The increase in youth's self-identification as trans in the United States and Canada has created new urgency in schools to meet the needs of these students, yet education survey researchers have yet to find ways to assess their educational outcomes based on sex and gender. In this critical systematic review, I provide an overview of surveys from…

This study examined seven Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) teachers' accounts of current Portfolio Based Language Assessment (PBLA) practices, elicited through semi-structured interviews, in order to explore "washback" -- the effects of PBLA on teaching and learning. Portfolios are primarily useful as formative…

This article describes a study, from a Canadian technical institute's upgrading mathematics course, where students played a role in developing the final closed-book exam that they sat. The study involved a process where students developed practice exams and solutions keys, students sat each other's practice exams, students evaluated classmates'…

This paper explores the role of media in shaping adult literacy discourse and policy in Canada. The authors show how journalists, newspapers and other media personalities have directly and indirectly influenced (1) government and public perception of adult literacy and (2) the creation of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's…

Most implementations of the Mantel-Haenszel differential item functioning procedure delete records with missing responses or replace missing responses with scores of 0. These treatments of missing data make strong assumptions about the causes of the missing data. Such assumptions may be particularly problematic when groups differ in their patterns…

Another round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reporting has come and gone and the world is still spinning. So is the media. For the classroom teacher, generally, today is another day where they will teach and children and youth will learn. So do the PISA results impact on a day in the life of a classroom teacher? Author…

In this inquiry, I examine the cross educational experiences of ten Arab undergraduate students in two English-language universities in Montreal. Participants were from Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and have been in Canada for three to seven years. Classic qualitative methodological tools of in-depth interviews, participant observation and…

This study investigates what grade-3 teachers say they would do if faced with common test administration dilemmas--and why. Grade-3 teachers with experience administering Ontario's provincially mandated assessment were recruited through professional association newsletters and Toronto-area newspapers. They responded to an on-line questionnaire (n…

In high-stakes writing assessments, rater training in the use of a rating scale does not eliminate variability in grade attribution. This realisation has been accompanied by research that explores possible sources of rater variability, such as rater background or rating scale type. However, there has been little consideration thus far of…

The practice of handing out excellent grades to students who don't deserve them (grade inflation) is not a new phenomenon. Indeed grade inflation is among the oldest and most difficult issues to address in higher education. The author first studied the impact of grade inflation on student performance on standardized tests at the high school level…

Examined the P scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in three samples of normal Canadian and Japanese students who obtained either very high or very low means on the P scale. Psychometric problems were identified in the sample with a low P mean. Recommended that the scale be renamed. (JAC)

Offers standard errors of prediction and confidence intervals for Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) that help in deciding whether variation in obtained scores of scale administered to the same person more than once is a result of measurement error or whether it reflects actual change in examinee's functional level. Presented values were…

Using generalizability theory, this study examined both the rating variability and reliability of ESL students' writing in the provincial English examinations in Canada. Three years' data were used in order to complete the analyses and examine the stability of the results. The major research question that guided this study was: Are there any…

Determined strength of relationship between social desirability, psychological distress, and consumer satisfaction with mental health treatment in 82 clients in therapy. Results indicated that both consumer satisfaction reports and psychological distress scores were contaminated by socially desirable responding. (Author/ABL)

Across five continents, operant testing schemes are the assessment equivalent of an English jumble sale. Test types, rationales, preparation times, and scoring practices are equally diverse in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Israel, and Japan. Most systems are in flux or under scrutiny. (MLH)