This document contains 20 competency-based examinations with student and instructor manuals for electronics and instrumentation occupations. For each of the examinations, the student manual contains the following: the competency, the performance objective, directions, the materials and equipment needed, a space to note time started and time…

This curriculum guide helps teachers to lead students in grades 6-8 to investigate themselves and the world of work as a basis for career planning. It is planned for a semester course, but may be modified by local planners utilizing any or a combination of complete course units. Each of the four units of instruction contains the following: a…

A Writing Anxiety Scale (WAS) was developed. A literature review and interviews with writing instructors identified nine components of writing behavior (Empathy, Expression, Evaluation by Others, Motivation, Organization, Procrastination, Self-Esteem, Technical Skills, and Writing Anxiety). A pool of 146 items were written to reflect the…

Item components that might contribute to the difficulty of items on the Raven Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM) and the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) were studied. Subjects providing responses to CPM items were 269 children aged 2 years 9 months to 11 years 8 months, most of whom were referred for testing as potentially gifted. A second…

This study was intended to establish "base-line" data with respect to teacher utilization of available microcomputer software for the purposes of: (1) generating teacher-made appraisals; (2) scoring/analyzing teacher-made appraisals; and (3) assigning and recording grades. Differences in reported utilization at the K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 grade levels…

The last of three volumes studying the relationship between writing research and instruction, this four-part report focuses on writing assessment. The first section details specifications for an instrument assessing student writing samples and the following composition skills: word processing, sentence processing, paragraph development,…

This three-part guide presents a brief program description along with lists of performance objectives and lists of test items for the Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools Title I Elementary Mathematics Program. The program description provides background information on the Des Moines Public School District and describes the student selection/screening…

This paper reports on the process of modifying the ModelCreator item generation system to produce output in multiple languages. In particular, Japanese and Spanish are now supported in addition to English. The addition of multilingual functionality was considerably facilitated by the general formulation of our natural language generation system,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of using multidimensional items in a computer adaptive test (CAT) setting which assumes a unidimensional item response theory (IRT) framework. Previous research has suggested that the composite of multidimensional abilities being estimated by a unidimensional IRT model is not constant…

Major concepts can help create thinking frameworks that are powerful enough to make additional input more meaningful. As a result, the content is richer, more diverse, and more widely applicable. This set of concept papers was produced because concepts are not uniformly understood by practitioners. Each is designed to introduce a concept and to…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Nation's Report Card, has developed and pilot-tested a variety of hands-on science and mathematics tasks. These tasks were developed as prototypes for use in future national assessments, but the concepts measured and the innovative approaches used are equally suitable for classroom…

These item specifications were developed as a part of the Arkansas "Minimum Performance Testing Program" (MPT). There is one item specification for each instructional objective included in the MPT. The purpose of an item specification is to provide an overview of the general content and format of test items used to measure an…

These item specifications were developed as a part of the Arkansas "Minimum Performance Testing Program" (MPT). There is one item specification for each instructional objective included in the MPT. The purpose of an item specification is to provide an overview of the general content and format of test items used to measure an…

To assist instructors in implementing Missouri's Vocational Instructional Management System into the Consumer Education semester course, this guide sets forth the competencies that were derived from the duties and tasks of the Missouri homemaker and identified and validated by home economics teachers and subject matter specialists. A minimum of…

This paper, a discussion of the use of written tests to assess second language proficiency and achievement, considers what constitutes a valid writing test task and addresses three questions: (1) To what extent is performance influenced by prior knowledge about the topic? (2) Does it make a difference how the writing task is specified on the test…