Test-takers' voices in relation to high-stakes language tests have received growing attention in recent years. While the perspectives of this stakeholder group can be utilised to improve test quality, test-taking experience, and test impact, we argue that this goal needs to be achieved by considering a fundamental shift in our conceptualisation of…

The study explores how parents' occupational field affects gender differences in educational fields. On the one hand, the theory of direct transfer predicts that adolescents enter fields similar to those of their parents because of intergenerational transmission of occupation-specific resources and that adolescents are more likely to draw upon the…

The purpose of the studies reported here was to test the hypothesis that college students from cultures that emphasize strong family ties experience familial tethering or a pull to remain connected to home, which then has negative consequences on the student's ability to connect to and succeed at the university. In Study 1, it was found that…

While interdisciplinary courses are regarded as a promising method for students to learn and apply knowledge from other disciplines, there is limited empirical evidence available whether interdisciplinary courses can effectively "create" interdisciplinary students. In this innovative quasi-experimental study amongst 377 Master's…

As online educational programs and courses increase (Allen & Seaman, [Allen, I. E., 2014]), it is important to understand the benefits and limitations of this delivery format when assessing students and when comparing learning outcomes. This article addresses the following two questions: (1) What are some of the best practices in assessing…

The roles of distance education teaching staff are changing, necessitating role clarity and the development of appropriate competency frameworks. This article investigates the perceptions of the teaching and research staff at the University of South Africa, regarding the current and future roles of distance educators, their own competencies in…

This study investigated the relationship among Information Communication Technology utilization, self-regulated learning and academic performance of prospective teachers. The ex-post facto design (correlation method) was employed for the study. The research subjects were 580 prospective teachers who were drawn using multi-stage sampling technique…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) strives to provide every student with a positive and productive assessment experience, generating results that are a fair and accurate estimate of each student's achievement. Further, Smarter Balanced is building on a framework of accessibility for all students, including English…

This book provides more than 50 classroom-ready tools that make it easy to implement the nine categories of effective teaching strategies from McREL's bestselling book, "Classroom Instruction That Works" (2012) across grade levels and content areas. By incorporating these tools into your daily practice, you can turn your classroom into a…

Subscores, also known as domain scores, diagnostic scores, or trait scores, can help determine test-takers' relative strengths and weaknesses and appropriately focus remediation. However, subscores often have poor psychometric properties, particularly reliability and distinctiveness (Folske, Gessaroli, & Swanson, 1999; Monaghan, 2006;…

In this paper, we discuss the importance of teaching power considerations in statistical hypothesis testing. Statistical power analysis determines the ability of a study to detect a meaningful effect size, where the effect size is the difference between the hypothesized value of the population parameter under the null hypothesis and the true value…

This study explored a computerized adaptive test delivery algorithm for latent class identification based on the mixture Rasch model. Four item selection methods based on the Kullback-Leibler (KL) information were proposed and compared with the reversed and the adaptive KL information under simulated testing conditions. When item separation was…

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service science teachers' understanding of surface tension, cohesion and adhesion forces by using computer-mediated predict-observe-explain tasks. 22 third-year pre-service science teachers participated in this study. Three computer-mediated predict-observe-explain tasks were developed and applied…

This study investigated accommodations for students without disabilities in order to fill critical gaps in both knowledge and practices in fields of special education and educational assessments. In Ontario, students at different grade levels were assessed by the provincial assessments developed by the Education Quality and Accountability Office…

English learners (ELs) represent one of the fastest growing student populations in the United States. Given that language can serve as a barrier in EL performance, test accommodations are provided to help level the playing field and allow ELs to better demonstrate their true performance level. Test accommodations on the computer offer the ability…