This study examined teachers' beliefs about motivating students to read through the development of a new survey questionnaire. The current investigation reports on initial tests of the scale's reliability and validity. The items for this measure were developed from an engagement perspective to reflect the motivational constructs represented in an…

The impact of biotechnologies on peoples' everyday lives continuously increases. Measuring young peoples' attitudes toward biotechnologies is therefore very important and its results are useful not only for science curriculum developers and policy makers, but also for producers and distributors of genetically modified products. Despite of…

This article considers another group of educators involved with the adoption of model-based instruction (MBI)--the cooperating teachers, who supervise physical education teacher education (PETE) student teachers in the Georgia State University (GSU) program. The university spends several semesters educating preservice teachers about the skills and…

In previous chapters, student teachers' views and the use of model-based instruction (MBI) were determined to be largely positive. But do these positive attitudes and the actual use of MBI continue after completing a teacher education program? Many novice teachers experience "washout" when the attitudes and instructional practices they…

Guidelines for the construction and use of an attitude instrument are presented, and the application of the instrument to measure student attitude toward economics is described. Attention is directed to the Likert-like summated forced-choice variety of attitude instrument, whereby attitude toward the object is inferred from the summed responses to…

This manual describes the theory behind the Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ) used in Australia and defines what the subscale and scale scores mean. The LPQ is a 36-item self-report questionnaire that yields scores on three basic motives for learning and three learning strategies, and on the approaches to learning that are formed by these…

This manual describes the theory behind the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) and explains what the subscale and scale scores mean. The SPQ is a 42-item self-report questionnaire used in Australia to assess the extent to which a tertiary student at a college or university endorses different approaches to learning and the motives and strategies…

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that persons who experience a high degree of test anxiety also experience decrements in performance in evaluative situations. A study was conducted to develop a test anxiety questionnaire for student nurses in order to identify test anxiety. A 40-item, self-report questionaire was developed by two panels of…

An examination of the applicability of self-assessment as a tool for student placement in foreign language instruction focused on: (1) the ability of first-year university students to assess their performance level in the second language through a self-assessment questionnaire; (2) the quality of the questionnaire itself and its potential for…

Building capacity within schools and districts for continuous improvement is a goal of educators at all levels across the United States of America. An important first step in capacity building is identifying schools' current strengths and weaknesses. Schools can then begin building upon existing strengths to implement improvement initiatives.…

In a study of the reliability of an English language proficiency test for non-native teaching assistants (NNS TAs), 18 NNS TAs were administered the SPEAK Test. The results were compared with student evaluations of the intelligibility and clarity of the TAs' classroom speech. Despite problems with the SPEAK Test, the measure was considered a…

This section contains conference papers on testing and evaluation in second language teaching. They include: "English Language Entrance Examinations in Japan: Problems and Solutions" (James Dean Brown); "Reliability and a Learner Style Questionnaire" (Dale T. Griffee); "Does It Work?" Evaluating Language Learning Tasks" (Rod Ellis); "Communicative…