My research investigated how assistant principals in the suburbs of Chicago perceive the Illinois teacher evaluation model. Specifically, my study explored the amount of time assistant principals spend on an individual teacher's evaluation cycle, how they were trained to evaluate, their perception of the ratings used, and their perception of the…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" calls for new assessments that measure students' integrated three-dimensional science learning. The National Research Council has suggested that these assessments utilize a combination of item formats including constructed-response and multiple-choice. In this study, students were randomly assigned…

Teachers may wish to use open-ended learning activities and tests, but they are burdensome to assess compared to forced-choice instruments. At the same time, forced-choice assessments suffer from issues of guessing (when used as tests) and may not encourage valuable behaviors of construction and generation of understanding (when used as learning…

Performance in elementary cognitive tasks is moderately correlated with fluid intelligence and working memory capacity. These correlations are higher for more complex tasks, presumably due to increased demands on working memory capacity. In accordance with the binding hypothesis, which states that working memory capacity reflects the limit of a…

300,000 immigrants move to Canada each year in search of better economic opportunities, and many have limited English language skills. Improving written literacy of newcomers can enhance education, employment, or social integration opportunities. However, frequent, timely, and personalized feedback is not always possible for immigrants. Online…

This study investigated preservice teachers' (PTs) conceptions of how math is well-taught, their ability to design lessons that employ reform-based practices, and relations between their conceptions and lesson plans. We developed a survey and a rubric, in relation to the most recent standards and practices in U.S for the teaching and learning of…

We designed a rubric to assess free-response exam problems in order to compare thinking skills evidenced in exams in classes taught by different pedagogies. The rubric was designed based on Bloom's taxonomy and then used to code exam problems. We have analyzed historical and recent exam problems in both algebra-based and calculus-based exams. In…

Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) provides automatic writing feedback and scoring to support student writing and revising. The purpose of the present study was to analyze a statewide implementation of an AWE software (n = 114,582) in grades 4-11. The goals of the study were to evaluate: (1) to what extent AWE features were used; (2) if equity and…

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a widely used multiple-choice instrument measuring a student's conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism. This study applied modified module analysis (MMA) and modified module analysis-partial (MMA-P), network analytic methods that identify groups of correlated responses, to…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the "Institutional Assessment Rubric on Comprehensive Internationalization in Higher Education" could be developed and validated following Gehlbach and Brinkworth's recommended steps for rubric development and validation. Utilizing a mixed-methods research design, 13 research participants…

Science and Art Centers (BILSEM) are state institutions in Turkey operating under the Ministry of National Education, which aim to ensure that gifted students in Turkey acquire a scientific study discipline and develop their creativity in line with their talents and interests. In these centers, there are three different special talent fields:…

This article consists of short quotations from the author's chapter "Creative Learning" written for the "Routledge International Handbook of Creative Learning." It argues that, when assessing creativity, we should look for fitness to purpose as well as inventiveness, and that creativity can be assessed and recognised in a wide…

This brief summarizes "Comparability in Balanced Assessment Systems for State Accountability," published in "Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice" (Evans & Lyons 2017). The study evaluated comparability claims in local scoring of performance assessments across districts participating in New Hampshire's Performance…

Quality control (QC) in testing is paramount. QC procedures for tests can be divided into two types. The first type, one that has been well researched, is QC for tests administered to large population groups on few administration dates using a small set of test forms (e.g., large-scale assessment). The second type is QC for tests, usually…

This research report presents a summary of research and development efforts devoted to creating scoring models for automatically scoring spoken item responses of a pilot administration of the Test of English-for-Teaching ("TEFT"™) within the "ELTeach"™ framework.The test consists of items for all four language modalities:…