The current trend in science curricula is to adopt a context-based pedagogical approach to teaching. New study materials for this innovation are often designed by teachers working with university experts. In this article, it is proposed that teachers need to acquire corresponding teaching competences to create a context-based learning environment.…

Background: Children born very low birth weight (VLBW) are at increased risk for regulatory difficulties. However, identifying toddlers at risk has been impeded by a lack of screening measures appropriate for this population. Methods: We studied the nature of dysregulation in toddlers born VLBW (N = 32) using the Infant-Toddler Social and…

Purpose: The psychometric profiles of the widely used International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF) in Chinese youth have not been reported. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of the IPAQ-SF using a sample of Chinese youth. Method: One thousand and twenty-one youth (M[subscript age] = 14.26 ±…

Background: Whereas many education programs expect students to use national standards in various content areas, few studies have been conducted that examine pre-service teachers' confidence in demonstrating their use of the professional teacher standards. Purpose: The purpose of this project was 2-fold: (1) To develop the Pre-service Health…

Many of the instruments developed for research use by the chemistry education community are relatively new. Because psychometric evidence dictates the validity of interpretations made from test scores, gathering and reporting validity and reliability evidence is of utmost importance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate what…

In this article, we present a French adaptation and validation of the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (ADHS). The sample was composed of 310 French adults. We found that the ADHS scores demonstrated good reliability as well as adequate temporal stability. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) supported a bifactorial structure of the scale. The two…

The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire (called the Conceptions of Learning Management [COLM] inventory) to assess students' six categories of learning management (i.e. the learning of management), including learning management as "memorizing," "testing,'" "applying," "gaining higher…

The purpose of this study was to develop a measure for use in assessing musical behaviors of preschool children in the context of regular music instruction and to determine the validity and the reliability of the measure. The Early Childhood Musical Behavior Measure (ECMBM) was constructed for use with preschool-aged children to measure their…

Assessment of social and emotional learning (SEL) in young children is critical to understanding developmental progress and informing care and instruction. The current study investigated the development of a behavior rating scale designed to measure SEL skills in preschool-age children. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the…

Previous studies on teachers' thinking have usually related to teaching and learning, and concentrated on classroom-level outcomes. In this study, an organizational and administrative perspective was adopted in examining teachers' thinking style. Data collected were from a sample of 268 in-service teachers from 6 primary schools in Beijing, China.…

The Flourishing Scale (FS) and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) created by Diener et al. ("Soc Indic Res" 97:143-156, 2010) are instruments that assess psychological flourishing and feelings (positive and negative, and the difference between the two). In this study, the psychometric properties of both scales were…

The purpose of this research is to measure the teachers' awareness of, and attitudes towards children with Asperger's Syndrome (AS, hereafter). The main intention was to sample primary school teachers; however time constraints dictated that the 30 teachers (male and female), who participated in this study, were postgraduate students and teaching…

Including students with special educational needs in learning (SEN-L) is a challenge for large-scale assessments. In order to draw inferences with respect to students with SEN-L and to compare their scores to students in general education, one needs to assure that the measurement model is reliable and that the same construct is measured for…

The aim of the present research is to investigate a comparison between the effect of cooperative learning teaching method and lecture teaching method on students' learning and satisfaction level. The research population consisted of all the fourth grade elementary school students of educational district 4 in Shiraz. The statistical population…

As part of an ongoing investigation of students' learning in first semester upper-division quantum mechanics, we needed a high-quality conceptual assessment instrument for comparing outcomes of different curricular approaches. The process of developing such a tool started with converting a preliminary version of a 14-item open-ended quantum…