Psychometrics is the field of designing tests and assessments to measure certain psychological concepts. It is chiefly concerned with two fundamental properties: reliability and validity. These properties are often influenced by confounding variables: other things that can influence performance but are not what you are trying to measure. Here, I…

Teachers lack effective curriculum-based instruments to assess their students' scientific competence that would provide information for modifying their inquiry instruction. The main purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Curriculum-Based Scientific Competence (CBSC) test to assess students' scientific competence in a 1-semester Grade…

Mathematical fact fluency, particularly in addition and subtraction, is crucial for students' success in later mathematical concepts and is often a focus of elementary education. Educators are exploring tools to enhance math fluency, such as Reflex Math, a digital program designed to accelerate students' fact fluency through adaptive learning…

University examinations categorise students according to their individual achievements determined by teaching staff. This procedure serves the elicitation and certification of student knowledge and thus reproduces academic hierarchies. Drawing on empirical evidence from ethnographic fieldwork in Engineering and History departments, this article…

This open access book presents original research on effective and equitable teacher practice in mathematics and science education across Nordic countries. It focuses on three key aspects of teacher practice: what teachers teach, how teachers teach, and how teachers assess their students. To provide a comprehensive understanding of teacher…

In recent years, the Indonesian government has put greater emphasis on promoting critical thinking in the education system, including the notion of critical thinking in national examinations, curriculum, and graduate outcomes for school education. Nevertheless, as in many testing-oriented countries, fostering critical thinking in the Indonesian…

The Pirie-Kieren Model (PKM) was a paradigm shift in theories of learning by presenting a coherent, consistent theory compatible with complexity theory. PKM recognized that learning is non-linear, recursive, iterative, and emergent. PKM was one of the first theories to depart from the linear models of learning that dominated theories of learning…

The purpose of the study was to develop an instrument for the problem solving ability of students in Hybrid learning by Ethno-STEM via Four-D Model. In the study, the first three stages of the Four-D Model namely; defining, designing, and developing were applied. As the participants, 143 students of elementary education in the 4th semester took…

A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

Measures of teacher mathematical knowledge are notoriously difficult to develop (e.g., Orrill et al., 2015). This is in part because of the multidimensional nature of teacher knowledge. As part of two separate projects being undertaken by this research team, we have attempted to write assessments of teacher pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in…

Learning progressions (LPs) are novel models for the development of assessments in science education, that often use a scale to categorize students' levels of reasoning. Pictorial representations are important in chemistry teaching and learning, and also in LPs, but the differences between pictorial and verbal items in chemistry LPs is unclear. In…

Both of us were drawn into the writing assessment field initially through our lived experiences as schoolteachers. We worked in radically different contexts -- Martin was head of a languages department and teacher of French and German in the late 1990s in the UK, and David was a Grade 12 teacher of Academic English in Alberta, Canada, at the turn…

This report discusses frameworks and assessment development approaches to consider fairness, opportunity to learn, and consequences of test use in the design and use of assessments administered to diverse populations. Examples include the integrated design and appraisal framework and the sociocognitively based evidence-centered design approach.…

For many professors, testing is primarily a tool for assessing the learning of students. However, research into the "testing effect" has established the value of testing also as a learning tool, not just as an assessment tool. This article provides an overview of this research and also of my own experiences in using a variety of testing…

Geography educators have been, and continue to be, interested in spatial thinking, especially since they have been convinced of its importance in their students' ability to learn and do geography. As they developed strategies to improve students' spatial thinking, they searched for assessment instruments to evaluate their interventions' effects.…