This study sought to measure general teacher efficacy levels of in-service primary teachers in Hong Kong. Participants included 725 Hong Kong in-service teachers, who were invited to take part in the study. These in-service teachers came from 28 different primary schools ranging from government, aided, private and direct subsidy schools. The…

The undermining effect of extrinsic reward on intrinsic motivation remains unproven. The key unresolved issues are construct invalidity (all four definitions are unproved and two are illogical); measurement unreliability (the free-choice measure requires unreliable, subjective judgments to infer intrinsic motivation); inadequate experimental…

The interest inventory of the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System (T. F. Harrington & A. J. O'Shea, 1980, 1992, 2003) had hit rates of occupational status substantially exceeding chance expectations in the literature's 1st long-term predictive validity study since 1991. No significant gender differences were found for the Grade 10…

Despite current legislation which makes provision for collaboration between the public school sector and home schooling, it appears that much can still be done to move towards a closer partnership. Consequetly I investigated the possibilities of such a liaison. A literature review on the nature of home schooling in general was conducted as…

The grammar course objectives at Brigham Young University's English Language Center (ELC) are a list of grammar structures for each level that students are expected to be able to master. These objectives currently are only measured by pencil-paper grammar tests, providing information regarding receptive grammar ability only. Therefore, there is a…

The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) is a functional assessment used in approximately 27 states to evaluate youth service outcomes. The CANS purports to measure both the youth's risk and protective factors, but its validity is largely un-researched. This study compares ratings of 304 delinquent youth on the CANS and ratings on a…

Can community colleges make better use of data to improve student outcomes? That's the fundamental idea behind "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count," a bold initiative launched in 2003 by Lumina Foundation for Education to help community college students succeed--particularly, low-income students and students of color, who have…

Editor-in-Chief James L. Morrison interviews Scott Howell, the co-editor of a three-volume book series entitled "Online Assessment and Measurement" that was published in 2006 by IDEA Group. In discussing his own research, Howell first highlights the value of test blueprints as a valuable tool for ensuring an effective alignment of…

The articles published in the "Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science" (MPEES) journal over the first 10 volumes were categorized by content area and methodology. The authors have offered opinions here concerning the changes observed over the 10-year period, the areas that are well-represented, and other potential areas of research…

Cultural competence has become a central social work tenet enshrined in the profession's ethical and educational standards. Few measures of cultural competence exist, however, in spite of an increasing array of religious, ethnic, and racial groups in U.S. society. This article develops a new measure to assess cultural competence among one family…

The role of theory in the restructuring of schools and curriculum is discussed. Theory is defined as a set of assumptions from which laws or principles may be derived. The descriptive, analytical, and predictive characteristics of theory are described. The examination of the relationship of theory to practice leads to the conclusion that they are…

A project to field test instruments and procedures for measuring English language proficiency, to be used in a large-scale national household survey, is reported. The major purposes of the field test were to measure the validity of census-type questions for determining language proficiency, using several different bilingual ethnic groups, and to…

Computer-based instruction could have considerable impact on improving the quality of science education. Simulations and interactive problems provide a means for students to explore scientific concepts and experiment without the expense or hazard of using actual materials. This paper focuses on the instructional design process as it relates to the…

Traditional methods of job and task analysis may be categorized as worker-oriented methods focusing on general human behaviors performed by workers in jobs or as job-oriented methods focusing on the technologies involved in jobs. The ability of both types of traditional methods to identify, understand, and communicate the skills needed in high…

This paper reports 20 unsolved problems in educational measurement and points toward what seem to be promising avenues of solution. The first group of concerns involves validity, posing the problems of obtaining suitable validity criteria, determining and measuring the predictor variables that best characterize the traits and proficiencies of…