The examination of measurement invariance in polytomous items is complicated by the possibility that the magnitude and sign of lack of invariance may vary across the steps underlying the set of polytomous response options, a concept referred to as differential step functioning (DSF). This article describes three classes of nonparametric DSF effect…

Equating functions are supposed to be population invariant, meaning that the choice of subpopulation used to compute the equating function should not matter. The extent to which equating functions are population invariant is typically assessed in terms of practical difference criteria that do not account for equating functions' sampling…

Recent work addressing the phenomenon of perceptual simulation offers new and exciting avenues of investigating how to model knowledge representation. From the perspective of language, the simulation approach has given rise to new impetus to work on models of language understanding (e.g., Zwaan, 2004, and references therein), and provides a way of…

There has been a body of emerging research describing students' understanding of complex systems. This research has primarily studied students understanding of complex phenomena in science. However, complex phenomena are also pervasive in everyday life. Children observe and participate in them daily. How do they reason about such ordinary complex…

A primary criterion on which models of cognition are evaluated is their ability to fit empirical data. To understand the reason why a model yields a good or poor fit, it is necessary to determine the data-fitting potential (i.e., flexibility) of the model. In the first part of this article, methods for comparing models and studying their…

Changes to research methodology motivated by the adoption of a complexity theory perspective on language development are considered. The dynamic, nonlinear, and open nature of complex systems, together with their tendency toward self-organization and interaction across levels and timescales, requires changes in traditional views of the functions…

The "Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality" (IOM, 2003) proposed strategies for higher education leaders and faculty to transform their institutions in ways that address the healthcare problems. This study provides higher education leaders and faculty with empirical data about the processes of change involved to implement the…

Product life cycle (PLC) stages and diagrams are briefly and dispassionately covered in the standard marketing textbook format with little attention to the social-psychological experiences of those actually participating. This qualitative study used process drama as a teaching tool and a research instrument to probe the PLC phenomenon in a…

Doctoral education in the United States had been scrutinized because of high-attrition rates reported as an average of 50 percent. Emerging from Lovitts (2001), this research examined students' attendance at Mock Orals (MO) and its relationship to their academic and social integration, cognitive maps, goals, rates of attrition, and retention in a…

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is generally regarded as a technique for large sample sizes ("N"), with N = 50 as a reasonable absolute minimum. This study offers a comprehensive overview of the conditions in which EFA can yield good quality results for "N" below 50. Simulations were carried out to estimate the minimum required "N" for different…

As research shows that the knowledge and use of models and modelling by teachers is limited, particularly for predicting phenomena, we developed and applied a sequence of three representations of a simulated model focusing on polarization and specifically showing the behaviour of an atom, and forces exerted on a dipole and an insulator, when a…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is a statistical technique used for ensuring the equity and fairness of educational assessments. This study formulates a new DIF analysis method using the information similarity index (ISI). ISI compares item information functions when data fits the Rasch model. Through simulations and an international…

The study presents the results of an educational intervention during in-service training of secondary school teachers in Cyprus, which led to participants' development. The aim was twofold, first to reveal teachers' conception about cooperative learning and second to help teachers through simulation of cooperative learning to construct the…

In educational effectiveness research, multilevel data analyses are often used because research units (most frequently, pupils or teachers) are studied that are nested in groups (schools and classes). This hierarchical data structure complicates designing the study because the structure has to be taken into account when approximating the accuracy…

This is a ready-to-use simulation that has high school students portraying all of the key players that decide how water from the Colorado River will be allocated. Students act as judges, lobbyists, news analysts, and even protesters during a mock water conference. Water supply is promised beyond nature's delivery, so the problem is real and will…