This paper presents the phases involved in the design of a methodology to contribute both to the acquisition of competencies and to their assessment in the field of Financial Accounting, within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework, which we call MANagement of COMpetence in the areas of Accounting (MANCOMA). Having selected and…

This paper examines the utilization of construct validity in formative assessment for classroom-based purposes. Construct validity pertains to the notion that interpretations are made by educators who analyze test scores during formative assessment. The purpose of this paper is to note the challenges that educators face when interpreting these…

The purpose of this study was to examine the internal structure, relationships with other variables, and diagnostic accuracy of scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic (ADOS-G; Lord et al., 1999) for the purpose of diagnostic decision-making. Participants were 462 children enrolled in a public school district in the southern…

Delta's Key to the TOEFL iBT: Advanced Skill Practice is a revised and updated edition of Delta's Key to the Next Generation TOEFL Test. Since the introduction of the TOEFL iBT in 2005, there have been significant changes to some of the test questions, particularly the integrated writing and integrated speaking tasks. The new 2011 edition of…

This report draws from decades of experience using observation in early childhood education, which has implications for administrative decisions, evaluation practices, and policymaking in K-12. Early childhood education has long embraced the value of observing classrooms and teacher-child interactions. In early childhood education the features of…

Information technology (IT) flexibility continues to grow in importance as organizations become increasingly dependent on IT in increasingly dynamic business environments. The contribution of IT infrastructure towards IT flexibility is fairly well understood and managed within organizations today. The contribution of IT personnel capabilities…

Emotion plays an ever-present role in human existence, impacting nearly every behavior and decision in some way. Research in the behavioral sciences is rife with exploration of emotion and the role it plays in everything from business decision making to health-related behavior. However, affect, the feeling or experience of emotion, is complex and…

Mood affects the way people think. But can the way people think affect their mood? In the present investigation, we examined this promising link by testing whether mood is influenced by the presence or absence of associative progression by manipulating the scope of participants' information processing and measuring their subsequent mood. In…

In a variety of conflict paradigms, target and distractor stimuli are defined in terms of perceptual features. Interference evoked by distractor stimuli tends to be reduced when the ratio of congruent to incongruent trials is decreased, suggesting conflict-induced perceptual filtering (i.e., adjusting the processing weights assigned to stimuli…

As the country's K-12 student population grows more ethnically diverse, students of color face the troubling possibility of never having a teacher who looks like them. According to federal data, more than 40 percent of students are nonwhite, compared to just 17 percent of teachers, and that mismatch appears to be on the rise. But a new project is…

We know that knowledge of word structure--morphology--relates to reading, but there is limited research on its unique contribution to reading comprehension, especially with students in middle and high schools and with the nesting of students within classrooms taken into account. In this study with 4780 students in grades 3 to 10, we examined how…

In February 2012, the "New York Times" took the unusual step of publishing performance ratings for nearly 18,000 New York City teachers based on their students' test-score gains, commonly called value-added (VA) measures. This action, which followed a similar release of ratings in Los Angeles last year, drew new attention to the growing use of VA…

The overwhelming majority of play research concerns juveniles. However, a full understanding of the phenomenon requires knowledge of play and playfulness across the life spans of those animals, including humans, who play in adulthood. The authors investigate a theory of play based on Darwin's concept of sexual selection that may account for the…

Reaction time (RT), thought to be important for acquiring a full understanding of the establishment of equivalence classes, has been reported in a number of studies within the area of stimulus equivalence research. In this study, we trained 3 classes of potentially 3 members, with arbitrary stimuli in a one-to-many training structure in 5 adult…

This article presents the author's open letter to her students. In her letter, the author apologizes to her students for the state's narrow and deceptive standardized test. She asserts that she does not oppose rigorous testing and she understands the purpose of evaluation. A good test can measure achievement and even inspire. But, she argues that…