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…

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…

The aim of this article is to present an alternative method for science mapping, which remedies some of the classic limitations to e.g. using co-citation analysis as a mapping tool. With the emergence of new, more complex and interdisciplinary areas of research it becomes important to adjust our understandings of how to study these areas, and the…

Haraway foregrounds many stories that we, in a late capitalist era, tell ourselves in order to justify, or not even notice, actions that are harmful to all living things. While I am mindful of Haraway's excellent attention to the ways that 'stories tell stories, thoughts think thoughts, and knots knot knots,' I argue that we must take great care…

A formula is derived for a 'two-dice horse race', in which two ordinary dice are thrown repeatedly and each time the sum of the scores determines which horse (numbered 2 to 12) moves forward one space. This paper answers a question posed in a former "Teaching Statistics" article, and demonstrates the value of simulation.

This paper presents the operation of the educational software, Real Estate Data Analyzer, to teachers and future teachers. It is a specific software that allows students carry out complete statistical analysis projects on the characteristics of the buildings that surround them.

Many psychometric measures yield data that are compatible with (a) an essentially unidimensional factor analysis solution and (b) a correlated-factor solution. Deciding which of these structures is the most appropriate and useful is of considerable importance, and various procedures have been proposed to help in this decision. The only fully…

Jesus' stories and parables--the products of his own imagination--are at the core of Christian religious education. Christian religious educators are to encourage their audience to engage their imagination to let Jesus' stories retain their power to form and transform them. Although imagination operates imperceptibly, it is essential to faith…

This chapter provides an overview of three assessment scholars whose work influenced the articles contained in this volume.

In this ITEMS module, we introduce the generalized deterministic inputs, noisy "and" gate (G-DINA) model, which is a general framework for specifying, estimating, and evaluating a wide variety of cognitive diagnosis models. The module contains a nontechnical introduction to diagnostic measurement, an introductory overview of the G-DINA…

Few traits are as desirable as creativity. In fact, according to chief executives around the world, creativity is the most sought-after trait in leaders. This article is an attempt to share with educators what researchers have found regarding the hallmarks of creativity. It also provides a sampling of proven techniques and approaches instructors…

A thorough appreciation of the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in molecules is crucial for new students of chemistry and critical to students continuing their studies in chemistry. We discuss current use of molecular models in education and investigate a variety of techniques used over the years to introduce students to atomic orbitals.…

The Early Years (EY) key stage in England comprises the nursery year (ages 3-4) and the reception year (ages 4-5), with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covering children from birth to 5 years old. Planning and completing evaluations in the EY has all the challenges of evaluations in other key stages, plus the constraints of working with…

We discuss a decade of initiatives to improve the teaching and learning of calculus at The Ohio State University. Calculus at OSU is taught in lecture/recitation format with large lectures and is tightly coordinated, so all innovations had to occur within that framework. We show how many smaller projects built upon one another to create a larger…

International relations is often confusing for students. IR theories are introduced as parsimonious and elegant and then systematically challenged as students learn more about detailed events. There are rules, there are norms, and states follow them until they don't. East Asia increases these challenges because it often undermines IR theory.…