This paper is a philosophical piece relating to an issue in education theory: what is the epistemological nature of the product of education research and what are the consequences for the reporting of findings and conclusions in particular, what form of contribution to knowledge and/or understanding can emerge from education research? Education…

Retrospective confidence refers to the phenomenological experience of the level of certainty that retrieved information is, in fact, correct. Retrospective confidence judgments are examined across a range of sub-disciplines in psychology from perception to memory research, and in education and legal applications. This paper focuses on…

In visual communication, people glean insights about patterns of data by observing visual representations of datasets. Colormap data visualizations ("colormaps") show patterns in datasets by mapping variations in color to variations in magnitude. When people interpret colormaps, they have expectations about how colors map to magnitude,…

Data reasoning is an essential component of scientific reasoning, as a component of evidence evaluation. In this paper, we outline a model of scientific data reasoning that describes how data sensemaking underlies data reasoning. Data sensemaking, a relatively automatic process rooted in perceptual mechanisms that summarize large quantities of…

When people interpret the outcome of a research study, do they consider other relevant information such as prior research? In the current study, 251 college graduates read a single brief fictitious news article. The article summarized the findings of a study that found positive results for a new drug. Three versions of the article varied the…

A guide for professional counselors and counseling researchers for calculating and interpreting Percent Improvement as an indicator of clinical significance is provided. Strategies for reporting findings are described and illustrated. Guidelines for contextualizing discussions of clinical significance within the boundaries of psychometric evidence…

Reaction coordinate diagrams (RCDs) are chemical representations widely employed to visualize the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters associated with reactions. Previous research has demonstrated a host of misconceptions students adopt when interpreting the perceived information encoded in RCDs. This qualitative research study explores how…

Despite tremendous interest in social games and game studies, the potential of game heuristics for the field of mixed methods remains unknown. This article introduces game heuristics to mixed methods research, showing how it was used in a specific study on the survival probabilities on the "Titanic." Specifically, we describe how game…

Students' critical thinking is often researched using quantitative tests designed to measure critical thinking. In contrast, this study qualitatively analyses group and whole-class dialogues in an interdisciplinary SSI project by focusing on students' critical thinking practices. As such, the study provides an in-depth example of an immersion…

Basic knowledge of ideas of causal inference can help students to think beyond data, that is, to think more clearly about the data generating process. Especially for (maybe big) observational data, qualitative assumptions are important for the conclusions drawn and interpretation of the quantitative results. Concepts of causal inference can also…

The South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement for Technology stipulates that Technology should provide learners with the opportunity to solve authentic problems that are embedded in real-life experiences. Solving these authentic technological problems requires learners to use critical thinking skills and teachers are expected to…

This special issue of "Assessment in Education" contains the type of debate needed about what Cizek (2015) calls a "… lingering flaw in the concept of validity…." Some practitioners might not agree that the current theory of validation is flawed. Specifically, the debate Jon Twing is referencing concerns the role of the…

New technologies have completely altered the ways that citizens can access data. Indeed, emerging online data sources give citizens access to an enormous amount of numerical information that provides new sorts of evidence used to influence public opinion. In this new environment, two trends have had a significant impact on our increasingly…

Advances in validity theory and alacrity in validation practice have suffered because the term "validity" has been used to refer to two incompatible concerns: (1) the degree of support for specified interpretations of test scores (i.e. intended score meaning) and (2) the degree of support for specified applications (i.e. intended test…

Education researchers often study count variables, such as times a student reached a goal, discipline referrals, and absences. Most researchers that study these variables use typical regression methods (i.e., ordinary least-squares) either with or without transforming the count variables. In either case, using typical regression for count data can…