Approaches to Studying Inventory was administered to 503 adult students, most returning to study after many years. Results indicate low internal consistency for seven subscales. Comparison with results of mathematics instructional unit suggests learning orientations are fundamental and identifiable in students returning to study after long…

The National Center for Student Aspirations developed the Student Aspirations Survey to address issues of student aspirations at the secondary level. The developed instrument, 98 items with 13 scales, was administered to 1,674 students from rural and suburban high schools. Results provide evidence of internal consistency, although the factor…

Psychometric support for the use of the Los Angeles Symptom Checklist (LASC), a self-report measure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was provided by a study involving 639 high-risk adolescents. The LASC had appropriate levels of reliability and appeared to detect distress and PTSD as a function of trauma exposure. (SLD)

Describes the development and initial psychometric evaluation of the Sources of Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (SASES). It will enable counselors to assess factors affecting the development of self-efficacy beliefs, design counseling strategies, modify environments for people with learning disabilities, and investigate patterns and determinants of…

Finds that graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) experience eight interrelated types of communication concern (self, task, impact, role conflict, teaching, area knowledge, procedural knowledge, and time management). Shows that GTA variables of expected duties, prior teaching experience, newness to area, foreign or domestic birth, and age are likely…

This article examines assessment instruments, measurement considerations, and factors that affect understanding of a child's creativity. It compares strengths and weaknesses of methods of assessing creativity and lists more than 60 standardized assessment measures. Procedures for using formal and informal measures in the decision-making process…

In this classroom simulation of a crime, students take on the challenge presented in the article To Catch a Thief. Students witnessing a surprising event learn to question the nature of how criminals get identified and generate ideas about how criminals can be better identified. A key component of the evidence is an unusual distinguishing…

Explored how third-year-level university students represented an assigned reading-to-write task as indicated by the type of papers they produced, and the relationship between the linguistic quality of those papers and the type of task representation. Findings suggest that the ability to interpret a reading-to-write task appropriately is dependent…

This volume is the fourth in a series for college faculty and advanced graduate students, "Survival Skills for Scholars." It offers practical advice for developing, using, and grading classroom examinations, focusing on traditional multiple-choice and constructed-response tests rather than alternative assessments. (SLD)

This article proposes a new type of pronunciation test, based on the variability principle and language continuum paradigm developed by Tarone (1983, 1985). Trials with 80 elementary and 73 university students indicate that the test distinguishes between subjects with and without phonetic training and is generally reliable and valid. Contains 31…

Results of the fall 1993 administration of part two of the Medical Council of Canada's Evaluating Examination for 744 candidates provided evidence of the consistency of the pass/fail and cutting score definitions for the objective- structured clinical examination stations used across examiners. These results support the validity of this…

This study examined test characteristics of the Pediatric Language Acquisition Screening Tool for Early Referral-Revised (PLASTER-R), a set of developmental questionnaires for children 3 to 60 months of age. The PLASTER-R was moderately to highly successful in identifying children within normal limits for language development. Test-retest…

Presents the American Educational Research Association's position on high-stakes educational testing, which stresses conditions essential to sound implementation of such testing, including: protection against high-stakes decisions based on single tests; adequate resources and opportunity to learn; validation for each intended use; alignment…

Reviews evidence on reliability and validity of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ); presents CBQ data on structure of temperament in childhood. Factor analyses indicate three broad dimensions of temperament: extroversion/surgency, negative affectivity, and effortful control. This factor structure also appears in ratings of children in…

Outlines challenges to classroom technology use (unrealistic expectations; hardware, software, and network reliability; copyright considerations; service capability; technological literacy; technological limitations; time; facility limitations; maintenance; working hours) and argues that while technological developments outstrip education's…