This report describes the development and testing of a computerized early literacy diagnostic assessment for students in prekindergarten to grade 3 that can measure skills across a variety of preliteracy and reading domains. The STAR Early Literacy assessment was developed by a team of more than 50 people, including literacy experts,…

A faculty's commitment to continuous learning and improvement is a critical dimension in defining schools as high-performing learning communities. When planning an improvement effort, a school's staff needs a conceptual framework that outlines the dimensions of school improvement. The AEL Continuous School Improvement Questionnaire (CSIQ) is a…

This book provides a comprehensive overview of assessment used to support learning, and it makes this area accessible and understandable for a wise range of users. This unique text is a major source of practice-based theory on assessment for learning, a formative assessment to support individual development and motivate learners. Key areas covered…

This paper explores the role of instructional scaffolding in the development of undergraduate students' understanding of mathematical proof during a one-year discrete mathematics course. We describe here the framework adapted for the analysis of whole-class discussion and examine how the teacher scaffolded students' thinking. Results suggest that…

We present results from a study which investigated the influence of dynamic geometry-based activities in the development of proving skills (in geometry) in high-school students (15-16 years of age). After a 12-week course on Cabri and the writing of conjectures and proofs, students were asked to write and prove conjectures based on their…

Job satisfaction expresses the extent of match between teachers' expectation of the job, job requirements and the satisfaction derived from their jobs. There seems to be a growing discontentment towards teaching as a result of which standards of education are falling. Teachers are dissatisfied in spite of different plans and programmes which have…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) provides a comprehensive measure of intelligence, whereas the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT) provides a quick measure of intelligence, requiring less than 30 minutes to administer. Since both tests are frequently used in clinical settings and in schools for initial…

Assessment systems to measure high educational standards emerged as the major theme at the 1996 conference of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), "Moving Up to Complex Assessment." This feature article, providing a summation of the proceedings of the conference, reports that the…

This book explores the practice of testing. Two postulates are assumed: that student assessment should improve performance, rather than just monitoring it, and that testing should be only a small facet of assessment. The first chapter, "Introduction: Assessment and the Morality of Testing," considers what assessment is and how it differs from…

One focus of educational measurement has been the examination of the relationship between students' entering academic characteristics and their subsequent achievement outcomes. In the case of admissions tests, an important consideration is that test scores predict later achievement similarly for all groups of students who take the test. The…

Although Yalom's framework of "therapeutic factors" for facilitating outcomes in group work has been accepted by psychologists, no empirically based instrument assesses all of these factors in one measure. The Therapeutic Factors Inventory (TFI), which is described here, was created to fill this need. In designing this measure, the…

A case study investigated the writing strategies use by high ability seventh graders (n=4) responding to explanatory tasks from the Maryland Writing Test (MWT), a state-mandated writing assessment. Central questions were: (1) what are the writing strategies elicited by the MWT?; (2) what evidence is revealed of participants' self-monitoring…

Reading is an essential way of attaining information, particularly for students studying in a university. Using reading strategies is extremely important for non-native readers of English because it serves as an effective way to overcome language deficiency and obtain better reading achievement. A study determined the psychometric properties of a…

This study examined aspects of concurrent, predictive, and consequential validity evidence of the Pre-Professional Skills Test (PPST) scores as college of education admission criteria. American College Test (ACT) and PPST subtest scores of 372 graduates, and PPST scores, undergraduate grade-point averages, and student teaching ratings of 1,062…

The Coping with Disability Scales (CDS) (J. Perry and E. Bard, 1992) was developed to provide a social-emotional assessment specific to disabilities. This report provides a preliminary test of construct validity for a Resilience Profile from the Parent Rating Scale of the CDS through factor analysis, focusing on three subdomains: (1) Disability…