There has been an increased interest in developing computer-adaptive testing (CAT) and multistage assessments for K-12 accountability assessments. The move to adaptive testing has been met with some resistance by those in the field of special education who express concern about routing of students with divergent profiles (e.g., some students with…

A primary instructional objective of most early science programs is to foster children's scientific curiosity and question-asking skills (Jirout & Klahr, 2011). However, little is known about the relationship between curiosity, question-asking behavior, and general inquiry skills. While curiosity and question asking are invariably mentioned in…

This article discusses obstacles that higher education institutions may need to surmount when introducing quality assurance measures such as student evaluation of teaching. It is based on a research study of how student evaluation of one-to-one instrumental tuition is perceived, experienced and practiced by instrumental teachers and their students…

This paper explores some complexities of moral learning by referencing personal and professional experiences that shape my moral ecology. Moral learning, like all forms of learning, is not merely accumulative but rather a recursive, adaptive and elaborative process. The multidimensional nature of this phenomenon can be captured by drawing on the…

Background: Dealing with complex issues per definition bears the burden of imperfection. Whatever comforting theoretical concepts may promise, real life complexity will take its messy toll once travelling from conceptual ambition to real life practice. We specifically reflect on the social scientific contribution to these inter- and…

The usage of "passe compose" and "imparfait" is one of the most challenging topics in French grammar for anglophone learners. Based on the aspect hypothesis formulated by Andersen and Shirai (1994), this study explored the patterns of errors made by higher-ability as opposed to average-ability students and male vs. female students with different…

Many students lack problem-solving skills. As teenagers, they tend to blame external forces or other people when something goes wrong, instead of trying to understand the root cause to prevent it from happening again. This article discusses the Lean Six Sigma methodology for problem solving, which the Board of Cooperative Educational Services in…

In 2010, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Education Program has established the Deeper Learning Initiative, which focuses on students' development of deeper learning skills (i.e., the mastery of core academic content, critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and "learn-how-to-learn" skills). Two test…

The Dimensional Change Card Sorting task frequently is used to measure extradimensional shifting abilities in preschool children. In two studies, we investigated what makes this extradimensional shifting task difficult. In Study 1 with 61 2- to 4-year-olds, we showed that extradimensional shifts from one dimension to another are more difficult…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. history content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from second-to fourth-grade levels. Half of the students received special education services, and half of the students were English language learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

The learning of English tenses and verbs is obviously the major and challenging part of second language learning and acquisition for Chinese students. The paper analyzes the features of simple present tense, simple past tense and verbs in them from the aspect of Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk's student grammar book as an instructive example.…

The purpose of the study was to determine to what extent online instructors make use of synchronous tools, and whether use of synchronous tools is correlated with retention. Between April and September of 2010 a confidential web survey was e-mailed to 120 randomly selected higher education instructors across the country who taught either 3- or…

In this commentary, the author discusses two recent replications (Santelices & Wilson, 2010; Scherbaum & Goldstein, 2008) of some of his earlier work on SAT items using the differential item functioning (DIF) statistic wherein he contrasted the test performance of African American examinees with White examinees (Freedle, 2003). In this…

According to classical theories, automatic processes are autonomous and independent of higher level cognitive influence. In contrast, the authors propose that automatic processing depends on attentional sensitization of task-congruent processing pathways. In 3 experiments, the authors tested this hypothesis with a modified masked semantic priming…

The main challenge for theories of multitasking is to predict when and how tasks interfere. Here, we focus on interference related to the problem state, a directly accessible intermediate representation of the current state of a task. On the basis of Salvucci and Taatgen's (2008) threaded cognition theory, we predict interference if 2 or more…