Learning standards across the United States have increasingly called for history students to engage in aspects of "historical thinking," a term used to describe the complex disciplinary processes that historians use to make sense of the past. Although students are expected to learn these complex processes, little is known about how to…

Population invariance in equating exists when the relationship between two scales is the same for two or more subpopulations of examinees and hence the function used to equate the scales is not dependent on subpopulations. A lack of equating invariance (i.e., equating dependence) leads to a situation whereby examinees having the same score on one…

Among cues that fail to elicit successful recall, participants can still discriminate between cues that do and do not resemble studied items. This ability is referred to as recognition without cued recall (RWCR). We hypothesized that whereas recognition with cued recall is at least partly based on recalled studied information, RWCR results from a…

In recent studies, different methods were proposed to investigate invariant item ordering (IIO), but practical IIO research is an unexploited field in questionnaire construction and evaluation. In the present study, the authors explored the usefulness of different IIO methods to analyze personality scales and clinical scales. From the authors'…

For mixed-type tests composed of both dichotomous and polytomous items, polytomous items often yield more information than dichotomous ones. To reflect the difference between the two types of items, polytomous items are usually pre-assigned with larger weights. We propose an item-weighted likelihood method to better assess examinees' ability…

The probability of test takers changing answers upon review of their initial choices is modeled. The primary purpose of the model is to check erasures on answer sheets recorded by an optical scanner for numbers and patterns that may be indicative of irregular behavior, such as teachers or school administrators changing answer sheets after their…

These guidelines describe considerations relevant to the assessment of test takers in or across countries or regions that are linguistically or culturally diverse. The guidelines were developed by a committee of experts to help inform test developers, psychometricians, test users, and test administrators about fairness issues in support of the…

Students' explanations of biological phenomena are frequently characterized by disconnects between levels and confusion of levels. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of a hands-on lab activity that aims at fostering the ability to reason across levels. A total of 197 students (18 years of age) participated in a randomized,…

Problem Statement: Algebra, which is one of the basic principles of mathematical learning, still maintains its importance in mathematics programmes. However, especially starting from the primary school years, algebra represents a complex mathematical factor in the operational stage for many students. In this scope, a differentiated teaching…

Through the lens of hospitality, we explored the meanings that members constructed about their experiences within a blended formal/informal college music ensemble. The focus in this ensemble was not on competition and musical excellence but on independent musicianship and praxis. The bandleader had his roots in tradition but his heart in socially…

In this descriptive study, researchers surveyed choristers (N = 630) from 16 mid-level collegiate choirs nationwide to investigate their perceptions and behaviors as they related to the strategies used by directors to facilitate ensemble identity. Also investigated were the factors affecting choristers' dedication to choir and their intentions…

In online educational systems we can easily collect and analyze extensive data about student learning. Current practice, however, focuses only on some aspects of these data, particularly on correctness of students answers. When a student answers incorrectly, the submitted wrong answer can give us valuable information. We provide an overview of…

Variation in test performance among examinees from different regions or national jurisdictions is often partially attributed to differences in the degree of content correspondence between local school or training program curricula, and the test of interest. This posited relationship between test-curriculum correspondence, or "alignment,"…

South Africa participated in TIMSS from 1995 to 2015. Over these two decades, some positive changes have been reported on the aggregated mathematics performance patterns of South African learners. This paper focuses on the achievement patterns of South Africa's high-performing Grade 9 learners (n = 3378) in comparison with similar subsamples of…

In most large-scale programs of tests that aid in making high-stakes decisions, such as the "TOEIC"® family of products and service, it is not unusual for a significant portion of test takers to retake the test at multiple times.The study reported here used multilevel growth modeling to explore the score change patterns of nearly 20,000…