A power supply is needed to maintain the function of a computer, heat is needed to keep food from cooling down, and a force is needed to maintain motion. Those are notions that seem very natural to many people as they are based on everyday experiences. However, when it comes to motion, it is not force that maintains motion but momentum. Students…

Beyond the basic information provided in foundation texts and test manuals, there is a notable scarcity of professional literature addressing complex issues and dilemmas in assessment. At times, psychologists need to make decisions based on their professional experience or personal preferences, and it is possible that some of these decisions are…

Piano education is one of the fundamental aspects of instrument training. As a polyphonic instrument, the piano, unlike other instruments, is popular with all age groups. This study examines factors of success in adult piano education and piano methods utilized in training in all aspects, including historical development. Data was generated by…

Following the exponential rise in publications on mindfulness in education and the emergence of some critical perspectives on this field, this paper articulates three roles of mindfulness practice in education: Mindfulness in, as and of education. The three are developed based on an examination of the practice as it is shaped by two different…

Normally, school students learn academic subjects in classrooms, but it is best practice to, now-and-again, take them on trips. Often, it is then that they come face-to-face with 'the real thing', an historical artefact. This paper seeks the knowledge acquired in seeing such an artefact. If knowledge means propositional knowledge, we land on the…

In an on-demand testing program, some items are repeatedly used across test administrations. This poses a risk to test security. In this study, we considered a scenario wherein a test was divided into two subsets: one consisting of secure items and the other consisting of possibly compromised items. In a simulation study of multistage adaptive…

Nonfiction children's literature has changed in recent years, including an increase in organizational, design, and text features. The authors conducted a content analysis of 112 nonfiction award-winning and honor books from 2000 to 2018 to examine how the books have changed over time. The authors discuss the patterns, changes, and complexities…

Differing research worldviews have typically resulted in interpretations at odds with one another. Yet, leveraging distinct perspectives can lead to novel interpretations and theoretical construction. Via an empirically grounded research commentary, we describe the value of such activity through the lens of previously reported findings. This…

Most recent research on teacher evaluation examines evaluation's measurement properties and accountability uses. Less research studies how evaluation data can improve teaching and student learning. In other contexts, researchers have examined how teachers use data to improve their practice. From general research on teachers' data use, we apply the…

Rater-mediated assessments are a common methodology for measuring persons, investigating rater behavior, and/or defining latent constructs. The purpose of this article is to provide a pedagogical framework for examining rater variability in the context of rater-mediated assessments using three distinct models. The first model is the observation…

Models were prepared by 3D printing that can be used to demonstrate the operations required for the study of molecular symmetry. The models were designed to emphasize the order and locations of rotation axes and to clearly illustrate the more abstract reflection and improper rotation axes. The models were well-received by students in a course on…

Additive colors are interesting to young students. In this paper, we show a convenient and straightforward method to demonstrate this phenomenon by projector. It produces defocus blur and reduces imaging quality for color mixing. We believe this demonstration experiment can be performed in most classrooms.

The identification of rapid guessing is important to promote the validity of achievement test scores, particularly with low-stakes tests. Effective methods for identifying rapid guesses require reliable threshold methods that are also aligned with test taker behavior. Although several common threshold methods are based on rapid guessing response…

Methods to generate random correlation matrices have been proposed in the literature, but very few instances exist where these correlation matrices are structured or where the statistical properties of the algorithms are known. By relying on the tetrad relation discovered by Spearman and the properties of the beta distribution, an algorithm is…

Lacan once remarked that there was "something quite ironic about Christ's injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself because, actually, people hate themselves." Can Lacan's observation about our loving and hating our neighbors the way we love and hate ourselves help us to make sense of ongoing, almost incomprehensible suffering, the rise…