This study concerns 182 first year mathematics undergraduates' perspectives on the tangent line of function graph in the light of a previous study on Year 12 pupils' perspectives. The aim was the investigation of tangency images that settle after undergraduates' distancing from the notion for a few months and after their participation in…

Many students who struggle with basic mathematics courses benefit from digital instructional technologies, including additional visual and supplemental materials on difficult concepts and skills. Currently, the intelligent tutoring technology feature in the learning management system (LMS) should make it easier for students to deal with material…

This is a quantitative study, which attempted to detect gender bias test items from the Botswana Junior Certificate Examination in mathematics. To detect gender bias test items, a randomly selected sample of 4000 students responses to mathematics paper 1 of the Botswana Junior Certificate examination were selected from 36,000 students who sat for…

Superitem test based on the SOLO model (Structure of the Observing Learning Outcome) has become a powerful alternative assessment tool for monitoring the growth of students' cognitive ability in solving mathematics problems. This article focused on developing a superitem test to assess students' algebraic solving ability through interview method.…

Relatively little research has explored whether schools differ in their effectiveness for different group of pupils (e.g. by ethnicity, poverty or gender), for different curriculum subjects (e.g. English, mathematics or science) or over time (different cohorts). This paper uses multilevel modelling to analyse the national test results at age 7 and…

State assessments are increasingly used as outcome measures for education evaluations. The scaling of state assessments produces variability in measurement error, with the conditional standard error of measurement increasing as average student ability moves toward the tails of the achievement distribution. This report examines the variability in…

In light of the strong correlation between Kindergarten performance and later cognitive and achievement outcomes, this paper investigates the link between student achievement and the educational background characteristics of Kindergarten teachers. This study will utilize the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a…

Educational stakeholders are aware that school administration has become an incredibly intricate dynamic that is too complex for principals to handle alone. Test-driven accountability has made the already daunting task of school administration even more challenging. Distributed leadership presents an opportunity to explore increased leadership…

This study examined preservice teachers' mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics teaching efficacy and compared them to their mathematical performance. Participants included 89 early childhood preservice teachers at a Midwestern university. Instruments included the Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale (MSES), Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs…

This article provides a cultural-historical (CHAT) analysis of the practices used by an effective teacher of Latino/a children previously classified as "underachieving" and "beginning/novice" English Language Learners. Although the teacher would not describe her practices in strict CHAT, or sociocultural theory (SCT) terms, our analysis shows that…

Diagnosis is an integral part of instructional decision-making. As the bridge between identification of students who may be at-risk for failure and delivery of carefully designed supplemental interventions, diagnosis provides valuable information about students' persistent misconceptions in the targeted domain. In this paper, we discuss current…

The major purpose of this study is to describe a conceptual framework for examining differential item functioning (DIF) and differential person functioning (DPF) as types of model-data misfit within the context of assessing students with disabilities. Specifically, DIF and DPF can be viewed through the lens of residual analyses. Residual analyses…

The No Child Left Behind act resulted in an increased reliance on large-scale standardized tests to assess the progress of individual students as well as schools. In addition, emphasis was placed on including all students in the testing programs as well as those with disabilities. As a result, the role of testing accommodations has become more…

For one reason or another, various sources of information, namely, ancillary variables and correlational structure of the latent abilities, which are usually available in most testing situations, are ignored in ability estimation. A general model that incorporates these sources of information is proposed in this article. The model has a general…

Differential gender performance in standardized mathematics assessment has long been a heated topic. Gender gaps of varied magnitude have been identified on large-scale assessments in the United States. To continue the investigation, this study examined male and female performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003…