Background: Undergraduate students in healthcare professions need to develop critical thinking skills in order to be prepared to deliver patient-centered high-quality care upon graduation. The new Canadian Athletic Therapy Association (CATA) competency framework includes a "scholar" role, placing emphasis on knowledge and skills related…

Portfolio assessment of teaching practice has been used in many states as one indicator to inform licensure decisions, yet the human scoring process is costly for all stakeholders. This paper documents a series of investigations of alternative scoring procedures for a state pre-service teacher performance assessment. The proposed partial double…

In this study, we developed an Explicit Instruction special education teacher observation rubric that details the elements of explicit instruction and tested its psychometric properties using many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM). Video observations of classroom instruction from 30 special education teachers across three states were collected.…

In this study, we developed an Explicit Instruction special education teacher observation rubric that details the elements of explicit instruction, and tested its psychometric properties using many-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM). Video observations of classroom instruction from 30 special education teachers across three states were collected.…

Background: Service learning is an educational pedagogy that provides students with an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge to real-life situations. There are three components of service learning: course outcomes, service, and reflection. One barrier to incorporating service learning into nursing curriculum is the lack of a standardized…

This article documents the adaptation, piloting and validation of a measure of teachers' ethical sensitivity. To create the test, we modified a measure from dentistry drawing on literature in teacher professional ethics and drew on the expertise of professional ethics scholars and practitioners. Based on the results of Rasch analysis combined with…

The evidence-centered design framework was used to create a special education teacher observation system, Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers. Extensive reviews of research informed the domain analysis and modeling stages, and led to the conceptual framework in which effective special education teaching is operationalized as the…

The Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) framework was used to create a special education teacher observation system, Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET). Extensive reviews of research informed the domain analysis and modeling stages, and led to the conceptual framework in which effective special education teaching is…

In most U.S. schools, teachers are evaluated using observation of teaching practice (OTP). This study investigates rater effects on OTP ratings among 421 principals in an authentic teacher evaluation system. Many-facet Rasch analysis (MFR) using a block of shared ratings revealed that principals generally (a) differentiated between more and less…

Assessments of developmental spelling, also called spelling inventories, are commonly used to understand students' orthographic knowledge (i.e., knowledge of how written words work) and to determine their stages of spelling and reading development. The information generated by these assessments is used to inform teachers' grouping practices and…

Teacher evaluation systems commonly rely on observation of teaching practice (OTP) by school principals. However, the value of OTP as evidence of teacher effectiveness depends on its psychometric quality. In this study, we address a key aspect of the psychometric quality of principals' OTP ratings. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of assessment method (essays vs. examinations) and instruction method (seminars vs. lectures) on student perceptions of the fairness of the assessment process. Department-specific combinations of these factors give a unique profile to the assessment process and to the way students interact with…

This study describes the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) teacher observation instrument. Specifically, the study uses generalizability theory to compare two versions of a rubric, one with general descriptors of performance levels and one with item-specific descriptors of…

This study examined the reliability and structure of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, R. C., K. M. La Paro, and B. K. Hamre. 2008. "Classroom Assessment Scoring System. Manual Pre-K." Baltimore, MD: Brookes) and the quality of interactional processes in a German pre-school setting, drawing on a sample of 390…

This study examines students' procedural and conceptual achievement in fraction addition in England and Taiwan. A total of 1209 participants (561 British students and 648 Taiwanese students) at ages 12 and 13 were recruited from England and Taiwan to take part in the study. A quantitative design by means of a self-designed written test is adopted…