In this edition of Assessment News, Charles Darr uses a case study from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) to highlight how students can benefit from activating deliberate thinking in assessments. The key message underscores the value of using assessment information to generate insights that inform better teaching and…

The present study tested the effects of extrinsic motivation on scientific and artistic creativity among Chinese middle school students. In Study 1, a between-groups design was applied to examine the effects of expected rewards on scientific and artistic creativity among 123 students, and in Study 2 the same design was applied to examine the…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive design study was to understand how 6-12th grade teachers describe their teacher evaluation experiences and the role those experiences play in shaping their instructional practices. The literature review indicated the need to understand how teacher understandings of evaluation tools influence their…

This paper aims to describe the design and inspection of the quality of a digital learning platform to diagnose mathematical ability levels of seventh-grade students with regard to the topics of Measurement and Geometry. A total of 517 seventh-grade students from 23 schools in four regions, namely north, northeast, central, and south of Thailand…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine mathematics teachers' abilities in developing formative assessments when teaching algebraic reasoning after utilizing two innovations: lesson study and open approach. Methodology: A single group quasi-experimental research design was employed in two mathematics classes in a school in…

The need for improving and evaluating students' cognitive skills, including problem-solving, has been highlighted in both the mathematics education literature and the curricula worldwide. The objective of this study was to assess the problem-solving skills of lower secondary school students using a teacher-based evaluation method, taking into…

This study aimed to evaluate the value of justice, one of the 10 core values in the mathematics course curriculum, in the context of an exemplary activity in classroom practice and student interviews, where it was integrated into mathematics learning goals. The case study model was employed. The sample of the study included eight 7th-grade…

Science teachers crave instructional materials and an increasing number of them are going to online educational marketplaces to purchase them. This study reports on a content analysis of highly rated products marketed for middle level science (grades 6, 7, and/or 8) on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), one of the most prominent online educational…

Guided by the analytical framework in the current literature, whereby ten nature of science (NOS) aspects were targeted, this study aims at assessing the extent to which the three physics textbooks for Cycle 4 of Fundamental Schools in Burundi represent the NOS aspects. The quantitative embedded research design which combines the qualitative and…

Recent advances in automated writing evaluation have enabled educators to use automated writing quality scores to improve assessment feasibility. However, there has been limited investigation of bias for automated writing quality scores with students from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds. The use of biased scores could contribute to…

Understanding and supporting students' development of graph literacy is important. We studied how aspects of graph literacy might be supported (or hindered) in middle school by analyzing the content in textbooks. Specifically, we conducted a content analysis of tasks involving two-dimensional Cartesian graphs presented in grade 6-8 US textbooks.…

Research shows that writing motivation decreases throughout schooling and predicts writing performance. However, this evidence comes primarily from cross-sectional studies. Here, we adopted a longitudinal approach to (a) examine the development of attitudes toward writing, writing self-efficacy domains, and motives to write from Grade 6 to 7, and…

Recent advances in automated writing evaluation have enabled educators to use automated writing quality scores to improve assessment feasibility. However, there has been limited investigation of bias for automated writing quality scores with students from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds. The use of biased scores could contribute to…

Tangible programming tools have become a mainstream teaching aid in gamification programming learning (GPL) due to their interactivity and ability to enhance novice learners' computational thinking and spatial reasoning skills. However, comparing the relative efficacy of different programming tools that simultaneously support these skills was not…

In this study, it was aimed to develop a rubric to determine the travel writing levels of secondary school 7th grade students and to determine the students' travel writing skill levels. The descriptive scanning design of the quantitative model was adopted. It was decided to develop an analytical rubric because it serves to measure the sub-skills…