A significant body of research documents the negative consequences of dropping out of school for both the individual and society. In attempting to respond to the problem of early school leaving, schools and systems internationally have put in place a range of system-level and local responses such as mentoring, targeted additional career guidance…

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization promoted the creation of a model instrument for individual assessment of students' foundational writing skills in the Spanish language that was based on a literature review and existing writing tools and assessments. The purpose of the "Early Grade Writing Assessment"…

Gender has become a focus of mathematics education research. While some research show that there are no differences between boys and girls, numerous research studies have indicated that boys have outperformed girls. It is suggested that gender stereotypes, such as expecting girls to show less achievement in mathematics compared to boys, have an…

The new national educational policy was implemented at secondary schools in 2002 in Japan. The revised Course of Study for foreign language education corresponding to the national educational policy decreased the number of English lessons per week from four to three at the junior high school level, which resulted in a 25% decrease in English…

Community-based learning (CBL) integrates problem-based service-learning, volunteerism, and experiential learning across a variety of disciplines. The Community-Based Learning Impact Scale is an instrument developed to measure the impact on a liberal arts university campus. Scale items were generated from focus groups, literature, and existing…

Within the scope of educational testing and assessment, setting standards and creating guidelines as a code of practice provide more prolific and sustainable outcomes. In this sense, internationally accepted and regionally accredited principles are suggested for standardization in language testing and assessment practices. Herein, ILTA guidelines…

"Methods and Procedures in PIRLS 2016" documents the development of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessments and questionnaires and describes the methods used in sampling, translation verification, data collection, database construction, and the construction of the achievement and context questionnaire…

Background: Studies have highlighted the importance for engineers of leadership, adaptability to change, and synthesis of multiple perspectives. Yet only a few studies and instruments have explored the operational definitions of these concepts for engineering undergraduates. Purpose: The goals of this research were to identify observable outcomes…

The literature regarding teamwork has supported the idea that the key to improving team performance is to understand team processes. Early work within the realm of teamwork focused on quantifiable measures of team performance, like number of products developed. The measure of a successful team hinged on whether or not the team accomplished the end…

Proper survey design is essential to obtain reliable, replicable data from research subjects. One threat to inferences drawn from surveys is anchoring-and-adjusting. Tversky and Kahnemann (1974) observed that participants' responses to questions depended systematically on irrelevant information they received prior to answering. It is important for…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an assessment tool entitled the Algebra Curriculum Based Measure (ACBM) with the intent of measuring preschool children's sorting and classifying skills based on one attribute (color, shape, and size) and two attributes (color and shape) simultaneously; and their ability to explain their…

There are many reasons to believe that open-ended (OE) and multiple-choice (MC) items elicit different cognitive demands of students. However, empirical evidence that supports this view is lacking. In this study, we investigated the reactions of test takers to an interactive assessment with immediate feedback and answer-revision opportunities for…

Students cannot learn in chaotic, badly managed classrooms. In the first years of teaching experiences, teachers revealed that novice teachers came to recognize the importance of discipline skills and classroom management for effective instruction. The purpose of the study was (i) to develop Science teachers' views towards classroom management…

The Mission Skills Assessment (MSA) is an online assessment that targets 6 noncognitive constructs: creativity, curiosity, ethics, resilience, teamwork, and time management. Each construct is measured by means of a student self-report scale, a student alternative scale (e.g., situational judgment test), and a teacher report scale. Use of the MSA…

In California, individuals with autism and co-occurring mental disorders, and their families, face two serious barriers when attempting to access the mental health services they need. The first is that the State Mental Health Specialty Service guidelines specifically exclude autism as a qualifying primary diagnosis for eligibility for mental…