In the past decade, there have been ample interests in the assessment of cognitive and affective processes and products for the purposes of meaningful learning. Meaningful measurement (MM) has been proposed which is in accordance with a humanistic constructivist information-processing perspective. Students' responses to the assessment tasks are…

Performance assessment, constructed-response, and authentic assessment are topics of current interest in educational testing and reform. This workbook presents the following articles on educational assessment to highlight work being done in this area: (1) "Aquarium Problem and Teacher Guidelines: New Standards Project" (University of…

This study examines the question of students as context for what happens in school and the ways in which educators' subjective interpretations of the realities students bring with them to school influence every aspect of the school environment. The focus is on contemporary, nontraditional students whose academic backgrounds, families, values, or…

Stress factors affecting community college educators in Ontario were determined using a questionnaire survey. The effect of demographic variables (campus location, program types and specialization, gender, age, and years taught at the college) on perceived stress levels were evaluated. Participants rated their present stress levels on a…

The partial credit model of G. N. Masters (1982), a one-parameter unidimensional polychotomous Rasch model, was used to reduce the error of measurement, particularly for students near the cut score, and to permit measurement to reflect the actual ability of a student more accurately by reducing the degree of misfit for students near the cut…

In the spring of 1990, over 9,000 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students (only 6 percent of all students in Massachusetts) were assessed using open-ended mathematical, scientific, social studies, and reading concepts. Beginning with the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program for 1992, open-ended questions will be administered to all students and…

The purpose of this study is to find out from transfer students exactly what they are afraid of or nervous about when they start over in a new school and examines the implications these anxieties may have for teachers. During the transition, transfer students often suffer social, academic, and emotional distress which can impede their adjustment…

This study investigated the stresses confronting homeless adolescents and the coping strategies that enable stressed urban minority children to achieve in school. A total of 176 homeless children ranging in age from 9 to 14 years were interviewed, and 199 control subjects who were not homeless were surveyed. Academic achievement was determined…

This study was conducted to examine a restructured inner-city school and a second-grade teacher's personal and collaborative efforts to teach all of her students to become literate. To do so, she needed to adopt a feminist view recasting the teacher's role in school reform as that of an individual with knowledge who can act upon the world, rather…

Sponsored by the Curriculum Policies Committee, which advises the Alberta Minister of Education on matters relating to the curricula used in provincial schools, the study of school programs for Alberta natives (Metis, status and non-status Indians) was intended to discuss whether there should be special educational programs for these students. The…

With funds received under the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) Chapter 2, the Computer Discretionary Grant was designed to train Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) School District teachers in personal computer operations. Teams comprised of middle and junior high school teachers were allowed to enroll in the staff development program.…

Use of item response theory (IRT), the delta plot method, and Mantel-Haenszel techniques to assess differential item functioning (DIF) across racial and gender groups associated with the Maryland Test of Citizenship Skills (MTCS) is described. The objective of this research was to determine the: effect of sample size on results from these three…

The objective of this study was to investigate differential tendencies to avoid guessing as a function of three variables: (1) lingual-cultural-group; (2) gender; and (3) examination year. The Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) for universities in Israel was used, which is administered in Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Russian. The…

Longitudinal studies conducted with children typically experience non-response problems that can make substantial inroads on sample size and introduce bias into the analysis. Three methods for limiting non-response in school-based research programs were assessed: (1) asking parents to return consent forms only if they do not want their children to…

Reading evaluation should (1) be a continuous process using many samples of a learner's work, (2) allow students to engage in uninterrupted reading, (3) constitute a learning situation, and (4) indicate new directions for improvement in an open-ended manner. Current practices for evaluating children's reading processes are usually based on samples…