It's been nearly 25 years since the first MCAS tests were taken. Since then, the test and the state's accountability system have brought resources to underfunded schools, highlighted inequities in our education system, and pushed Massachusetts to first in the nation in academics. But, with progress stalling, a new understanding of the importance…

Many community colleges receive performance-based funding; therefore, many of these colleges have implemented student success courses in an effort to increase persistence and completion. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the influence of the student success courses on persistence at Ivy Tech Community College. This study…

Background: The International Performance Assessments of Learning (iPAL) project developed a framework for the construction of performance assessments for testing critical thinking, which proposes structuring them around a problem situation that sets an authentic (i.e., real-life-like) problem-solving task for the test-taker. Its critical thinking…

Comparative Judgement (CJ) aims to improve the quality of performance-based assessments by letting multiple assessors judge pairs of performances. CJ is generally associated with high levels of reliability, but there is also a large variation in reliability between assessments. This study investigates which assessment characteristics influence the…

This study investigated required repertoire lists for state music education associations' choral performance assessment events in the National Association for Music Education North Central division. Questions included: (a) How many states have required repertoire lists; (b) What categories/genres and historical time periods are represented on…

Critical educational literature suggests that an increased reliance upon performative technologies is currently transforming the very foundations from which teacher subjectivities are constructed. Arguably though, the number of studies pointing to this risk or tendency is considerably larger than the ones theorising why this should be the case.…

This article compares the growth rates of Web of Science indexed research publications in 11 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The growth of publication output in the Czech Republic was very fast: the annual production increased more than threefold. However, the number of articles increased only 2.6-fold, whereas the number of proceedings…

Equipping new teachers in today's society is a noble and challenging task. Of late, many additional licensing standards for teachers create additional responsibilities for universities that provide pedagogy, knowledge, and content for teacher candidates. Identification of best practices that support teacher candidates on the Educative Teacher…

This paper reports on the implementation of a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA), a component of graduation recently introduced into the teaching workforce in Australia. The TPA typically requires graduates to demonstrate that they can plan, implement, assess and reflect on a series of lessons given to school students. This case study used…

This article details the experiences of four teacher education faculty members as we navigated the consequential implementation of a state-mandated high stakes teacher performance assessment in our educator preparation program. By shifting our perspective from simply complying with an assessment mandate to considering how we can leverage…

Canadian students experience many different assessments throughout their schooling (O'Connor 2011). There are many benefits to using a variety of assessment types, item formats, and science-based performance tasks in the classroom to measure the many dimensions of science education. Although using a variety of assessments is beneficial, it is…

With the addition of the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) as a high-stakes, consequential standardized examination for teacher licensure, the practice of training new generations of educators using principles of Invitational Education (IE) Theory when making andragogic decisions arrives at an intersection. Teacher preparation…

Tests and examinations are widely used internationally. Despite their pervasiveness, they tend to measure lower order thinking skills in a decontextualized manner at a time when the literature frequently argues for the benefits of a richer, authentic approach to assessment. The focus of this paper is to improve authenticity in test assessment…

When educators are developing an effective and workable assessment program in graduate medical education by employing action research and stakeholder mapping to identify core competency domains and directives, the multi-stage process can be guided and informed by utilizing the story of designing, building and sea-testing sailing ships as a…

The purpose of this study is to find an authentic assessment in field study activities that can be used to shape the professionalism of geography teacher candidates. The method used in this research is Research and Development. Research instruments: documentation study guidelines; model authentic assessment; Instruments for prospective…