Amid growing debates around international assessment tools in educational policy, few have critically examined how students themselves are cast in policy tool production processes and discourse. Drawing on Stuart Hall's concept of representation, we show how higher education (HE) "students" are constructed, fixed and normalized by the…

The seven articles in this special issue are concerned with the challenges of assessing complex aspects of cognition in the domains of mathematics, reading, history, and science. Each describes the design of assessments and their interpretive use, with a particular focus on assessments closely tied to classroom instruction. Individually and…

Engineering byDesign™ (EbD) provides teachers and students with reflective, formative, and comprehensive summative assessment tools throughout the curriculum. Each lesson, unit, and course is created with a list of essential questions that are meant to guide students to a deeper understanding of national standards across the STEM domains (STL,…

Many studies have shown the positive impact of serious educational games (SEGs) on learning outcomes. However, there still exists insufficient research that delves into the impact of immersive experience in the process of gaming on SEG-based science learning. The dual purpose of this study was to further explore this impact. One purpose was to…

Current science education reform efforts emphasize teaching K-12 science using hands-on, inquiry activities. For maximum learning and probability of implementation among inservice teachers, these strategies must be modeled in college science courses for preservice teachers. About a decade ago, Morehead State University revised their science…

This article describes the design of a misconception diagnostic test about fire-related phenomena. It proposes a new test format in which a certainty-measuring tier has been integrated into each of the true/false response choices. This format is argued to be easier for teachers to use than the increasingly popular three-tier format. First, we…

Over the past several years, research teams have developed observational instruments to measure the quality of teachers' instructional practices. Instruments such as Framework for Teaching (FFT) and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) assess general teaching practices, including student-teacher interactions, behavior management, and…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

The first aim of this study was to develop a computer adaptive EFL test (CALT) that assesses test takers' listening and reading proficiency in English with dichotomous items and polytomous testlets. We reported in detail on the development of the CALT, including item banking, determination of suitable item response theory (IRT) models for item…

Parenting practices are a field in psychology in which numerous studies have been carried out. In western countries, attempts to define the concept operationally have led to the emergence of many scales claiming to test the concept. This study aims at developing a scale to evaluate the parenting practices of parents with schoolchildren and at…

The current study aimed to construct a questionnaire that measures students' personality traits related to "striving for understanding" and "learning value of geometry" and then examine its psychometric properties. Through the use of multiple methods on two independent samples of 402 and 521 middle school students, two studies…

This research suggests that structural accommodation can be implemented during the construction phase of standardized mathematics examinations. Data from a racially diverse district in the United States are used to compare student performance on questions with and without graphical aids. Findings suggest that mathematics questions possessing…

Purpose: The cross-cultural significance of autonomy within self-determination theory is divisive on universal significance. This paper aims to report a sequential exploratory mixed methods study conducted to construct and validate a scale to investigate how, in Malaysian context, the construct of autonomy is conceptualized in comparison with the…

Professional ethics includes the principles set forth by professional associations and accepted as correct by discussions over time, and which has become the sine qua non of a profession today. Professional ethics are established to increase the quality of professional practices and ensure correct and honest conduct. Not having professional…

The purpose of this study is to describe the development and validation of a survey that examines science students' social media learning behaviours. Inherent in critiques regarding "digital natives" is a need to better understand what the current generation of learners actually do in their social media practices for…