For academic success, it is increasingly important that students of all ages can produce and comprehend expository discourse. This article provides guidance to clinicians and educators on using language sample analysis (LSA) to assess the expository language abilities of students across grades. Focusing on microstructural and macrostructural…

Classroom-based language assessments mainly include formative assessment and summative assessment, which are the most commonly used evaluation methods. The present study adopts a contrastive method to analyze the two types of assessments. Results of the study show that: 1) the characteristics of formative assessment contain teachers' adaptation to…

This study compared Korean adult learners' English speech in dialogic and monologic tasks, measuring 57 college students' oral proficiency in terms of holistic and analytic grades. The statistical analyses were focused on two questions: (1) how much do the holistic grades of oral proficiency and analytic grades of the four linguistic features…

An alternative to null hypothesis significance testing is presented and discussed. This approach, referred to as observation-oriented modeling, is centered on model building in an effort to explicate the structures and processes believed to generate a set of observations. In terms of analysis, this novel approach complements traditional methods…

This article utilises theories, methods and tools from the fields of Social Psychology and Education to suggest new metrics for the analysis of competitive sport. The hope is that these metrics will encourage cooperation to exist alongside of the dominant feelings of competition. The main theory from Social Psychology involved here is Social…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gather elements to propose a sustainability assessment tool (SAT) to be used in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil and the related program to be created for SAT dissemination and HEI monitoring, publication of results and benchmarking. Design/methodology/approach: The characteristics of eight…

The purpose of this ITEMS module is to provide an introduction to differential item functioning (DIF) analysis using mixture item response models. The mixture item response models for DIF analysis involve comparing item profiles across latent groups, instead of manifest groups. First, an overview of DIF analysis based on latent groups, called…

Whilst the fight for the inclusion of dance in schools has been an ongoing struggle, current government directives and educational policies present an even greater threat to the future of quality dance education in schools and this needs to be addressed. This paper begins to explore the certificated dance education currently on offer in the United…

Purpose: This study evaluated interrater reliability (IRR) and test-retest stability (TRTS) of seven linguistic measures (percent correct information units, relevance, subject-verb-[object], complete utterance, grammaticality, referential cohesion, global coherence), and communicative success in unstructured conversation and in a story narrative…

Purpose: Multilingual children are disproportionately represented on speech pathology caseloads, in part due to the limited ability of traditional language assessments to accurately capture multilingual children's language abilities. This systematic review evaluates the evidence for identification of language disorder in multilingual children…

'School league tables' summarising the performance of secondary schools in England have been published annually since 1992. Although now a firmly established feature of the educational landscape, they have attracted criticism from those who point to their unintended negative consequences. These include 'teaching to the test', entering pupils for…

Initiatives to increase leadership accountability coupled with efforts to promote data-driven leadership have led to widespread adoption of instruments to assess school leaders. In this article, we present a decision matrix that practitioners and researchers can use to facilitate instrument selection. Our decision matrix focuses on the…

California's Commission on Teacher Credentialing (Commission) requires all programs of preliminary multiple and single subject teacher preparation to use a Commission-approved Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) as one of the program completion requirements for prospective teacher candidates. Three TPA models were approved by the Commission: (1)…

Educators, including English Language Teaching practitioners, acknowledge the influence of collaborative learning on students' learning experiences, as demonstrated by numerous studies conducted in diverse contexts. This research, however, keeping instructional innovation, students' collaborative engagement, language learning and classroom…

Dynamic Assessment (DA) is an implicit kind of assessment that most teachers and learners engage in during class time. Although there exists a body of research on the promising effects of DA, the studies have not compared the results across proficiency levels. This study examined the effect of interventionist approach to DA on Iranian English as a…