Background: While highlighting is one of the most common strategies to enhance reading comprehension, little is known about how highlighting behavior and its relationship with performance varies across cultures. Our purpose was to examine whether the use and the success of highlighting prevalence, quantity, and task relevance vary internationally.…

This paper informs users of data collected in international large-scale assessments (ILSA), by presenting argumentsunderlining the importance of considering two design features employed in these studies. We examine a commonmisconception stating that the uncertainty arising from the assessment design is negligible compared with that arisingfrom the…

International large-scale assessments have gained much attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century, influencing education legislation in many countries. This includes Spain, where they have been used by successive governments to justify education policy change. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the PISA 2018 reading scores for…

In international large-scale assessments, students may not be compelled to answer every test item: a student can decide to skip a seemingly difficult item or may drop out before the end of the test is reached. The way these missing responses are treated will affect the estimation of the item difficulty and student ability, and ultimately affect…

The Cross-Classified Mixed Effects Model (CCMEM) has been demonstrated to be a flexible framework for evaluating reliability by measurement specialists. Reliability can be estimated based on the variance components of the test scores. Built upon their accomplishment, this study extends the CCMEM to be used for evaluating validity evidence.…

Group differences in test scores are a key metric in education policy. Response time offers novel opportunities for understanding these differences, especially in low-stakes settings. Here, we describe how observed group differences in test accuracy can be attributed to group differences in latent response speed or group differences in latent…

This study aimed to examine the achievements of 2019 Turkish Language Curriculum regarding main idea teaching in terms of PISA 2018 Reading Skills Test. In this regard, the overlap of the achievements in 2019 Turkish Language Curriculum in Turkey and the proficiency levels in PISA 2018 Reading Test were examined in the context of main idea…

From once being synonymous with reading and writing, literacy, as a concept has expanded in the last three decades to today being associated with multiple meaning making forms and competences. Impactful, in this shift, has been the research orientation of New Literacy Studies. Besides academia, the literacy concept has also had a major influence…

The present research aims to examine whether the questions in the Program for the International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 reading literacy instrument display differential item functioning (DIF) among the Turkish, French, and American samples based on univariate and multivariate matching techniques before and after the total score, which is…

Among the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) launched in 2015, the fourth goal (SDG 4) is dedicated to education, and one of the ten targets within that goal specifically addresses adult literacy and numeracy skills. Efforts to reach this target involve monitoring, which in turn involves assessment. The most powerful…

The Mantel-Haenszel estimator is one of the most popular techniques for measuring differential item functioning (DIF). A generalization of this estimator is applied to the context of DIF to compare items by taking the covariance of odds ratio estimators between dependent items into account. Unlike the Item Response Theory, the method does not rely…

Based on the relationships motivation theory, it can be assumed that social interactions in elementary school are essential for students' development and especially for their school success. Thus, this study examined how vital social resources, more precisely social interactions with peers and teachers, are for two central aspects of school…

This study aims to assess student motivation to provide valid responses to the PISA student questionnaire. This was done by modeling response times using a three-component finite mixture model, comprising two satisficing response styles (rapid and idle) and one optimizing response style. Each participant's motivation was operationalized as their…

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was used to measure Indonesian fourth grade elementary school students' reading comprehension in 2006 and 2011. Indonesian students scored among the lowest of the participating countries with a score of 405 in 2006 and 428 in 2011, with the PIRLS average scale score being 500. These results…

This paper extends existing work on teacher weighting in student-centered surveys by looking into aspects of practical implementation of deriving and using weights for teacher-centered analysis in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). The formal…