Helping students develop a sound understanding of scientific concepts can be a major challenge. Lately, learning progressions have received increasing attention as a means to support students in developing understanding of core scientific concepts. At the center of a learning progression is a sequence of developmental levels reflecting an…

The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) is a comprehensive and widely used instrument for assessing motivation based on the self-determination theory. Currently, no such comprehensive instrument exists to assess the different domains of motivation (stipulated by the self-determination theory) in mathematics education at the pre-tertiary level (grades…

Writing assessments have taken two primary forms in the past two decades: direct and indirect. Irrespective of type, either form needs to be anchored to making decisions in the classroom and predicting performance on high-stakes tests, particularly in a high-stakes environment with serious consequences. In this study, 11th-grade students were…

Research on factors that may promote engagement is hampered by the absence of a measure of classroom-level engagement. Literature has suggested that engagement may have 3 dimensions--affective, behavioral, and cognitive. No existing engagement scales measure all 3 dimensions at the classroom level. The Classroom Engagement Inventory (CEI) was…

Parental involvement has been recognized as an important factor for student achievement in traditional school settings. The lack of research regarding the effect of parental involvement on student achievement in virtual schooling is, in part, due to the absence of a valid and reliable instrument to measure this construct. This paper provides an…

Existing research posits multiple dimensions of bullying and victimization but has not identified well-differentiated facets of these constructs that meet standards of good measurement: goodness of fit, measurement invariance, lack of differential item functioning, and well-differentiated factors that are not so highly correlated as to detract…

Each year, Pennsylvania students participate in testing as part of the Pennsylvania assessment program. Students in grades 5, 8, and 11 take tests in reading and math while those in grades 6, 9 and 11 are assessed in writing. These tests serve as an important measure of student achievement for the state's accountability system. Results from these…