The Preschool Early Numeracy Skills Test--Brief Version (PENS-B) is a measure of early numeracy skills, developed and mainly used in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the factorial validity and measurement invariance across gender of PENS-B in the Greek educational context. PENS-B was administered to 906 preschool…

Research has shown that the context of practice tasks can have a significant impact on learning, with long-term retention and transfer improving when tasks of different types are mixed by interleaving (abcabcabc) compared with grouping together in blocks (aaabbbccc). This study examines the influence of context via interleaving from a psychometric…

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of functional data analysis (FDA) as a general methodology for analyzing person response functions (PRFs). Applications of FDA to psychometrics have included the estimation of item response functions and latent distributions, as well as differential item functioning. Although FDA has been…

Computational thinking (CT) has permeated primary and early childhood education in recent years. Despite the extensive effort in CT learning initiatives, few age-appropriate assessment tools targeting young children have been developed. In this study, we proposed Computational Thinking Test for Lower Primary (CTtLP), which was designed for lower…

Purpose: This study examined the psychometric properties of the Preschool Language Scales---Fifth Edition (PLS-5 English) among preschool children from low--socioeconomic status (SES) families. Method: The PLS-5 was administered individually to 169 3- to 4-year-old children enrolled in Head Start programs. We carried out a Mokken scale analysis…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become essential in educational settings and human development. Federal policy has begun to incorporate SEL factors into education accountability metrics. Schools, institutes, and scholars have started implementing SEL in K-12 educational contexts. Social interactions and emotions are a daily part of…

Analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions. A standard practice for HTE analysis is to examine interactions between treatment status and preintervention participant characteristics, such as pretest scores, to identify how different groups respond to treatment.…

Several instruments that measure the teaching, learning, and assessment quality have been developed and published. However, a psychometrically sound instrument to measure teaching, learning, and assessment quality in early childhood care and education that suitable for the Malaysian context needs to be validated. Therefore, this study aimed to…

Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) is a federally funded system that addresses quality in early care and education in many states throughout the country. At the heart of every QRIS system is a quality appraisal system that measures child care quality against state or regionally established standards. While QRISs are being implemented to…

The relationship between latent trait and test-taking speed is an important area of study in assessment research. In addition to contributions of such studies to psychometrics, the factors that affect both ability and speed have implications for test development and have policy consequences especially if the tests are high stakes. This study…

Background: The self-concept of children has an impact on later behavioural development and psychopathology; therefore, evidence of the accurate measurement of self-concept is important. Harter and Pike's (1984, "Child Development," 55, 1969) commonly used measure of self-concept, the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social…

Character education, an educational construct which emphasizes educational strategies and targets the specific moral development needs of children (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007), is often taught in the school setting through direct instruction by the school counselor using simple tools such as books and movies. However, there is absence of…

The study proposes a multicomponent model of subjective well-being (SWB) in elementary school. The model includes satisfaction with school, affect toward school, well-being related to communication with peers, and subjective physical well-being. The aim of this study is to verify whether well-being related to different aspects of school life can…

Scaffolding, an instructional strategy for providing support until learners can perform a task on their own, holds a potential to improve assessments for test takers who need support to demonstrate their abilities, such as English learners (ELs). In this study, we evaluated the benefits of including scaffolded tasks in standardized speaking…

There is a need for developmentally appropriate Computational Thinking (CT) assessments that can be implemented in early childhood classrooms. We developed a new instrument called "TechCheck" for assessing CT skills in young children that does not require prior knowledge of computer programming. "TechCheck" is based on…