To succeed in Canadian health professions, university education programs students must initially meet a variety of program-specific and English-language admission requirements. For non-native English-speaking (NNES) students, a major challenge can be the demonstration of profession-specific academic literacy and, in particular, adequate language…

This case study of a grade six classroom literacy curriculum in Ontario, Canada was designed to produce new knowledge of how curricula can promote multimodal literacy learning opportunities for students. With a focus on constraints and enablers, the study found few opportunities for multimodal literacy learning due to standardised assessments, an…

The practice of measuring Indigenous achievement dates back to the early 1960s. Since then, Indigenous people have been subjected to a number of different standardized assessments intended to capture indicators of their well-being. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to the cultural appropriateness of subjecting Indigenous people to…

In 2010, the province of Ontario introduced a new universal two-year play-based full-day kindergarten program. The authors exploited the phasing-in of this program over five years, allowing a natural experiment in which children from full-day kindergarten could be compared with those from half-day kindergarten in matched neighborhoods. Children (N…

While Ontario has received international accolades for its enactment of province-wide standardised testing upon the formation of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), a closer look at provincial assessments over a 20-year span reveals successes as well as systemic tensions and fissures. The purpose of this paper is twofold.…

High-stakes standardized literacy testing is not neutral and continues to build upon the legacy of dominant power relations in the state in its ability to sort, select and rank students and ultimately produce and name some youth as illiterate in contrast to an ideal white, male, literate citizen. I trace the effects of high-stakes standardized…

In this research we explored the relationship between spatial activities in the home and spatial ability at the start of formal schooling at age four. In total, 30 children participated in this research. Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, a survey of at home spatial activities, and standardized testing in verbal and non-verbal…

Cognitive and psychometric variables have directed research on student test performance. However, student learning involves a substantial affective component. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between two kinds of affective variables--interpersonal trust and attitudes towards standardised tests--likely to underlie student…

This study examined the performance of Mandarin-speaking students in a K-Grade 4 50/50 Chinese/English bilingual program. The program was intended to facilitate students' learning of English and their adjustment to English-medium instruction within the school context. The bilingual-program students were compared to students from Mandarin-speaking…

This article is an overview of how Flin Flon School Division in Flin Flon, Manitoba, used money received through grant funding to revamp its math programming in order to meet the needs of the students within the division. A combination of standardized test scores and individual teacher assessments revealed where student mathematical understanding…

The study examines the role that perceptions or impressions of learning environments and assessments play in students' performance on a large-scale standardized test. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to test aspects of the Learning Errors and Formative Feedback model to determine how much variation in students' performance was explained…

The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics (ELM) software, a research-based bilingual interactive multimedia instructional tool, and its potential to develop emerging numeracy skills. At the time of the study, a central theme of early mathematics curricula, "Number Concept," was fully…

Classroom response systems are widely used in interactive teaching environments as a way to engage students by asking them questions. Previous research on the time taken by students to respond to conceptual questions has yielded insights on how students think and change conceptions. We measure the amount of time students take to respond to…

This Data-to-Go brief summarizes five year GMAT testing trends for US and Canadian residents, and race/ethnicity breakdowns for US citizens. It includes: (1) GMAT exams taken by US region, US state of residence, and race/ethnicity of examinees (US citizens only), (2) GMAT exams taken by Canadian residents, by Canadian province, (3) GMAT exams…

We tested the criterion-related validity and potential bias of two measures of pupils' academic achievement: the Teacher Rating Scale (TRS) and the Mathematics and Literacy Achievement Tests (MLTs). These measures are representative of assessment methods largely used in the elementary school. The aims were: (1) to verify the extent to which TRS…