A teacher's value-added score is intended to convey how much that teacher has contributed to student learning in a particular subject in a particular year. Different school districts define and compute value-added scores in different ways. A variety of people may see value-added estimates, and each group may use them for different purposes.…

The vast majority of second language teachers feels confident about their instructional performance and does not usually have much difficulty with their teaching thanks to their professional training and accumulated classroom experience. Nonetheless, many second language teachers may not have received sufficient training in test development to…

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric validity of a Spanish translated version of a family involvement questionnaire (the FELP) using a mixed-methods design. Thus, statistical analyses (i.e., factor analysis, reliability analysis, and item analysis) and qualitative analyses (i.e., focus group data) were assessed.…

A study incorporating components of a standards based model of teaching (Danielson, 2007) was undertaken to examine the relationship between the principal's evaluation of the teacher's effectiveness, the teacher's self-evaluation of effectiveness, and student achievement. Participants were solicited from a large school district and…

The purpose of the researchers in the study was to psychometrically evaluate Passion Scale scores (Vallerand et al., 2003) in exercise. Self-report data were collected from two samples of Greek exercise participants. Sample 1 (n = 217) provided data on the Passion Scale and the self-determination theory variables of perceived autonomy support by…

This article describes the development and validation of the Attitudes towards Climate Change and Science Instrument. This 63-item questionnaire measures students' pro-environmental behaviour, their climate change knowledge and their attitudes towards school science, societal implications of science, scientists, a career in science and the urgency…

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of the Teacher School-Age Temperament Inventory (T-SATI) which is an adaptation of a parent version of the tool. A principal factor analysis using varimax rotation was performed on data provided by 143 teachers who reported on their 261 elementary school students. The results…

This paper describes a study designed to examine the relations between knowledge, attitude and behavior towards educational policy-making. Understanding parents' knowledge in terms of attitude is important to predict behavior for participation in educational policy-making. Factors affecting parental participation in educational policy-making are…

This study validated the four mathematics tests of the Spanish version of the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III) Achievement (ACH) battery for use in the first six grades of school in Spain. Developmental effects and gender differences were also examined. Participants were a normal population sample of 424 (216 boys) children aged 6 to 13 years.…

A well-documented finding in developmental psychopathology research is that different informants often provide discrepant ratings of a youth's internalizing and externalizing problems. The current study examines youth- and parent-based moderators (i.e., youth age, gender, and IQ; type of psychopathology; offense category; psychopathic traits;…

Of the several measures of optimism presently available in the literature, the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier & Carver, 1985) has been the most widely used in empirical research. This article explores, confirms, and cross-validates the factor structure of the Chinese version of the LOT with ordinal data by using robust weighted least…

With an aim to improve vocational interest assessments geared toward the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas, we developed a new assessment by incorporating occupational complexity levels. Occupations which correspond to Holland's realistic and investigative themes were identified together with their complexity levels…

In recent years, interest has grown in using classroom observation as a means to several ends, including teacher development, teacher evaluation, and impact evaluation of classroom-based interventions. Although education practitioners and researchers have developed numerous observational instruments for these purposes, many developers fail to…

The aim of this study was to validate a questionnaire on academic competence behaviour for use with Chinese preschool children in Hong Kong. A parent version and a teacher version were developed and evaluated. The participants included 457 children (230 boys and 227 girls) aged four and five years old, their preschool teachers and their parents.…

This study reports on the validation of the language domain subtest of a developmental assessment scale for Cantonese Chinese preschool children. Three hundred and seventy eight multi-stage randomly selected children between 3;4 and 6;3 years of age were tested on the 104-item subtest. Fifty-four of these children, spreading across three age…