Purpose: As a representative form of discourse, oral narratives offer a sensitive, flexible, and ecologically valid tool for language evaluation. Nevertheless, oral narrative assessments in mainland China remain uncommon among school-age children. Therefore, this study explores the effectiveness of narrative microstructural assessment in…

Here, we describe the development and validation of an automatic assessment system that examines students' hand-drawn visual representations in free-response items. The data were collected from 1,028 students in the second through 11th grades in South Korea using two items from the Test About Particles in a Gas questionnaire (Novick &…

Howard Gardner revolutionized the concept of intelligence with his Multiple Intelligences Theory. His vision was widely supported by the educational community, which considers different forms of learning and accessing knowledge. Despite its impact, there is still a lack of development of tools that can easily, practically and reliably evaluate…

This study investigated the complexity of leveled passages used in four classroom reading assessments. A total of 167 passages leveled for Grades 1-6 from these assessments were analyzed using four analytical tools of text complexity. More traditional, two-factor measures of text complexity found a general trend of fairly consistent across-grade…

Background: Personality is reliably associated with academic performance, but personality measurement in primary education can be problematic. Young children find it difficult to accurately self-rate personality, and dominant models of adult personality may be inappropriate for children. Aims: This meta-analysis was conducted to determine the…

The purpose of the present study was to examine validity aspects of teachers' judgements of pupils' reading skills. Data come from Sweden's participation in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001, for Grades 3 and 4. For pupils at the same achievement levels, as measured by PIRLS 2001 test, teachers' judgements of…

The Word Writing CAFE is a new assessment tool designed for teachers to evaluate objectively students' word-writing ability for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. It is designed to be given to the whole class at one time. This article describes the development of the CAFE and provides directions for administering and scoring it. The author also…