This ethnographic case study, situated in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, examined the effects of full-scale provincial testing on families, its influences on homework, and familial accountability for teaching and learning. Data were drawn from family interviews, as well as letters and documents regarding homework. Teachers sensed a significant…

First-year seminars that teach foundational academic skills are common in universities around the world, but few studies have been conducted to determine whether the specific skills students develop in these courses transfer to other academic contexts. Our research presents a case study that addresses this gap by measuring students' perceptions of…

Different variants of the selected-response (SR) item type have been developed for various reasons (i.e., simulating realistic situations, examining critical-thinking and/or problem-solving skills). Generally, the variants of SR item format are more complex than the traditional multiple-choice (MC) items, which may be more challenging to test…

This article investigates how test-takers change their strategies to handle increased test difficulty. An adult sample reported their test-taking strategies immediately after completing the tasks in a reading test. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling specifying a measurement-invariant, ability-moderated, latent transition…

Educational programs that incorporate social emotional-learning (SEL) strategies, study skills, and mindful breathing using biofeedback can help adolescents decrease worry and social stress, increase test preparedness self-efficacy, and improve academic performance due to lowered levels of test anxiety. The current study examined the efficacy of a…

Graded Response Method (GRM) is an alternative to multiple-choice testing where students rank options according to their relevance to the question. GRM requires discrimination and inference between statements and is a cost-effective critical thinking assessment in large courses where open-ended answers are not feasible. This study examined…

Background: A potential problem of low-stakes large-scale assessments such as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is low test-taking engagement. The present study pursued two goals in order to better understand conditioning factors of test-taking disengagement: First, a model-based approach was used to…