Abilities in scientific thinking and reasoning have been emphasized as core areas of initiatives, such as the Next Generation Science Standards or the College Board Standards for College Success in Science, which focus on the skills the future will demand of today's students. Although there is rich literature on studies of how these abilities…

In Fall and Winter 2022-2023, the NSCAS assessments were administered in ELA and mathematics for grades 3-8. In Spring 2022-2023, the NSCAS assessments were administered in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics for grades 3-8 and in science for grades 5 and 8. The purposes of the NSCAS assessments are to measure and report Nebraska students'…

Undergraduate research (UR) is a vetted educational tool that is commonly perceived to prepare students for entering graduate school and careers in STEM fields; however, scholarly attention to date has largely relied on self-report data, which may limit inferences about the causal effects on student outcomes. In light of this, recent calls have…

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and "respond" to their students' ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up…

After passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, states assumed greater responsibility for designing their own accountability and assessment systems. ESSA requires states to measure "higher order thinking skills and understanding" and encourages the use of open-ended performance assessments, which are essential for…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened up new possibilities for how student and school success are defined and supported in American public education. States have greater responsibility for designing and building their assessment and accountability systems. These new opportunities to develop performance assessments are critically important…

This paper enquires into the grounds for convergence of judgements in a situation of blind peer review, where reviewers are asked to assess the standing of scholars in a disciplinary field. The paper first considers traditional accounts of peer review and threats to its reliability and validity. Next it examines the grounds for disciplinary…

Most experts in the testing community have presumed that the $350 million promised by the U.S. Department of Education to support common assessments would promote those that made greater use of open-ended items capable of measuring higher-order critical-thinking skills. But as measurement experts consider the multitude of possibilities for an…

Quantitative literacy has been recognized as an important skill in the higher education and workforce communities, focusing on problem solving, reasoning, and real-world application. As a result, there is a need by various stakeholders in higher education and workforce communities to evaluate whether college students receive sufficient training on…

In this article, the author describes her use of direct instruction to introduce the skill of determining source reliability in a fifth-grade unit on immigration in American history. She structures instruction to help students establish a thinking-skill strategy that results in not only an understanding of immigration in the late 1800s to early…

Junior high school teacher Mary Rice designs a consumer research unit that cultivates students' critical reading and thinking skills. As students learn how to develop and revise criteria for evaluating the reliability of online information, they read customer reviews, research products, and present their findings orally.

Many people believe in the value of outdoor experiential education opportunities such as organized camps for youth, but few instruments have been developed to measure the central youth development outcomes of camp. The purpose of this paper is to present the psychometric properties including the internal consistency and validity of scales designed…

The Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), its design, concept and evaluation scheme as well as experiences and results of application are described. The test was designed to mirror a more holistic concept of creativity than the mere quantitatively oriented, traditional divergent thinking tests. The specific design using figural…

Discusses the Internet as a resource for secondary school students and describes a three-day Internet Information Literacy unit that is designed to improve students' critical thinking skills in using the Internet. Considers reliability problems, evaluation criteria, navigation problems, and effective research strategies. (LRW)

The Matrix Analogies Test measures nonverbal ability of handicapped and nonhandicapped children, ages 5-17, in a culture-fair fashion. It assesses pattern completion, reasoning by analogy, serial reasoning, and spatial visualization, with a short form available as a screening instrument. This paper describes the test's administration, format,…