Despite a policy focus on educating the whole child, China continues to struggle with a culture of testing, placing a premium on academic knowledge to the detriment of a more well-rounded curriculum. Students are overworked, lack adequate sleep, and have little time for anything beyond school work. The Chinese Ministry of Education has enumerated…

Each teacher of social studies teacher needs to possess a philosophy of teaching and learning. Philosophy provides guidance and direction in choosing objectives, learning activities, and assessment procedures. Each philosophy to be discussed will possess differences in meaning and implementation. It is salient to understand relevant philosophical…

This study explored the difficulties that probationary students viewed as obstacles to their academic progress. These difficulties were compared to those identified by regularly matriculated students and to probationary students' deficits on a standardized study skills test. We compared the responses of participants (N = 150) in an intervention…

Assessment has been at centre stage of educational reform in England and Wales in the past 15 years. This article argues that official educational assessment policy is essentially indifferent to the technical, pedagogic, and epistemological issues related to different forms of assessment. Policymakers are primarily concerned with…

We illustrate a class of multidimensional item response theory models in which the items are allowed to have different discriminating power and the latent traits are represented through a vector having a discrete distribution. We also show how the hypothesis of unidimensionality may be tested against a specific bidimensional alternative by using a…

In this study, the author investigated the relationships among Turkish students' perceived computer skills, computer attitudes, quantitative skills, qualitative skills, and gender. The author collected data from a total of 362 undergraduate students. He found that gender was a significant variable to predict computer attitudes but not perceived…

Each year, when standardized test scores are published for California students, the same message tends to surface: In general, the scores of blacks and Latinos trail those of other groups, especially whites. This pattern emerges so often that it usually doesn't surprise educators or researchers. In the author's search to better understand the…

We determine how much observed student performance in microeconomics principles can be attributed, inferentially, to three kinds of student academic "productivity," the instructor, demographics, and unmeasurables. The empirical approach utilizes an ordered probit model that relates student performance in micro to grades in prior…

This volume is concerned with the alignment between the way the mathematical performance of students is assessed and the reform agenda in school mathematics. The chapters in this book have been prepared to raise a set of issues that scholars are addressing during this period of transition from traditional schooling practices toward the reform…

It was hypothesized that receiving a problem of the day would result in higher mathematics scores on the Ohio Ninth Grade Proficiency Test. An experimental group consisting of 19 students received a problem of the day treatment every day during the 5 month period. The 19 students in the control group received no special treatment. Test scores of…

Suggests an open book approach to education and argues that educators should teach students to use books as sources of information instead of teaching students to memorize information. (RB)

Indicates that standardized reading tests vary widely in terms of the number of skills measured and in terms of the relative emphasis on each skill in studies done at the high school level. (RB)

Compares the "Neale Analysis of Reading Ability" test with the "Standard Reading Test 1" (Daniels and Diack), concluding that there is some evidence for the validity of "Test 1" but that it is more difficult than the Neale Test. (RB)

Critically analyzes selected intelligence test items from commonly used standardized tests. (DW)