In this paper we describe the development of an online tool for assessing the foundational knowledge and competencies essential to understanding money and building financial literacy. We present findings from an initial study using the tool to (i) measure basic skills with money among secondary students with intellectual disability (N = 85) and…

The extent to which the targeted outcomes in education are achieved can be determined by the educational assessment process. Although various alternative ways of assessment have arisen in recent decades, written examinations are still widely used by teachers. This study aims to determine the quality of the questions used by middle school…

The ability to synthesize and communicate complicated problems with confidence is paramount for success in STEM fields, but programs tend to overemphasize memorization. We conducted a preliminary study to determine if asking students to repeatedly link materials: (1) improved students' ability to build connections; and (2) increased students'…

The authors describe a research-based conceptual framework of how students learn that can guide the design, implementation, and troubleshooting of teaching practice. The framework consists of nine interacting cognitive challenges that teachers need to address to enhance student learning. These challenges include student mental mindset,…

Assessment of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) provides few opportunities for students to develop more in-depth knowledge, serving students' ability to identify and solve their problems. One type of instrument for measuring HOTS objectively is the two-tier multiple-choice test (TTMCT). This research is part of the research and development…

Understanding is one of the four key ideas in the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics." This case study investigated preservice teachers' understanding of modified words such as 'regular polygon', where the preceding word/s modifies the meaning of the final word. Data were gathered from 23 preservice teachers who voluntarily participated…

Many modern anatomy curricula teach histology using virtual microscopes, where students inspect tissue slices in a computer program (e.g. a web browser). However, the educational data mining (EDM) potential of these virtual microscopes remains under-utilized. In this paper, we use EDM techniques to investigate three research questions on a virtual…

We developed assessment tasks aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that require students to use argumentation and explanation practices along with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts to make sense of energy-related phenomena. Scoring rubrics were created to evaluate students' ability to make accurate claims, cite…

Mathematical calculations are an important part of chemistry. Those problems are difficult for students, especially if the task is set with a limiting reactant. The aim of this study was development of a Procedure for evaluation of cognitive complexity of the Stoichiometric Tasks with a Limiting Reactant. The procedure created included an…

Research with veterans in community colleges is often framed through a deficit perspective and with a definition of success limited to degree completion. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of student veterans negotiating the acculturation process within the community college canopy through an asset…

An increasing number of international students are choosing to study abroad in the United States, the experiences of cross-cultural learning have become a crucial factor that both students and educators must take into consideration. During the period of intercultural education, Chinese high school international students are inevitably exposed to…

Direct instruction of reading strategies, such as the 'structure strategy', is demonstrated to be effective for the development of more mature and skilled reading processes in struggling readers. This instructional intervention approach, aimed at directly improving reading ability, can be used in combination with text simplification. Text…

The paper presents a possible way of solving the problem of creating more test variants for a large number of students divided into groups. The proposed solution may consist in introducing a parameterized automatic test generator. The principle of an automatic parameterized test generator is shown. The process of the question tree construction…

The choice of anchor tests is crucial in applications of the nonequivalent groups with anchor test design of equating. Sinharay and Holland (2006, 2007) suggested "miditests," which are anchor tests that are content-representative and have the same mean item difficulty as the total test but have a smaller spread of item difficulties.…

For well over a century, scientists have investigated individual differences in performance. The majority of studies have focused on either differences in practice, or differences in cognitive resources. However, the predictive ability of either practice or cognitive resources varies considerably across tasks. We are the first to examine task…