School attendance and absenteeism are critical targets of educational policies and practices that often depend heavily on aggregated attendance/absenteeism data. School attendance/absenteeism data in aggregated form, in addition to having suspect quality and utility, minimizes individual student variation, distorts detailed and multilevel…

We propose new methods for identifying and classifying aberrant response patterns (ARPs) by means of functional data analysis. These methods take the person response function (PRF) of an individual and compare it with the pattern that would correspond to a generic individual of the same ability according to the item-person response surface. ARPs…

In this article we present a general approach not relying on item response theory models (non-IRT) to detect differential item functioning (DIF) in dichotomous items with presence of guessing. The proposed nonlinear regression (NLR) procedure for DIF detection is an extension of method based on logistic regression. As a non-IRT approach, NLR can…

This paper reports on the findings of an ESRC funded project that contributes to the evidence base underpinning contextualised approaches to undergraduate admissions in England. We show that the bolder use of reduced entry requirements for disadvantaged learners is necessary if ambitious new widening access targets set by the Office for Students…

The "Every Student Succeeds Act" requires that student's test scores be disaggregated by racial characteristics. Nevertheless, the author's recent study suggests that K-12 school principals may not intentionally think about race when they collect, interpret, analyze, and make decisions about data. By not disaggregating data by race,…

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) discovered that infants and toddlers who were referred for Part C services and initially found ineligible for a full evaluation through screening were being re-referred and later found eligible for services at a high rate. This report presents the systematic evaluation process that TDOE's Tennessee…

This article is a revised version of the keynote presented at LAK '16 in Edinburgh. The article investigates some of the assumptions of learning analytics, notably those related to behaviourism. Building on the work of Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Simon, and James Gibson as ways of "learning as a machine," the article then develops two levels of…

All research accounts are partial. Who we are--our biographies, experiences, ideological stances, and so on--affects the entirety of the research process. Who we are shapes what types of research questions we find interesting, how we frame our research objectives, how we collect data, how we analyze these data, and how we present our findings. In…

This article examines two methodological issues regarding ways of obtaining and analyzing outcome data for people with intellectual disabilities: (a) self-report and proxy-report data and (b) analysis of population-based data sets. Some people with intellectual disabilities have difficulties with self-reporting due to problems of understanding and…

The issue of underrepresentation in gifted and talented (GT) programs has developed into a critical educational concern. At the core are ambiguous identification assessment practices, especially for bilingual students. To illustrate, this article reports data from the last decade that supports the underrepresentation of gifted Hispanic bilingual…

This article examines a case study framework designed to aid in the preparation of emerging community college leaders. The framework is multidimensional and fluid in nature, taking into account the multiplicity of factors affecting leadership in community colleges. The steps in the framework consist of (a) assuming the role of the leader; (b)…

This article critically reviews empirical correlates of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), based on several validation studies conducted with different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. A major critique of the reviewed MMPI-2 studies was focused on the use of…

Lim and Leek (2012) presented a formalization of information along object contours, which they argued was an alternative to the approach taken in our article (Feldman & Singh, 2005). Here, we summarize the 2 approaches, showing that--notwithstanding Lim and Leek's (2012) critical rhetoric--their approach is substantially identical to ours,…

One of the social identities held by people is defined by whether or not they smoke cigarettes. Although this identity can and does change for many people over the course of their lives, most research has not examined the effects of transitioning from a smoker to a non-smoker. Using a life span perspective, our analyses contrasted the extent to…

The concepts of "explicit" and "implicit" (knowledge) are at the core of SLA studies. We take "explicit" as conscious and declarative (knowledge); "implicit" as unconscious, automatic and procedural (knowledge) (DeKeyser, 2003; R. Ellis, 2005a, 2005b, 2009; Hulstjin, 2005; Robinson, 1996; Schmidt, 1990, 1994). The importance of those concepts and…