The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds' academic knowledge and skills. Educationalists and public policymakers eagerly await the tri-annual results, with particular interest in whether their country has moved up or slid down the international rankings, as compared to earlier…

The Programme for International Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year olds academic achievement. Although it has traditionally been conducted using paper-and-pencil tests, the vast majority of countries will use computer-based assessment from 2015. In this paper, we consider how cross-country comparisons of children's…

Fairness in access to HE is unarguably a subject of paramount importance. Wherever a student's secondary school scores are relevant for access to HE, grade inflation practices may jeopardize fair access. Pressures for high grading are common in the context of educational consumerism and competition between schools and students. However, they are…

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) It isn't always possible to say with certainty from looking at a country's rank in the PISA educational league tables alone whether one country or economy has definitely performed better than another; (2) England's position in the league tables is dependent on which countries and…

In this global world in which educational technologies have developed at such a great pace, it is possible to say that administrators in the education sector are obliged with serious roles with regard to keeping up with the evolving technology and the management of education in this virtual environment. In the present study utilizing screening…

This article investigates the persistent and change elements of educational testing and assessment from 1920 to the present day. I show by examining the addresses and texts of American Educational Research Association presidents a continuing focus on schools, from early experiments and development up through applications in accountability systems.…

Students on a first year undergraduate economics module were given the choice of when to sit their first assessment in the subject in order to determine both preferences over assessment timing, and the impact of timing on performance. Clear preferences of having this option were shown (only 2% of students stated to be indifferent) with those more…

The use of different tools in the field of education has become widespread with the developments in technology. Online student response systems are one of these tools. Online student response systems have been used for many years. In the last couple of years, game items have been added, and game-based online student response systems have started…

Online quizzes have been shown to be effective learning and assessment approaches. However, if scenario-based online construction safety quizzes do not include time pressure similar to real-world situations, they reflect situations too ideally. The purpose of this paper is to compare engineering students' performance when carrying out an online…

The study aims to search the effect of guided inquiry laboratory experiments on students' attitudes towards chemistry laboratory, chemistry laboratory anxiety and their academic achievement in the laboratory. The study has been carried out with 37 third-year, undergraduate science education students, as a part of their Science Education Laboratory…

The interdependence between the first and second language of bilingual immigrant children has not received sufficient attention in research. Most studies concentrate on mainstream language skills of immigrant pupils. In some studies, the gaps in the language development of immigrant children are documented by comparing mainstream pupils with…

The authors examined the state of United States student academic readiness for higher education from a global perspective utilizing data from the Organization of Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests over a half a million 15 year old student's skills and knowledge.…

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a 30-question multiple-choice assessment that has been a building block for much of the physics education research done today. In practice, there are often concerns regarding the length of the test and possible test-retest effects. Since many studies in the literature use the mean score of the FCI as the…

This study compared an expert-based cognitive model of domain mastery with student-based cognitive models of task performance for Integrated Algebra. Interpretations of student test results are limited by experts' hypotheses of how students interact with the items. In reality, the cognitive processes that students use to solve each item may be…

Several factors could cause variability in item response theory (IRT) linking and equating procedures, such as the variability across examinee samples and/or test items, seasonality, regional differences, native language diversity, gender, and other demographic variables. Hence, the following question arises: Is it possible to select optimal…