TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is a long-standing international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been collecting trend data every four years since 1995. About 70 countries use TIMSS trend data for monitoring the effectiveness of their education systems in a global…

Reading difficulties in school are very challenging for teachers due to many different reader subtypes in one and the same class. Moreover, there are few easy-to-use tools enabling teachers to assess reading ability. According to the Simple View of Reading (Hoover and Gough in "Reading and Writing", 2(2), 127-160, 1990), efficient…

Measuring teachers' skills to carry out the complex tasks required in teaching is an important means of evaluating the effectiveness of teacher education but remains a challenging activity to conduct in practice. It is necessary to optimise approaches for usability and effectiveness along a continuum from low-effort and low-authenticity measures…

At the heart of changing institutional assessment and feedback practices is the need to transform university teachers' ways of thinking about feedback and assessment. In this article, we present a case study of a three-year Master's in Education offered to UK STEMM university teachers as an opportunity to develop critically reflective and…

The past decade has seen an emerging interest in mapping (aligning or linking) test scores to language proficiency levels of external performance scales or frameworks, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as well as locally developed frameworks, such as China's Standards of English Language Ability (CSE). Such alignment is…

The processes to assess students' learning acquired in various non-formal and informal learning environments have become increasingly common in Finnish university language centres in recent years. This paper describes new developments at the University of Eastern Finland to assess students' non-formal and informal learning of English for Academic…

Currently, the government of Indonesia has implemented a computer-based test for the national examination for secondary schools in Indonesia. It is believed that the administration of computer-based national examination (CBNE) would address some challenges related to dishonesty and validity. The present study is aimed to investigate the teachers'…

An assumption underlying speaking tests is that scores reflect the ability to produce online, non-rehearsed speech. Speech produced in testing situations may, however, be less spontaneous if extensive test preparation takes place, resulting in memorized or rehearsed responses. If raters detect these patterns, they may conceptualize speech as…

Perceptual assimilation is a well-known task; however, there is no study on the assimilation pattern of the English monophthongs by L2 Thai learners. The aims of this study are to explore the perceptual assimilation patterns of the British English monophthongs to Thai monophthongs by L2 Thai learners and to examine the effect of L2 experience on…

The United States is formally represented around the world by approximately 14,000 Foreign Service officers and other personnel in the U.S. Department of State. Roughly one-third of them are required to be proficient in the local languages of the countries to which they are posted. To achieve this language proficiency for its staff, the State…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education across the globe leading countries to adapt how they administer and manage high-stakes examinations and large-scale learning assessments. This thematic review describes the measures that countries have taken, in terms of policies and practices, when learning assessments are disrupted by emergencies and…

This pilot study evaluated the student user experience of a performance indicator tool (PIT) for formative assessment of a cohort of fourth year medical undergraduates undertaking a 12 week rotation. Scoping and elaboration for the standalone web-based tool was based on the existing paper-based formative assessment system for which training and…

As reading and reading assessment become increasingly implemented on electronic devices, the question arises whether reading on screen is comparable with reading on paper. To examine potential differences, we studied reading processes on different proficiency and complexity levels. Specifically, we used data from the standardization sample of the…

Approximately a third of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) items in the core domains (math, reading, and science) are constructed-response items and require human coding (scoring). This process is time-consuming, expensive, and prone to error as often (a) humans code inconsistently, and (b) coding reliability in…

There are some English verbs that can be used both intransitively and transitively. Verbs such as "break," "close," and "melt" can appear in intransitive active, transitive active, and passive constructions. Although native English speakers know in what kind of context a target verb is used in a certain construction,…