The National Center of Education Statistics conducted a mapping study that equated the percentage proficient or above on each state's NCLB reading and mathematics tests in grades 4 and 8 to the NAEP scale. Each "NAEP equivalent score" was labeled according to NAEP's achievement levels and used to compare state proficiency standards and…

Computational tools and resources play an important role for vocabulary acquisition. Although a large variety of dictionaries and learning games are available, few resources provide information about the complexity of a word, either for learning or for comprehension. The idea here is to use frequency counts combined with intralexical variables to…

Two methods are currently in use at Educational Testing Service (ETS) for equating observed item difficulty statistics. The first method involves the linear equating of item statistics in an observed sample to reference statistics on the same items. The second method, or the item response curve (IRC) method, involves the summation of conditional…

In February 2011 author Robert Schwartz, along with with two colleagues--economist Ronald Ferguson and journalist William Symonds--released a report, "Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century," which was published by Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. When they…

An investigation into prospective mathematics/statistics teachers' (n = 134) conceptual understanding of statistics and attitudes to statistics carried out at the University of Limerick revealed an overall positive attitude to statistics but a perception that it can be a difficult subject, in particular that it requires a great deal of discipline…

Recent literature on learning with instructional manipulatives seems to call for a moderate view on the effects of perceptual and interactive richness of instructional manipulatives on learning. This "moderate view" holds that manipulatives' perceptual and interactive richness may compromise learning in two ways: (1) by imposing a…

Authors of fiction need not provide accurate accounts of the world, which might generate concern about the kinds of information people can acquire from narratives. Research has demonstrated that readers liberally encode and rely upon the information provided in fictional stories. To date, materials used to demonstrate these effects have largely…

Implicit beliefs about the nature of human abilities have significant motivational, behavioral, and affective consequences. The purpose of this article was to review the application of implicit beliefs to the youth sport context and to provide theoretically derived and evidence-based instructional strategies to promote adaptive implicit beliefs…

Purpose: Evidence from children's spontaneous speech suggests that utterance length and utterance position may help explain why children omit grammatical morphemes in some contexts but not others. This study investigated whether increased utterance length (hence, increased grammatical complexity) adversely affects children's third person singular…

An analysis of one-step equations from a cognitive load theory perspective uncovers variation within one-step equations. The complexity of one-step equations arises from the element interactivity across the operational and relational lines. The higher the number of operational and relational lines, the greater the complexity of the equations.…

Higher education has been deeply involved in the process of globalisation and has experienced consequent changes. In order to successfully operate in the globalised higher education landscape, universities worldwide continue to foster a commitment to internationalisation. As internationalisation has become a central concern of universities, more…

This study compared sections of functions and linear functions from four Korean textbooks and Core Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP). To understand differences and similarities among these textbooks, both horizontal and vertical analyses were conducted. The horizontal analysis results revealed that topics related to functions and linear functions…

Animation can be used for various purposes such as for procedural and motor skill learning (i.e., dance, sports, and motor rehabilitation). In the context of visual design, this study explores the possible influence of realism (levels of visual detail) in animation at the cognitive stage of motor skill acquisition. Students (N = 64) with low-prior…

In this article we explore the use of pictorial glossaries as an accommodation for English learners (ELs) with entry and emerging levels of English language proficiency. Drawing on survey responses from 98 middle school ELs and cognitive interviews with 10 of the survey participants, we examined the participants' preferences and experiences with…

When learning English, learners might face a challenging task in mastering pronunciation due to differences in both languages such as sound-to-letter correspondence, size of phoneme inventory, allophonic realization of sounds, place and manner of articulation, among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review both theoretical and…