This paper examines the way in which learning quality has been conceptualised and measured in school effectiveness surveys conducted by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of child poverty. Primary school surveys were conducted in Vietnam in 2010-11 and Ethiopia in 2012-13, and surveys at upper-primary and secondary level were conducted in Ethiopia,…

Test development has been an important part of measurement and evaluation in any educational setting, whether its purpose is instruction or training. Both teachers and trainers are expected to have certain level of mastery in developing reliable and valid tests for assessing performance of learners adequately. However, it has often been reported…

Linear factor analysis models used to examine constructs underlying the responses are not very suitable for dichotomous or polytomous response formats. The associated problems cannot be eliminated by polychoric or tetrachoric correlations in place of the Pearson correlation. Therefore, we considered parameters obtained from the NOHARM and FACTOR…

A self-report scale that measures teachers' confidence in teaching students about twenty-first century skills was developed and validated with pre-service and in-service teachers. First, 16 items were created to measure teaching confidence in six areas: information literacy, collaboration, communication, innovation and creativity, problem solving,…

School climate is recognized as a relevant factor for the improvement of educative processes, favoring the administrative processes and optimum school performance. The present article is the result of a quantitative research model which had the objective of psychometrically designing and validating a scale to diagnose the organizational climate of…

David Thissen, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Quantitative Program at the University of North Carolina, has consulted and served on technical advisory committees for assessment programs that use item response theory (IRT) over the past couple decades. He has come to the conclusion that there are usually two purposes…

Graduate students play a critical role in undergraduate education at doctorate granting institutions; but generally have minimal opportunity to develop teaching expertise. Furthermore, little is known about how graduate students develop teaching expertise in this context. We investigated the development of topic-specific pedagogical content…

The present study examined the technical adequacy of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) measure of early numeracy for kindergarten through third grade students. Our CBM measures were developed to reflect broad and theoretically derived categories of mathematical thinking: quick retrieval, written computation, and number sense. The mastery of these…

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale that measures adolescents' attitudes toward classroom incivility and determine whether items would reveal subscales. A sample of 549 adolescents between ages 11 and 18 (53.1% boys; M[subscript age] = 13.90, SD = 1.41) completed items written to measure attitudes toward classroom incivility. An…

The measurement of teacher self-efficacy has a history of more than 30 years. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the development and validation of a new scale to measure the science teaching self-efficacy of elementary school teachers. Therefore, a scale has been created to measure elementary teachers' science teaching self-efficacy and…

Seeking to address a gap in the literature, this article reports the development of an instrument to measure Hong Kong primary school music teachers' concerns about inclusive music education. To do so, a 25-item music teachers' Concern of Inclusive Music Teaching (CIMT) scale was constructed and administered to 317 primary schools music teachers…

The C-Test as a tool for assessing language competence has been in existence for nearly 40 years, having been designed by Professors Klein-Braley and Raatz for implementation in German and English. Much research has been conducted over the ensuing years, particularly in regards to reliability and construct validity, for which it is reported to…

Research indicates that most standards documents articulate far more content than can be taught in the time available to K-12 teachers. In response, analysts at Marzano Research sought to identify, as objectively as possible, a focused set of critical concepts for each K-12 grade level in the content areas of English language arts (ELA),…

Background: Every year, significant effort and resources are expended around the world to develop innovative instructional strategies and materials to improve undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education. Despite convincing evidence of efficacy with respect to student learning, most will struggle to become successfully…

Science teachers in South Africa and globally experience difficulties with the integration of indigenous knowledge into their science lessons--a requirement of many science curricula. One of the reasons for this may relate to the views teachers hold about indigenous knowledge. Such views can form a barrier against successful inclusion of…