For more than 20 years, the 50 agricultural mechanics laboratory management competencies identified by Johnson and Schumacher in 1989 have served as the basis for numerous needs assessments of secondary agriculture teachers. This study reevaluated Johnson and Schumacher's instrument, as modified by Saucier, Schumacher, Funkenbusch, Terry, and…

Background: Studies exploring the relationship between students' achievement and the quality of the classroom learning environments have shown that there is a strong relationship between these two concepts. Learning environment instruments are constantly being revised and updated, including for use in different cultures, which requires continued…

This paper summarizes research associated with the development of the "Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes-Stuttering" ("POSHA-S"), a survey instrument designed to provide a worldwide standard measure of public attitudes toward stuttering. Pilot studies with early experimental prototypes of the "POSHA-S" are summarized that relate to…

This article reports about the development and validation of a measurement instrument assessing elementary school students' achievement emotions (Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School, AEQ-ES). Specifically, the instrument assesses students' enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom pertaining to three types of academic settings (i.e.,…

This paper introduces "CTutor", an automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool for detecting breakdowns in local coherence and reports on a study that applies it to the writing of Chinese L2 English learners. The program is based on Centering theory (CT), a theory of local coherence and salience. The principles of CT are first introduced and…

Across the world, university teachers are increasingly being required to engage with diversity in the classes they teach. Using the data from a large Economics 1 class at a South African university, this attempts to understand the effects of diversity on chances of success and how assessment can impact on this. By demonstrating how theory can be…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the most appropriate item response theory (IRT) measurement model for aphasia tests requiring 2-choice responses and to determine whether small samples are adequate for estimating such models. Method: Pyramids and Palm Trees (Howard & Patterson, 1992) test data that had been collected from…

The purpose of this study was to examine an alternative configuration of the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS), a psychometric instrument used as a measure of academic motivation in various academic environments. The analyses utilised data from a convenience sample of 2354 business students, broken into two random subsamples of 1177 cases.…

Any meaningful initiative to improve the teaching and learning in introductory control systems courses needs a clear test of student conceptual understanding to determine the effectiveness of proposed methods and activities. The authors propose a control systems concept inventory. Development of the inventory was collaborative and iterative. The…

Reliability and validity are integral concepts in assessment design. Test speededness, the influence of time constraints on test taker performance, is often an overlooked threat to reliability and validity, especially in classroom-based testing. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the degree of test speededness of classroom-based assessments…

This study investigated firstly the reliability and validity of an Indonesian version of the "Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction" (QTI). Second, perceptions of Indonesian secondary school teachers' interpersonal behaviour as perceived by students and teachers were studied with the QTI. Third, differences between students' and teachers'…

Childhood obesity trends have increased dramatically over the past three decade's. The purpose of this quantitative systematic review is to provide an update of the evidence, illustrating the efficacy of childhood obesity treatment, considering whether treatment fidelity has been measured and/or reported and whether this related to the treatment…

The aims of the studies were to assess the impact of the Little Champs programme for motor development on (1) the gross motor skills, and (2) cognitive function of children in the programme. In study 1, 118 children from one Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) were tested using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2, and in study 2, 83…

We examined the longitudinal predictors of nonword decoding, reading fluency, and spelling in three languages that vary in orthographic depth: Finnish, Greek, and English. Eighty-two English-speaking, 70 Greek, and 88 Finnish children were followed from the age of 5.5 years old until Grade 2. Prior to any reading instruction, they were…

This study assesses the environmental literacy (knowledge, attitudes, and concerns) of pre-vocational education teachers. A total of 124 teachers participated in the study. Data was collected through a closed ended questionnaire. Questionnaire validity was established by content and a Cranach's alpha coefficient used to determine reliability. The…