Background and Purpose: As a growing number of instructional units have been developed to promote young children's scientific and engineering practices (SEPs), understanding how to evaluate and assess children's SEPs is imperative. However, paper-and-pencil assessments would not be suitable for young children because of their limited reading and…

Background: Base-ten thinking (BTT) -- children's ability to reason in tens and ones is a crucial measure of Foundation Phase learners' mathematical performance in South Africa. Aim: The study looks at the six learners using BTT to solve additive tasks through two different assessments. Setting: Six purposely selected Grade 3 learners in…

Bilingual children with a limited command of the second language (L2) often yield unsatisfactory results in L2-based non-word repetition tasks (NWRT) for the assessment of working memory. In this study, monolinguals (MO) and bilinguals (BI) of preschool age acquiring German were compared in regard to their performance on German-based NWRT to…

Reading comprehension is based on the efficient accomplishment of several cognitive processes at the word, sentence, and text level. To the extent that each of these processes contributes to reading comprehension, it can cause reading difficulties if it is deficient. To identify individual sources of reading difficulties, tools are required that…

The concept of variability is central to statistics. In this research report, we review mathematics education research on variability and, based on that review and on feedback from an expert panel, propose a learning progression (LP) for variability. The structure of the proposed LP consists of 5 levels of sophistication in understanding…

Despite calls for engaging assessments targeting young language learners (YLLs) between 8 and 13 years old, what makes assessment tasks engaging and how such task characteristics affect measurement quality have not been well studied empirically. Furthermore, there has been a dearth of validity research about technology-enhanced speaking tests for…

This study aims to validate a teacher-report measure of children's task-avoidant behavior, namely the Behavioral Strategy Rating Scale (BSRS), in a sample of 352 Finnish children. In each of the four waves from Kindergarten to Grade 2, teachers rated children's task-avoidant behavior using the BSRS, children completed reading and mathematics…

In this article, we highlight the need for a precisely defined construct in score-based validation and discuss the contribution of cognitive theories to accurately and comprehensively defining the construct. We propose a framework for integrating cognitively based theoretical and empirical evidence to specify and evaluate the construct. We apply…

The purpose of this study is to apply the attribute hierarchy method in an operational diagnostic mathematics program at Grades 3 and 6 to promote cognitive inferences about students' problem-solving skills. The attribute hierarchy method is a psychometric procedure for classifying examinees' test item responses into a set of structured attribute…