There is growing acknowledgement of the importance of spatial abilities to student achievement across a broad range of domains and disciplines. Nets are one way to connect three-dimensional shapes and their two-dimensional representations and are a common focus of geometry curricula. Thirty-four students at year 6 (upper primary school) were…

White and Gorard make important and relevant criticisms of some of the methods commonly used in social science research, but go further by criticising the logical basis for inferential statistical tests. This paper comments briefly on matters we broadly agree on with them and more fully on matters where we disagree. We agree that too little…

This article examines how two processes--reasoning with statistical modelling of a real phenomenon and aggregate reasoning--can co-emerge. We focus in this case study on the emergent reasoning of two fifth graders (aged 10) involved in statistical data analysis, informal inference, and modelling activities using TinkerPlots™. We describe nine…

Grade 6 (modal age 11) students invented and revised models of the variability generated as each measured the perimeter of a table in their classroom. To construct models, students represented variability as a linear composite of true measure (signal) and multiple sources of random error. Students revised models by developing sampling…

The present studies examined the effects of varying degrees of unfamiliar vocabulary within written discourse on individuals' abilities to use linguistic context for the purposes of translation and comprehension (i.e., lexical inferencing). Prose varied in the number of foreign words introduced into each sentence (e.g., 0 through 7 content words…

The objective of this study was to investigate the frequencies of using critical thinking in reading among university students namely; interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. The quantitative method was used in this study. The respondents of this study were 100 second year undergraduate students of…

Stan is a probabilistic programming language for specifying statistical models. A Stan program imperatively defines a log probability function over parameters conditioned on specified data and constants. As of version 2.14.0, Stan provides full Bayesian inference for continuous-variable models through Markov chain Monte Carlo methods such as the…

Personalized learning considers that the causal effects of a studied learning intervention may differ for the individual student. Making the inference about causal effects of studies interventions is a central problem. In this paper we propose the Residual Counterfactual Networks (RCN) for answering counterfactual inference questions, such as…

Before an assessment is used to make decisions, the validity of the intended interpretation must be evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to describe how the argument-based approach and an interpretation/use argument (IUA) (Kane, 2013) were used to validate the interpretations made from the new Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA)…

Second language (L2) writing has been determined to be influenced by what is read, with language learners tending to borrow words and short phrases from input texts while writing (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2015). This phenomenon is referred to as lexical alignment. Only one empirical study has investigated the influence that the linguistic complexity…

Ensuring that test-score use brings about socially positive consequences for test-takers is an important aspect of test validation. While many studies use an inductive approach to evaluate test consequences, few studies have implemented Appraisal analysis. To that end, this case study investigated the test consequences of an English reading…

This study aimed to compare selection patterns of distractors (incorrect options) according to test taker proficiency regarding Japanese students' summarization skills of an English paragraph. Participants included 414 undergraduate students, and the test comprised three summarization process types--deletion, generalization, and integration.…

The importance of teacher read-alouds in language teaching and learning has been known for years, but we know very little about how older English learners with limited English skills can benefit from this practice. The author shares how interactive read-alouds with picture books can be designed to help emerging college learners of English as a…

The author explored text difficulty for third-grade bilingual students reading below grade level. In six small-group discussions, students read and discussed informational texts matched to their reading levels, and in six other sessions they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. The alternating treatment design and…

Critical thinking is one of the core objectives of talent training in higher education. Meanwhile, the cultivation of critical thinking skills in foreign language teaching has become more and more urgent, and it has also been written into the national standards for the training of foreign language talents. A good critical thinking includes both a…