Across Europe we can observe the reinforcement of monolingual education policies, despite increasing multilingualism. Recent research has shown that the emphasis is on language proficiency in the socially dominant language. This is viewed as the key to educational success. The use of other languages or linguistic repertoires is not valued in…

This study investigated longitudinal pathways leading from early spatial skills in first-grade girls to their fifth-grade analytical math reasoning abilities (N = 138). First-grade assessments included spatial skills, verbal skills, addition/subtraction skills, and frequency of choice of a decomposition or retrieval strategy on the…

This study provides insight into preservice teachers' experiences with integrating technology into lessons with children who had mild learning disabilities. Participants included 14 junior early childhood education majors enrolled in a special education course with a fieldwork component. The researchers collected and analyzed lesson plans, journal…

This dissertation is developed around two studies created with the goal of describing and quantifying current educators' knowledge and perceptions of reading assessment and subsequent data-based instructional decision making. Unique to the field, a critical component of this study is an emphasis on educators' development of "data…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in therapies that include the learning of mindfulness skills. The 39-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) has been developed as a reliable and valid comprehensive instrument for assessing different aspects of mindfulness in community and student samples. In this study, the psychometric…

The parental report instrument is the most efficient developmental detection method and has shown high validity with professional assessment instruments. The reliability and validity of the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study (TBCS) 6-, 18- and 36-month scales have already been established. In this study, the reliability and validity of the 60-month scale…

With the recent addition of engineering to most K-12 testable state standards, efficient and comprehensive instruments are needed to assess changes in student knowledge and perceptions of engineering. In this study, I developed the Students' Awareness and Perceptions of Learning Engineering (STAPLE) instrument to quantitatively measure fourth…

The current study will explore the validity and potential of using the SAT, in conjunction with HSGPA, to arrive at a predicted FYGPA to improve student retention at four-year postsecondary institutions. Specifically, this study examined whether college students who did not perform as expected (observed FYGPA minus predicted FYGPA) were more…

Data from instruments which are technically adequate and which inform instruction are not only considered best practice, but are legally mandated by laws such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act and No Child Left Behind. The Phonics Diagnostic Inventory (PDI) was designed to assess students' proficiency with specific…

This researcher examined the relationship of bureaucratic structure to school climate by means of an exploratory factor analysis of a measure of bureaucracy developed by Hoy and Sweetland (2000) and the four dimensional measure of climate developed by Hoy, Smith, and Sweetland (2002). Since there had been no other empirical studies whose authors…

Metacognition is widely studied for its influence on the effectiveness of learning. With Exploratory Computer-Based Learning Environments (ECBLE), metacognition is found to be especially important because these environments require adaptive metacognitive control by the learners due to their open-ended structure that allows for multiple learning…

This study investigates the construct validity of a new measure of Integrative Language functioning, "Tallying Reference Errors In Narratives" (TREIN), by examining the association between previously existing CNS impairment and Expressive Language functioning and elevated outcomes on the TREIN measure "rate of Nominal Reference Errors" (rNRE). The…

This study examined construct validity of three commonly used clerkship performance assessments: preceptors' evaluations, OSCE-type clinical performance measures, and the NBME [National Board of Medical Examiners] medicine subject examination. Six hundred and eighty-six students taking the inpatient medicine clerkship from 2003 to 2007…

As research on achievement goals has increased, so has the number of ways to measure goal orientation. In this article, we focus on the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales. A translated and adapted version of a subsection known as the Teacher Scales: Perceptions of the School Goal Structure for Students is examined in terms of factorial validity,…

Current emotion knowledge (EK) measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of EK, the emotion matching task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive EK, expressive EK, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion…