place every three years, have been designed to collect information about 15-year-old students in participating countries. PISA examines how well students are prepared to meet the challenges of the future,…

For decades traditional methods of testing have been criticized for saying relatively little reliably about students' ability as well as causing anxiety, which can negatively affect students' recall of learned information. The reform movement with its innovative approaches focusing on learner-centered education perceives assessment as an…

This study examines the effect and validity of accommodations for limited English proficiency (LEP) students in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the impact of language factors on the assessment and accommodation of these students. Results indicate that accommodations used in NAEP did not reduce the performance gap between…

A Teacher Survey was developed for administration to Illinois teachers whose students take the Illinois Inventory of Educational Progress (IIEP). The IIEP are the achievement tests of the state assessment program. The purposes of the Teacher Survey range from determination of a test's curricular validity to investigations of teachers' abilities to…

In July 2001, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) agreed to the development of assessment instruments and key performance measures for reporting on student skills, knowledge and understandings in primary science. It directed the newly established Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce…

Work on the development of the intensive time-series design was initiated because of the dissatisfaction with existing research designs. This dissatisfaction resulted from the paucity of data obtained from designs such as the pre-post and randomized posttest-only designs. All have the common characteristic of yielding data from only one or two…