This applied dissertation was conducted to provide the graduate program in marine sciences a valid predictor for success in the admissions scoring systems that include the general Graduate Record Exam. The dependent variable was persistence: successfully graduating from the marine sciences master's programs. This dissertation evaluated other…

Faculty in an Educator Preparation Provider developed a system of instruction and assessment of professional dispositions that spans the teacher candidate's academic career. The system includes a quantifiable rubric to measure professional dispositions, with actionable behavior indicators for candidates and their supervisors to follow. This system…

Students in first-year chemistry classes come from a variety of backgrounds, with many students unaware of the qualities and behaviors of a professional scientist. Throughout their degree, students will gradually develop their cognitive skills, but they may not be adequately taught or assessed on their professional behavioral skills as a scientist…

Quality teacher-child interactions are characteristic of effective classrooms resulting in benefits for all children, but may be particularly important for children from low-income families. The purpose of this study was to explore the perception of Illinois Head Start teachers related to how "I am Moving, I am Learning" (IMIL) could…

Purpose: This study examined the effects of single-language and conceptual scoring on the vocabulary performance of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment. We assessed classification accuracy across 3 scoring methods. Method: Participants included Spanish-English bilingual children (N = 247) aged 5;1 (years;months) to…

Questioning is a central practice in science classrooms. However, not every question translates into a "good" science investigation. Questions that drive science investigations can be provided by many sources including the teacher, the curriculum, or the student. The variations in the source of investigation questions were explored in…

With only minimal changes to the course structure, classroom clickers were introduced in introductory chemistry to allow students to regularly compare their perceived abilities with their actual abilities, a measurement also known as calibration. Students used the clickers to provide knowledge judgments, an indication of their confidence in…

Secondary students with emotional and behavioral disorders may experience a phenomenon known as the failure cycle where behavioral needs and academic deficits negatively impact learning, including reading comprehension. Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) is one emerging method that addresses behavioral needs and reading comprehension…

This paper describes procedures by which two types of measures of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) were developed and validated: (a) PCK Survey and (b) PCK Rubric. Given the topic-specificity of PCK, the measures centered on photosynthesis as taught in high school classrooms. The measures were conceptually grounded in the pentagon model of PCK…

Over two semesters short essay prompts were developed for use with the Graphical Interface for Knowledge Structure (GIKS), an automated essay scoring system. Participants were students in an undergraduate-level online introductory statistics course. The GIKS compares students' writing samples with an expert's to produce keyword occurrence and…

This article brings to the fore trends in second language (L2) pronunciation research, teaching, and assessment by highlighting the ways in which pronunciation instructional priorities and assessment targets have shifted over time, social dimensions that, although presented in a different guise, appear to have remained static, and principles in…

Automatic essay scoring (AES) refers to the process of scoring free text responses to given prompts, considering human grader scores as the gold standard. Writing such essays is an essential component of many language and aptitude exams. Hence, AES became an active and established area of research, and there are many proprietary systems used in…

In response to global assessment reforms, using assessment for learning (AfL) in various education jurisdictions is on the rise. However, using assessment as learning (AaL) appears to enjoy a low profile in language learning in general and in L2 writing in particular. To this end, the paper intends to describe what AaL is in relation to AfL, argue…

This study examined the efficacy of an electronic essay-writing strategy to improve the expository writing skills of 20 young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities enrolled in a program at an institute of higher education in the midwest. A pretest and posttest experimental design with random assignment to treatment or control…

While the achievement gap in science exists in the US, research associated with our investigation reveals some high school science programs serving diverse student bodies are successfully closing the gap. Using a mixed methods approach, we identified and investigated ten high schools in a large Southwestern state that fit the definition of…