Large-scale assessment programs are beginning to design group assessment tasks in which small groups of students collaborate to solve problems or complete projects. However, little is known about the validity of data from group assessment for making inferences about the competence of individual students. The present study compared students'…

This paper describes a study that investigated the interchangeability of four different assessment methods for measuring middle-school students' understanding of science concepts. The four methods compared were hands-on tasks with associated multiple-choice and written justification items, written analogues of the hands-on tasks, and two types of…

Whether or not working with more realistic and lengthier problems during instruction would make students better able to solve similar problems on achievement tests was studied for 82 seventh graders (50 in the experimental condition and 32 in the control condition) in general mathematics classes at an urban middle school. The study also…