The timing in providing feedback after testing is less important than the fact that feedback needs to be provided at some point. (JD)

Discusses innovations in testing methods in college-level science. Highlights previous efforts at reform, new thinking, new practices, and computer-generated exams and scoring systems. Reports on focus group interviews that explore student recollections of in-class examinations in college-level science. (24 references) (JRH)

Techniques for reducing test anxiety include fostering study skills, reducing competition, using tests to meet a variety of needs, providing feedback, optimizing the test environment, setting realistic goals, and explaining the testing process. (SK)

Contends that tests were not used in counseling in the mid-20th century partially as a function of the prevailing view of what constituted science. Questions the 19th-century view of science regarding testing and then moves on to assert that the 21st-century application of tests with clients requires a substantial paradigm shift. (Author/NB)

Surveyed test use patterns and practices among members (n=423) of American School Counselor Association. Most respondents believed tests were important part of their work, and most were highly confident of their ability to use test scores in counseling and to select, administer, and interpret tests. Other findings, however, suggest that this…

Examined how knowledge associated with verbs can be impaired by brain damage. A standardized battery of tests was administered to a group of brain damaged subjects. The goal was to investigate how patterns of associations and dissociations that emerged across tests could shed light on the functional architecture that underlies the meaning of verbs…

Analogical reasoning is conceptualized by Relational Frame Theory as responding in accordance with an equivalence relation between equivalence or other types of derived stimulus relations. The purpose of this study was to provide an empirical demonstration of analogy using the Relational Evaluation Procedure (REP), a recently developed technique…

In January 2004 the author published an article in the Kappan titled "The Test Mess." In it, he examined how the state and federal accountability and tests were going. It was clear at that time that tests and accountability were not going to disappear--or even diminish--as the central mechanisms of the national effort to improve…

Across the United States, school districts are adopting benchmark assessments to help teachers modify instruction over the course of a school year. Yet many teachers remain wary. In this article, the author presents views from teachers regarding the benchmarks.

In this article, we use a dialogue format to explore the possible relevance of ideas in the hermeneutic tradition of social science for examining contemporary issues that lie at the intersection of concerns about validity and ethics in language assessment. Specifically, we focus on language testing as a socio-political-cultural practice and…

This article reviews the empirical literature on 9 topics about the modified Angoff standard-setting method that have been studied repeatedly in the literature, while taking into consideration the methodological warrant for the findings on the topics. It concludes that we can be reasonably confident about selecting the appropriate number of judges…

We studied preparatory attention in patients suffering from frontotemporal dementia in the beginning stages of the disease, using an experimental test developed by LaBerge, Auclair, and Sieroff (2000). In this experimental test, a distracter can appear while subjects have to prepare to respond to a simple target. The probability that a distracter…

In this paper, we apply sequential one-sided confidence interval estimation procedures with beta-protection to adaptive mastery testing. The procedures of fixed-width and fixed proportional accuracy confidence interval estimation can be viewed as extensions of one-sided confidence interval procedures. It can be shown that the adaptive mastery…

Sequential testing is applied to reduce costs in SP-based tests (OSCEs). Initially, all candidates take a screening test consisting of a part of the OSCE. Candidates who fail the screen sit the complete test, whereas those who pass the screen are qualified as a pass of the complete test. The procedure may result in a reduction of testing…

This article represents a first turn of talk in an ongoing dialogue. Our focus here is on the value of sustained dialogue across the boundaries of research discourses. We argue that such dialogue can illuminate the categories of thought and action (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) that "we" in a given discourse take for granted, situate them as choices…