There has been a call from the national community of biologists and biology educators to increase biological literacy of undergraduate students, including understanding and application of core concepts. The structure and function relationship is a core concept identified by the wider biology community and by physiology faculty. Understanding of…

Over 30 states have adopted the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) as a component of their program quality assessment systems, but the use of ECERS-R on such a large scale has raised important questions about implementation. One of the most pressing question centers upon decisions users must make between two scoring…

Classrooms are a primary site of evidence about learning. Yet classroom proceedings often occur behind closed doors and hence evidence of student learning is observable only to the classroom teacher. The informal and undocumented nature of this information means that it is rarely included in statistical models or quantifiable analyses. This…

Most doctoral students are novice researchers and may not possess the skills to effectively conduct a comprehensive review of the literature and frame a problem designed to conduct original research. Students need proper training and tools necessary to critically evaluate, synthesize and organize literature. The purpose of this concurrent mixed…

This work describes three case studies conducted to address two major problems in the area of chemistry education research, the lack of reported psychometrics regarding instrument scores, and the need for well-characterized assessments to evaluate college chemistry curricula. The first case study describes a psychometric evaluation of the Colorado…

This mixed methods study combining a single-subject experimental design with an embedded case study focuses on the impact of a visual treatment on the handwritten and typed output of a struggling male writer during his 5th through 7th grades who has undergone a longitudinal remedial phase of two and a half years creating text-only material as well…

Repeated Reading is a common reading intervention that has been used to help students read fluently since 1979. There are many variations of Repeated Reading that have been investigated and found to be effective. However, there is a relative research deficit on the effectiveness of software programs for administering Repeated Reading. This…

In K-12 environments in the US, classroom tests are a central means by which teachers assess English Language Learner (ELL) content knowledge. Performance on routine classroom assessments is often a contributing criterion for school based decision-making and can affect decisions relating to academic tracking, retention, and access to academic…

Multilevel data often exist in educational studies. The focus of this study is to consider differential item functioning (DIF) for dichotomous items from a multilevel perspective. One of the most often used methods for detecting DIF in dichotomously scored items is the Mantel-Haenszel log odds-ratio. However, the Mantel-Haenszel reduces the…

Value-added modeling is an alternative approach to test-based accountability systems based on the proportions of students scoring at or above pre-determined proficiency levels. Value-added modeling techniques provide opportunities to estimate an individual teacher's effect on student learning, while allowing for the possibility to control for the…

This hermeneutically crafted qualitative study examines how six university-educated middle-class Pakistani Muslim women negotiate the competing expectations of traditional Muslim culture and the emancipated ethos of the university. It uses Robert Kegan's constructive-developmental theory, whose Subject-Object scoring system distinguishes a…

By centralizing the issue of test fairness in language proficiency assessments, this study responds to a call by researchers for developing greater social responsibility in the language testing agenda. As inquiries into language attitude and psychology indicate, there is an underlying uncertainty pertaining to the validity of test use and score…

Forty five percent of the students' receiving Title I funds in urban lower class inner city schools and 20% of the students not receiving Title I funds in American public schools are reading below proficient on standardized tests. The goal of No Child Left Behind Legislation was to make sure that 95% of all students are reading at a proficient…