The Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) is used to determine the profile and intensity of the supports needed by a person to participate successfully in major life activities. With its publication into 13 languages, a need has arisen to document its reliability and validity across language and cultural groups. Here we explain the adaptation and the…

College students with disabilities represent an increasing population of nontraditional students that often experience difficulty in achieving in higher education. This difficulty appears to be related to students with disabilities needing to request accommodations in higher education, unlike in elementary and secondary education where…

This article proposes a procedure, based on a global statistic, for assessing intra-individual consistency in a test-retest design with a short-term retest interval. The procedure is developed within the framework of parametric item response theory, and the statistic is a likelihood-based measure that can be considered as an extension of the…

Psychometric properties of item response theory proficiency estimates are considered in this paper. Proficiency estimators based on summed scores and pattern scores include non-Bayes maximum likelihood and test characteristic curve estimators and Bayesian estimators. The psychometric properties investigated include reliability, conditional…

Reform and improvement are imperative in the current South African education system. Monitoring of school and learner achievement is an essential for establishing praxis for school improvement. Diversity of culture and South Africa's 11 official languages make it difficult to develop valid monitoring systems. Limited resources, time constraints…

Concept maps provide a way to assess how well students have developed an organized understanding of how the concepts taught in a unit are interrelated and fit together. However, concept maps are challenging to score because of the idiosyncratic ways in which students organize their knowledge (McClure, Sonak, & Suen, 1999). The construct a map…

In this paper we describe a "Train the Tutor" programme (TtT) for developing the metacognitive skills, facilitator skills, and tutor skills of students in a problem based learning (PBL) context. The purpose of the programme was to train 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students in psychology to become effective PBL tutors for…

In the present study, we examined the extent to which the responses of teachers and mothers toward a particular child are similar in respect to their instructional support and affect, and whether child characteristics predict these responses. The data of 373 Finnish child-teacher-mother triads (178 girls, 195 boys) were analysed. Teachers and…

The potential of computer-based assessments for capturing complex learning outcomes has been discussed; however, relatively little is understood about how to leverage such potential for summative and accountability purposes. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a multimedia-based assessment of scientific inquiry abilities (MASIA) to…

Although researchers call for inquiry learning in science, science assessments rarely capture the impact of inquiry instruction. This paper reports on the development and validation of assessments designed to measure middle-school students' progress in gaining integrated understanding of energy while studying an inquiry-oriented curriculum. The…

There are a number of practical situations in which it would be desirable to be able to use the results of the administration of one assessment to estimate what the results would have been if another assessment had been administered. Test linking refers to the idea that results obtained from the administration of one test might be used to infer…

C. S. Carver and E. Harmon-Jones have made an important contribution to the understanding of anger, its linkage to higher order dimensions of emotion, and potential neurobiological substrates. The authors believe, however, that their model and future research conducted to test it would be improved by a more precise explication and parsing of the…

Teamwork skills are considered essential in a work environment characterized by diversity and interdependence. Consequently, middle grade teachers arrange cooperative learning so students can acquire experience with solving problems in groups. Teachers also acknowledge that they are frustrated because appropriate instruments are lacking to track…

To successfully educate the public about agriculture, food, and natural resources, we must have effective educators in both formal and nonformal settings. Specifically, this study, which is a valuable part of a larger sequential mixed-method study addressing effective teaching in formal and nonformal agricultural education, provides direction for…

This paper is based on the premise that little attention has been paid to learner preparedness for online language learning. We synthesized research on the broader topic of learner readiness for online learning, and attempt to apply those insights to the language learning context. Based on previous work, the demographic variables gender, student…