Although research methodology is a staple and essential requirement of many undergraduate political science programmes worldwide, there are still many intense and ongoing debates among teachers and students on the series of effective learning and teaching approaches and strategies for this subject matter that involve theoretical understanding,…

Designing and analyzing lesson plans is a ubiquitous practice in teacher education, and yet we know little about how preservice teachers (PSTs) notice elements of their lesson plans that afford opportunities for supporting equitable student sensemaking. We investigate how the use of a tool, a framework for supporting equitable sensemaking, guided…

In undergraduate science education, laboratory courses stand as essential cornerstones of experiential learning. Chemistry laboratory courses offer students unique hands-on experiences that bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. The journey through the undergraduate chemistry curriculum is paved with a series of…

This quasi-experiment tested whether co-constructing a writing rubric gives students an advantage over only using the co-constructed rubric. We used students' perception and use of the rubric, and their writing performance as outcome variables. One hundred and twenty-six second-year university students who enrolled in an elective course…

The recent emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has significantly influenced different fields, including education. One notable example is ChatGPT, an AI-driven large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI. This tool holds potential for supporting both teachers and students in the teaching and learning process. While some fields of…

For over two decades, NIET has been dedicated to building educator excellence to enhance student success by supporting states, districts, schools, and educator preparation programs in recruiting, developing, and retaining educators. The first section of the 2023-24 NIET Research Summary presents highlights from five recent studies that align with…

GCSE examinations (taken by students aged 16 years in England) are not intended to be speeded (i.e. to be partly a test of how quickly students can answer questions). However, there has been little research exploring this. The aim of this research was to explore the speededness of past GCSE written examinations, using only the data from scored…

This paper presents a multidimensional model of variation in writing quality, register, and genre in student essays, trained and tested via confirmatory factor analysis of 1.37 million essay submissions to ETS' digital writing service, Criterion®. The model was also validated with several other corpora, which indicated that it provides a…

We report on the development of a rubric to reliably qualify and score responses to the "Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire" (VNOS): The "VNOS Analysis and Scoring Rubric" (VAScoR). The "VAScoR" is designed to (a) provide systematic guidance for the qualitative analysis, and score assignment to nuanced…

The purpose of study is to examine the reliability of analytical rubrics and checklists developed for the assessment of story writing skills by means of generalizability theory. The study group consisted of 52 students attending the 5th grade at primary school and 20 raters in Mersin University. The G study was carried out with the fully crossed…

Extension awards recognize programs that have achieved outstanding accomplishments, results, and impacts in addressing contemporary issues. Whether an individual or a team is recognized, the awardees gain inspiration and motivation and may attain promotion and/or tenure. The Western Region Program Leadership Committee oversees a special award…

An approach to scoring tests with binary items, referred to as D-scoring method, was previously developed as a classical analog to basic models in item response theory (IRT) for binary items. As some tests include polytomous items, this study offers an approach to D-scoring of such items and parallels the results with those obtained under the…

Purpose: This study compared the inter- and intrarater reliability of the percentage of consonants correct (PCC) metrics and the probe scoring system between an experienced and a less experienced rater and between two experienced raters. In addition, these outcome measures' ability to reflect changes following speech intervention was measured.…

Metabolic systems form the very foundation of life and as such are broadly taught in the molecular life sciences. Here, we describe the biochemistry educator community-based development and use of an assessment instrument designed to evaluate students' ideas about metabolic pathway dynamics and regulation in undergraduate biochemistry courses.…

Item response theory "dual" models (DMs) in which both items and individuals are viewed as sources of differential measurement error so far have been proposed only for unidimensional measures. This article proposes two multidimensional extensions of existing DMs: the M-DTCRM (dual Thurstonian continuous response model), intended for…