The Ethical Reasoning in Action program leveraged program assessment data to further promote student learning based on their effective educational framework for ethical reasoning: The Eight Key Question (8KQ) strategy. A cross-disciplinary team of five core researchers launched the first constructivist qualitative inquiry into students' ethical…

Background: The history essay, and historical writing, are crucial forms of assessment in History throughout primary and high school education. This article draws from an autoethnography of teachings in a pre-service history teachers' school classroom. This article discusses obstacles students experience in conceptualising and writing the history…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) using neural networks has helped increase the accuracy and efficiency of scoring students' written tasks. Generally, the improved accuracy of neural network approaches has been attributed to the use of modern word embedding techniques. However, which word embedding techniques produce higher accuracy in AES systems…

The present study explores two rating methods for peer assessment (analytical rating using criteria and comparative judgement) in light of concurrent validity, reliability and insufficient diagnosticity (i.e. the degree to which substandard work is recognised by the peer raters). During a second-year undergraduate course, students wrote a one-page…

The educational value of portfolios as assessments has been widely acknowledged across the higher education sector and literature as providing a platform to promote student-centred and reflective learning (Brown, 1997; Snadden & Thomas, 1998; Karlowicz, 2000). While there is plentiful research investigating the benefits of providing portfolios…

Providing timely and helpful writing feedback for student writers, especially those at the middle and high school level, can present an unwieldy challenge for teachers. Yet, feedback is necessary for students' growth as writers. There is an increased interest and use of automatic writing programs to provide students with writing feedback. However,…

This study examined the extent to which prior beliefs and reading instructions impacted elements of a reader's mental representation of multiple texts. College students' beliefs about childhood vaccinations were assessed before reading two anti-vaccine and two pro-vaccine texts. Participants in the experimental condition read for the purpose of…

Integrated writing tasks, which require students to incorporate information from multiple sources into their writing, are gaining attention in language assessment and writing instruction due to their alignment with the expectations of academic and professional writing. Understanding what aspects of integrated tasks are perceived as challenging by…

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) serves as a key accelerator for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), emphasizing systems thinking as an essential competency that must be cultivated in the learning process. This study investigates students' systems thinking skills within the ESD framework through assessments on…

As a vital learning activity in second language (L2) writing classrooms, peer feedback plays a crucial role in improving students' writing skills. However, student reviewers face challenges in providing impactful feedback on peers' essays. Low-quality peer reviews emerge as a persistent problem, adversely affecting the learning effect of peer…

The following qualitative study analyzed pre-service teachers' reflective essays during an introductory place-based educational experience class. The analysis examined how racial identity is an integral component of preservice teachers' professional identity development. Using Helm (2007) and Howard's (2016) racial identity developmental model,…

This research addresses challenges faced by non-native speakers in primary school, specifically focusing on the proficiency of Malay essay writing skills. A qualitative study was conducted among five primary school teachers in the Kapit area of Sarawak, specializing in Malay language. They were selected through purposive sampling to actively…

Admissions essays submitted by applicants to undergraduate institutions are typically evaluated by admissions professionals to gain a better understanding of an applicant's likely fit for the institution. These essays are becoming increasingly important because many colleges are likely to strengthen the role that non-test-based application…

Research has identified a particularly useful lexicogrammatical resource that language learners need in order to develop academic literacy, that of grammatical metaphor (GM). GM enables the wordy expression characteristic of informal, spoken discourses to be reorganized into the cohesive and abstracted expression valued in academic texts. Although…

In Health and Physical Education (HPE) of the "New Zealand Curriculum," Outdoor Education (OE) is one of the seven key areas of learning. It has been taught in various forms because it includes a whole range of outdoor adventure activities and leisure pursuits. To better understand/interpret its nature and value in a New Zealand…