Given decision-makers often prioritize causal research that identifies the impact of treatments on the people they serve, a key question in education research is, "Does it work?". Today, however, researchers are paying increasing attention to successive questions that are equally important from a practical standpoint--not only does it…

Coding is a process of assigning meaning to a given piece of evidence. Evidence may be found in a variety of data types, including documents, research interviews, posts from social media, conversations from learning platforms, or any source of data that may provide insights for the questions under qualitative study. In this study, we focus on text…

This chapter introduces three applications of Bayesian inference to common and novel issues in second language research. After a review of the critiques of conventional hypothesis testing, our focus centers on ways Bayesian inference can be used for dealing with missing data, for testing theory-driven substantive hypotheses without a default null…

This project classifies groups of small order using a group's center as the key feature. Groups of a given order "n" are typed based on the order of each group's center. Students are led through a sequence of exercises that combine proof-writing, independent research, and an analysis of specific classes of finite groups…

We calculate the number of subgroups in a direct product of finite cyclic groups by applying the fundamental theorem of finite abelian groups and a well-known structure theorem due to Goursat. We also suggest ways in which the results can be generalized to a direct product of arbitrary finite groups.

Cambridge Assessment has more than 20 years experience in assessing Critical Thinking (CT) in a number of diverse tests and qualifications, unrivalled by any other body within the UK. In recent years, a number of research activities have been carried out in order to support these assessments, with a focus on the validity of measurement. This paper…

Injured children (N=145 between 2 and 13 years of age) were recruited from a hospital emergency room and were interviewed about the injury event soon afterward and then twice more at yearly intervals. Their transcripts were coded three ways: completeness of overall structural components of a prototypical injury event (e.g., who, when, where),…

A screening tool (in Chinese) for maladaptive internet use was developed in two stages. Thirty-five factors were first extracted from data obtained from 378 adolescents with a 179-item questionnaire. Nine higher-order factors were then obtained from 35 factors. A 26-item screen that measures both endogenous and exogenous factors was constructed on…

The CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) syllabus is the most detailed statement on the goals of engineering education currently found in the literature. This paper presents an in-depth validation exercise of the CDIO syllabus using the taxonomy of engineering competencies as a validating instrument. The study explains the attributes that make…

"DSM-IV" and "ICD-10" have limitations in the diagnostic classification of psychiatric disorders at preschool age (0-5 years). The publication of the "Diagnostic Classification 0-3 (DC:0-3)" in 1994, its basically revised second edition ("DC:0-3R") in 2005 and the "Research Diagnostic Criteria-Preschool Age (RDC-PA)" in 2004 have provided several…

High-stakes decisions for the instruction and assessment of English language learner (ELL) students are made based on the premise that ELL classification is a valid dichotomy that distinguishes between those who are proficient in the use of the English language and those who are not. However, recent research findings draw a vague picture of the…

Lissitz and Samuelsen (2007) have proposed an operational definition of "validity" that shifts many of the questions traditionally considered under validity to a separate category associated with the utility of test use. Operational definitions support inferences about how well people perform some kind of task or how they respond to some kind of…

In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners' interactions is a…

Implicit in the work of S. Huck and H. Sandler (1979) is the idea that the concept "rival hypotheses" refers to some kind of alternative explanation. Rather than being threats to internal validity, rival hypotheses, in their view, are interpretations that differ from those of the researcher. This paper broadens the idea to include any…

Provides an overview of the use of models in instructional design. Highlights include a definition of the term model; types of models, including conceptual, procedural, mathematical, and prescriptive; procedures for model development; classification of models in the literature; and alternative techniques for model validation. (Contains 38…