The Act of the Republic of Indonesia No. 14/2005 on Teachers and Lecturers call for 4 teacher competencies, They are: pedagogical, personality, social, and professional. Those four components of the professional competences for teachers; simultaneously, competence variable determines the quality of teacher performance. These will be critical…

In science education, laboratory practicals are frequently assessed through submission of a report. A large increase in student numbers necessitated us adapting a traditional practical report into an online test with automated marking. The assessment was designed to retain positive features of the traditional laboratory report but with added…

The psychometric properties of the Persian "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test were investigated, so were the predictions from the Empathizing-Systemizing theory of psychological sex differences. Adults aged 16-69 years old (N = 545, female = 51.7%) completed the test online. The analysis of items showed them to be generally acceptable.…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of an expectancy-value-based questionnaire measuring five aspects of test-taking motivation (effort, expectancies, importance, interest, and test anxiety). The questionnaire was distributed to a sample of Swedish Grade 9 students taking a low-stakes (n = 1,047) or a high-stakes (n =…

Tacit knowledge, that is knowledge not expressible in words, may play a role in learning science, yet it is difficult to study directly. Intuition and insight, two processes that link the tacit and the explicit, are proposed as a route to investigating tacit knowledge. Intuitions are defined as tacit hunches or feelings that influence thought with…

While current literature on examination and testing mostly engages with the objectivity of exams and their procedural logic, this article is concerned with the 'ethical dimension' of examination: Examinations provoke a particular relation to oneself, possibly self-transformation. The praxis of examination entails self-confrontation in the light of…

Raju, van der Linden, and Fleer (1995) introduced a framework for differential functioning of items and tests (DFIT) for unidimensional dichotomous models. Since then, DFIT has been shown to be a quite versatile framework as it can handle polytomous as well as multidimensional models both at the item and test levels. However, DFIT is still limited…

Establishing cut scores using the Angoff method requires panelists to evaluate every item on a test and make a probability judgment. This can be time-consuming when there are large numbers of items on the test. Previous research using resampling studies suggest that it is possible to recommend stable Angoff-based cut score estimates using a…

Taking a test generally improves the retention of the material tested. This is a phenomenon commonly referred to as testing effect. The present research investigated whether two-tier diagnostic tests promoted student teachers' conceptual understanding of variables in conducting scientific experiments, which is a scientific process skill. In this…

Mental color imagery abilities are commonly measured using paradigms that involve naming, judging, or comparing the colors of visual mental images of well-known objects (e.g., "Is a sunflower darker yellow than a lemon"?). Although this approach is widely used in patient studies, differences in the ability to perform such color…

Because recent initiatives highlight the need to better support preschool-aged children's math and science learning, the present study investigated the impact of professional development in these domains for early childhood educators. Sixty-five educators were randomly assigned to experience 10.5 days (64 hr) of training on math and science or on…

This paper introduces a dataset and associated analysis of the scores of National Football League (NFL) games over the 2012, 2013, and first five weeks of the 2014 season. In the face of current media attention to "lopsided" scores in Thursday night games in the early part of the 2014 season, t-test results indicate no statistically…

On the surface, this chapter concerns the evolution of educational assessment from a paper-based technology to an electronic one. On a deeper level, that evolution is more substantive. In the first section of this chapter, those stages are briefly described and used to place the new generation of assessments being created by the two comprehensive…

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) enables participating countries to monitor 15-year old students' progress in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. The present study investigates persistent factors that contribute to science performance of Turkish students in PISA 2006 and PISA 2009. Additionally, the study…

For more than a decade, Pewaukee School District Superintendent JoAnn Sternke has watched her district get better and better at its mission: opening the door to each student's future. The Wisconsin district began using Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) computer adaptive interim assessments from Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) in 2004…