Most teaching and reference materials on English idioms are primarily intuition based. As such, they often include seldom-used idioms and incorrect descriptions of the meaning and use of some idioms, hence limiting their usefulness to ESOL students. This article demonstrates how this problem can be addressed through a corpus-based study of the…

The study set out to assess the needs of Nigerian science teachers, which the teachers believe are militating against their desired productivity. It seeks to find out the special needs and wants of science teachers in trying to discharge their duties well, and to find out the underlying relationship among these specials needs and wants. Six…

There are indications that the new technologies could have radical implications for conventional teaching and learning processes. It notes that, in reconfiguring how teachers and learners gain access to knowledge and information, the new technologies challenge conventional conceptions of both teaching and learning materials, and teaching and…

The development of an assessment tool to measure the quality of instruction is necessary to provide an informative accountability system in education. Such a tool should be capable of characterizing the quality of teaching and learning that occurs in actual classrooms, schools, or districts. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development…

It has been reported that the cultural-historical experiences of ethnic group members can play a role in the literacy beliefs of those members. Socioeconomic conditions can also influence the belief system of the groups' constituents. This study investigated parents' and children's beliefs pertaining to early literacy acquisition as related to the…

There is a gap in the current research literature regarding evaluation of TAFE outcomes and it stems from a predominant human capital focus. The existing paradigm of human capital, which values the acquisition of knowledge and skills for their economic value, has been of primary interest and significance, particularly in terms of government policy…

In this technical report, we describe the development and piloting of a series of mathematics progress monitoring measures intended for use with students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. These measures, available as part of easyCBM[TM], an online progress monitoring assessment system, were developed in 2007 and 2008 and administered to…

For more than 50 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been conducting comparative studies of educational achievement in a number of curriculum areas, including mathematics and science. TIMSS 2011 represents the fifth cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS),…

The subject of this dissertation is the examination of differential item functioning (DIF) through the use of loglinear Rasch models with latent classes. DIF refers to the probability that a correct response among equally able test takers is different for various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. Because usual methods of detecting DIF give little…

This study examines how third and fourth grade children work with a representative sample of test items designed to measure reading comprehension. The developmental and ethnocultural problems that children experience (whether they are rooted in the passage, the tasks, or the entire item) are discussed. From a passage-based perspective, the items…

Item responses from a standardized language arts usage and expression test were submitted to an ordering-theoretic data analysis procedure to identify the significant prerequisite relationships that underlay the data set. Responses were elicited from a sample of 81 sixth graders who took the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form G, Level 12 usage and…

Questions on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) with the largest score differences between women and men of all racial and ethnic groups were identified. Patterns of difficulty that would explain the SAT's continuing underprediction of female first-year college performance were studied. An item analysis of one form of the June 1986 SAT for 1,112…

This study examined agreement rates between identified strengths and weaknesses in shared abilities and influences on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Sixty-seven students in the first through seventh grades referred for learning disabilities (LD) evaluation were…

When the three-parameter logistic model and item response theory are used to analyze Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) data, there are problems with the assumption of unidimensionality. Linear factor analytic models, exploratory factor analysis programs, and the comparison of item parameter estimates for heterogeneous and homogeneous…

This paper presents an introduction to the use of latent trait models for the estimation of domain scores. It was shown that these models provided an advantage over classical test theory and binomial error models in that unbiased estimates of true domain scores could be obtained even when items were not randomly selected from a universe of items.…