Public perception of "declining standards" in school-leaving examinations often accompanies increases in pass rates in schoolleaving examinations. "Declining standards" to the public means easier examination papers. The present study evaluates a South African attempt to estimate the level of difficulty, as distinct from…

Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments may provide information about what faculty and/or researchers think it means to know and do physics, i.e.,…

Unlike their peers with typical hearing, reading and speech challenges observed among children with hearing loss may not only be caused by developmental issues but also hearing-related problems. Although conventional oral reading assessments are useful for identifying children at risk of reading difficulties, they do not help examiners identify…

This study aimed to determine the rater behavior in the evaluation process of student electronic portfolios used to measure student achievement in higher education, and thus to evaluate the usability of the electronic portfolio system. Considering that rater behavior adversely affects both validity and reliability in determining the performance of…

Video self-modeling (VSM) is a resource-efficient intervention that has been used to address some of the social and behavioral challenges experienced by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the current study, a multiple baseline design across three students was implemented to examine whether VSM can be used to increase compliance to…

Speakers use speech and gestures to represent referents in discourse. Depending on referents' information status, in speech speakers will vary richness of expression (e.g., lexical noun phrase [NP]/pronoun), nominal definiteness (indefinite/definite), and grammatical role (subject/object). This study tested whether these three linguistic markers…

National and institutional policies to escalate the production of doctorates have raised concerns about the quality of PhDs in South Africa. This study evaluates examiner reports of doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine to ascertain the criteria that examiners used to define a successful doctoral thesis. A qualitative…

There is quite a bit of evidence showing that the experience of learning an L2 will help in learning an L3, but as far as we know, very little research has investigated the possible impact of L3 learning on the already existing and still developing L2 system within the learner. According to Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), language…

The Third Edition of the ACEI Global Guidelines Assessment (GGA) was evaluated for its effectiveness as an international assessment tool for use by early childhood educators to develop, assess, and improve program quality worldwide. This expanded study was conducted in nine countries [People's Republic of China (2 sites), Guatemala, India, Italy,…

Writing is a critical skill to develop, but many students are not proficient writers. Limited research exists about writing interventions, particularly interventions that are resource-efficient (e.g., provided by non-educators and in a small-group format) and can be used during early elementary school. This study evaluated an evidence-based…

Many educators use the "Me! Lessons" to teach high school students with disabilities self-advocacy and self-awareness knowledge and skills. We conducted a mixed-methods study to examine the usefulness of the lessons, obtain student and parent perceptions of the lessons and to examine the lessons' impact on student knowledge. This study…

Purpose: The purpose of the present clinical forum is to compare how 2 clinicians might select among therapy options for a preschool-aged child who presents with stuttering close to onset. Method: I discuss approaches to full evaluation of the child's profile, advisement of evidence-based practice options open to the family, the need for…

In German Switzerland the learning and assessment of Swiss German Sign Language ("Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache," DSGS) takes place in different contexts, for example, in tertiary education or in continuous education courses. By way of the still ongoing implementation of the Common European Framework of Reference for DSGS,…

This study aims to report the development an instrument that is standardized (reviewed by validity, reliability, and difficulty index) to detect science misconception in an elementary school teacher. This study used a 4-D model; defining, designing, developing, and disseminating. First, it was prepared with 47 opened-ended questions, and then it…

This article presents an empirical evaluation of the validity and reliability of a peer-assessment activity to improve academic writing competences. Specifically, we explored a large group of psychology undergraduate students with different initial writing skills. Participants (n = 365) produced two different essays, which were evaluated by their…