In August 2010, the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) received a grant of more than $25 million from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program for a five-year study to validate its Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) model in three very diverse regions of the United States: rural North…

Although Advanced Placement (AP) courses are intended to promote rigorous, college-level instruction for high school students, AP tests have been criticized for privileging breadth over depth. In response to both this criticism and to the 2002 National Research Council (NRC) report on STEM education, AP Biology, Chemistry, and Physics curricula…

Income inequality has soared in the United States over the past half century. Has educational inequality increased alongside, in lockstep? Despite the topic's importance, surprisingly little scholarship has focused on long-term changes in the size of the achievement gap between students from higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The authors'…

Online testing holds much promise for assessing students' complex science knowledge and inquiry skills. In the current study, we examined the comparative effectiveness of assessment tasks and test items presented in online modules that used either a static, active, or interactive modality. A total of 1,836 students from the classrooms of 22 middle…

This paper reports a comparison of a group of higher-and lower-achieving undergraduate chemistry students, 17 in total, as separated on their ability in stoichiometry. This exploratory study of 17 students investigated parallels and differences in the students' general and domain-specific cognitive abilities. Performance, strategies, and mistakes…

Discipline-based science concept assessments are powerful tools to measure learners' disciplinary core ideas. Among many such assessments, the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA) has been broadly used to gauge student conceptions of key electricity and magnetism (E&M) topics in college-level introductory physics courses.…

The South African science curriculum advocates an inquiry-based approach to practical work. Inquiry is a complex and multifaceted activity involving both cognitive and physical activity; thus, paper-and-pencil items do not provide the authentic context for this assessment. This study investigates the construct validity of inquiry-related questions…

Instructors are frequently uncertain about the usefulness of methods to promote student-centered learning and uneasy about adopting new technologies such as clickers. We describe a study in which an honors biology instructor implemented clickers as a mechanism for students to complete in-class quizzes. To determine the usefulness of this approach,…

This study used a Chinese-language version of the Index of Science Reading Awareness (ISRA) to investigate metacognitive awareness and the Reading Comprehension of Science Test (RCST) to explore comprehension of science text by Taiwanese students. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results confirmed the validity of the underlying models of…

Latent regression models are used for score-reporting purposes in large-scale educational survey assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). One component of these models is based on item response theory. While there exists some research on assessment…

Problem Statement: Student achievement is considered an indicator of the quality of education, and achievement tests are applied to assess student achievement. International tests are adapted into different languages and cultures with the aim of assessing student achievement on an international level and comparing the achievements of different…

This paper illustrates a teaching technique used in computer applications in chemical engineering employed for designing various unit operation processes, where the students learn about unit operations by designing them. The aim of the course is not to teach design, but rather to teach the fundamentals and the function of unit operation processes…

Does correctly answering a test question about a multiterm fact enhance memory for the entire fact? We explored that issue in 4 experiments. Subjects first studied Advanced Placement History or Biology facts. Half of those facts were then restudied, whereas the remainder were tested using "5 W" (i.e., "who, what, when, where",…

Background: In the last few decades, researchers have turned their attention to students' understanding of scientific concepts at different school levels. The results indicate that the learners have different ideas, and most of them are inaccurate in terms of those generally accepted by the scientific community. Purpose: This study was undertaken…

The influences on governments for policy changes in schools range across many agencies, including the political party in power. When policies change, the sources of these influences are not always clear. The project whose work is presented in this special issue examines what these changes look like in terms of the differences in assessment tasks…