This paper describes the second year of a multi-year study on the implementation of Peer Instruction and PeerWise-inspired pedagogies in a physics methods course in a teacher education program at a large research university in Western Canada. In the first year of this study, Peer Instruction was implemented consistently in the physics methods…

Tasks provide engaging ways to involve learners in meaningful, real-world activities with the foreign language (FL). Yet selecting classroom tasks suitable to learners' linguistic readiness is challenging, and task-based research is exploring the relationship between learners' overall abilities (e.g., reading, grammatical) and the complexity and…

High-stakes testing is used for the purposes of providing results that have important consequences. Validity is the cornerstone upon which all measurement systems are built. This study applied the Item Response Theory principles to analyse Northwest University Kano Post-UTME Economics test items. The developed fifty (50) economics test items was…

As part of an international effort to develop theory and best practices for teaching languages, the U.S. military has, since the American Revolution, been a leading supporter of literacy education to improve the job performance of soldiers. One important aspect of literacy education today--which continues to be a priority for government agencies,…

The purpose of this study was to examine processes experienced by students of different achievement levels in small group discussions in argumentation applications conducted in scientific and socio-scientific issues. Case study which is a qualitative research design was used for the study. In this line, a success test including mechanical subjects…

In this study, we identified the code-related (decoding, fluency) and language comprehension (vocabulary, listening comprehension) demands of the CBM-Maze test, a formative assessment, and compared them to those of the Gates-MacGinitie test, a standardized summative assessment. The demands of these reading comprehension tests and their…

Concept inventories hold tremendous promise for promoting the rigorous evaluation of teaching methods that might remedy common student misconceptions and promote deep learning. The measurements from concept inventories can be trusted only if the concept inventories are evaluated both by expert feedback and statistical scrutiny (psychometric…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) provide teachers with the expectations and requirements that are meant to prepare K-12 students for college and the workforce (CCSSI 2010b). The Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMPs) emphasize the development of skills and conceptual understanding for students to become proficient in…

This study investigated the role of item formats in the performance of 206 nonnative speakers of English on expressive skills (i.e., speaking and writing). Test scores were drawn from the field test of the "Pearson Test of English Academic" for Chinese, French, Hebrew, and Korean native speakers. Four item formats, including…

The central goal of this study was to examine the extent to which a teaching approach focused on the interaction between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic levels of chemistry representations could affect high school students' performance in the field of inorganic reactions, as well as to examine how the applied instruction influences…

From 2011-2013 the VCAA conducted a trial aligning the use of computers in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment culminating in a group of 62 volunteer students sitting their end of Year 12 technology-active Mathematical Methods (CAS) Examination 2 as a computer-based examination. This paper reports on statistical modelling undertaken to compare the…

As data-based decision making is receiving increased attention in education, more and more school performance feedback systems (SPFSs) are being developed and used worldwide. These systems provide schools with data on their functioning. However, little research is available on the characteristics of the different SPFSs. Therefore, this study…

"Scientific argumentation," defined as the ability to develop and analyze scientific claims, support claims with evidence from investigations of the natural world, and explain and evaluate the reasoning that connects the evidence to the claim, is a critical component of current science standards and is consistent with "Common Core…

Children's memories improve throughout childhood, and this improvement is often accompanied by a reduction in suggestibility. In this context, it is surprising that older children learn and reproduce more factual errors from stories than do younger children (Fazio & Marsh, 2008). The present study examined whether this developmental…

Helping students develop a sound understanding of scientific concepts can be a major challenge. Lately, learning progressions have received increasing attention as a means to support students in developing understanding of core scientific concepts. At the center of a learning progression is a sequence of developmental levels reflecting an…