Practical arts is a subject that not only promotes learners' better understanding of work in their daily lives, but also enables them to find ways to solve work-related problems by fostering basic skills and attitudes necessary for performing the work. The teaching of practical arts as a subject should be focused on developing creativity and…

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) of silent reading fluency using the maze task has been shown to be a useful tool for evaluating students' silent reading skills. No prior research has evaluated whether the source of the maze passages has a relationship with the obtained reading scores. Prior research with CBM of oral reading fluency (ORF) has…

The Model-Assisted Reasoning in Science (MARS) project seeks to promote model-centered instruction as a means of improving middle-school science education. As part of the evaluation of the sixth-grade curriculum, performance of MARS and non-MARS students was compared on a curriculum-neutral task. Fourteen students participated in structured…

The purpose of this literature review and Ex Post Facto descriptive study was to determine which type of benchmark assessment, multiple-choice or project-based, provides the best indication of general success on the history portion of the CST (California Standards Tests). The result of the study indicates that although the project-based benchmark…

The collection of data by face-to-face interviews and questionnaires is common and literature in these areas is extensive; but few cases are reported in which respondents have been provided with a blank audio cassette tape, interview schedule, or open-ended questionnaire items, and been invited to record their own comments and forward these to the…

Results from an ongoing series of studies designed to describe changes in students' self-assessments across time are presented. In these studies, medical students predicted their performance on essay examinations in their first 2 years of medical school. Self-assessment is a valuable skill for clinical practice, and the importance of knowing what…

Standard and experimental forms of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundations Analytical Reasoning test were administered to 1,496 clients of the Foundation (persons seeking information about aptitude for educational and career decisions). The objectives were to develop a new form of the test and to better understand what makes some items more…

This study used multiple methods to assess basic community needs and attributes of community atmosphere (cohesion, religious involvement, and recreational activities) in two psychometric studies. Part 1 revised self-report community assessment measures, developed multi-item scales for each construct, and tested reliabilities and factor structures…

Sixteen goal-like statements were developed around P. Reed's contention that university-public school partnerships promote interdependence between groups, a balanced exchange of valued commodities, shared decision making, adaptations to inherent barriers, and an enabling support structure. The questionnaire was pilot tested with members of other…

Some results are presented relating to the dimensionality of the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics item-response data. Based on theoretical considerations, practical limitations, and previous research, two procedures were selected for study: full information factor analysis as implemented in the TESTFACT computer…

Cognitive changes in college students from early in the freshman year to the end of the sophomore year were assessed using a pretest-posttest design. In all, 135 university students completed both a pretest and a posttest. The academic achievement measure used was the College Basic Academic Subjects Examination (CBASE), a test intended to assess…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) investigate the feasibility of including convergent, divergent, and imaginary factors in models of creative thinking in music; (2) identify the relationship between the processes involved in musical creativity and motivation for musical activities; and (3) determine the generalizability of Amabile's…

An alternative to multiple-choice (MC) testing is suggested as it pertains to the field of radiologic technology education. General principles for writing MC questions are given and contrasted with a new type of MC question, the alternate-choice (AC) question, in which the answer choices are embedded in the question in a short form that resembles…

The major objectives and benefits of the Advanced Placement Program (APP) are summarized, and data specific to Delaware are compared to national statistics about advanced placement (AP) courses in high schools. School participation in the APP is considered an indicator of academic success by educators and policy makers. The extent to which…

Data were collected to develop special norms for the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABSs) for educable mentally retarded (EMR) and trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children. These scales currently report special norms for retarded adults. The study also sought to determine if the low to moderate relationship typically found between…