This guide is designed to help teachers create test items that measure a variety of higher level thinking abilities. Part One, "Foundations for Item Writing," provides a context for item writing. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book and defines basic concepts, principles, and terminology. Chapter 2 integrates research literature to…

This study investigates the amount of uncertainty added to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) estimates by equating error under both ideal and less than ideal circumstances. Data from past administrations are used to guide simulations of various equating designs and error due to equating is estimated empirically. The design…

Self-regulation is a major developmental accomplishment that begins in infancy and continues throughout childhood. This study focused on early socialization of self-regulation, and examined whether there was a common core of self-regulation in young children cutting across contexts and age, and whether the same maternal behaviors operate similarly…

Individual differences in the regulatory processes involved in managing difficult interpersonal interactions were investigated. Interpersonal systems that easily escalate to produce coercive or violent encounters in adult-child relationships were of particular interest. Adults who were predisposed to view adult-child interactions as containing…

Teachers' diverse goals for students reflect differences in teachers' conceptions of the teaching task and students' needs. This segment of the teachers' workplace research project (fieldwork and surveys in 16 public and private secondary schools) concentrated on ways in which workplace features generated dissimilar patterns of pedagogical…

This paper reports on a content analysis study of the dialogue in student-professor dialogue journals with a focus on professors' responses to student journal entries. Nine journals were kept by a multicultural sample of eight preservice secondary teachers and their three professors. The researchers applied Tannen's (1990) theory of symmetry in…

The Health, Science, and the Environment section of these proceedings contains the following seven papers: "Columbus, Mars, and the Changing Images and Ideologies of Exploration: A Critical Examination" (Lin Bin and August T. Horvath); "Prime Time TV Portrayals of Sex, 'Safe Sex' and AIDS: A Longitudinal Analysis" (Dennis T.…

Creative thinking styles of Native American students were investigated to determine the existence of creativity as a homogeneous trait among this culture. Seventy-nine Cherokee students in grades 4 and 6, attending a small rural school in eastern Oklahoma, were administered the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking--Figural Form A. Thirty-eight…

How data gathered through item response theory (IRT) analysis can be used to give immediate diagnostic information without a computer is explained. The Kidmap, developed by B. D. Wright and others (1980), provides clear information in a visual manner. Its major problem lies in the need for a computer and suitable software to construct a Kidmap.…

This paper states that college radio invokes two ends of a language spectrum -- the clean language authorized for on-air use and the dirty language prohibited from such use, and that the interaction between the two produces "expositional obscenity," a catalytic form of discourse that invites the audience to render a judgment about…

In studying the lyrics of popular music, and particularly aspects of violent attitudes toward women, teachers discover what language represents to students and what students experience through the songs. The texts created about artifacts like song lyrics suggest more about the students as knowers than about the objects being studied. Exploring…

A study was conducted at Macomb Community College (MCC), in Warren, Michigan, to determine whether respondents to studies would be as likely to include their return addresses on business reply envelopes if there were no lines designating the return address's proper placement. From October 25 through November 18, 1993, 23 mailings were conducted…

The role of item response theory (IRT) in determining the validity of second language tests is examined in the case of one specific test, the listening subtest of the Occupational English Test (OET), used in Australia to measure the language skills of non-native English-speaking health professionals. First, the listening subtest is described. Then…

Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the use of response latencies in psychological assessment. Some research has suggested that response times associated with answering personality and integrity questionnaires may be useful in differentiating among honest responders and individuals who are lying. Using an experimental paradigm…

This paper presents findings of a study that: (1) identified the most salient organization, personal, and professional factors contributing to administrator burnout; and (2) determined the relationship among these variables to each of the three dimensions of burnout. Data were obtained from a survey of 1,000 school administrators--169 elementary…