Education systems worldwide have shown much interest in "21st Century Competencies." In response to the call for better assessment of these competencies, we draw on a 4Cs framework (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking) and develop the 21st Century Competencies Scale-4C on a sample of 5857 Grades Four to Nine…

Argumentation plays a significant role in science as a scientific practice in which knowledge is constructed, evaluated, and modified. Scientific argumentation (SA) is thus a promising activity for students to pursue in order to think and act like scientists and to enhance their understanding of science. Considering the impact that assessments…

Background: As globalization continues to impact the engineering profession, many programs aim to prepare current and future engineers to work across national and cultural boundaries. Yet there remains a lack of quality tools for assessing global competency among engineers and other technical professionals, including their behavioral tendencies in…

This study addressed the cross-cultural validation of the Chinese Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (CMRQ) in a sample of 522 seventh to ninth graders from two public schools in eastern China. Confirmatory factor analyses, item-total correlation analyses, and reliability analyses were conducted to assess the psychometric quality of the CMRQ.…

Problem solving is considered one of the most critical competencies for life. However, many students may perform well in school yet cannot transfer the skills they learned in school to solve real-world problems, especially in science education. This study discusses the characteristics of the problem from the physics education perspective, based on…

Traditional oral examination (TOE) is criticized for the shortage of objectivity, standardization, and reliability. These perceived limitations can be mitigated by the introduction of structured oral examination (SOE). There is little evidence of the implementation of SOE in physiology laboratory courses. The purpose of this study was to…

Due to globalization, an increasing need for advanced speaking skills, and the interest aroused by English public speaking (EPS) competitions, EPS is increasingly important, especially among university students. Although self-efficacy is strongly associated with performance, no psychometrically sound instruments to measure EPS self-efficacy among…

The galvanic cell is a basic concept in electrochemistry. To assess mainland Chinese students' proficiency levels in galvanic cells, the Galvanic Cell Proficiency Level Assessment (GCPA) was developed based on the Rasch model. The GCPA was developed through a pilot test and consists of seven multiple-choice questions and four open questions. The…

It is essential to establish a multi-dimensional postgraduate quality evaluation system for student assessment and training. This study aimed to explore the construction of the multiindex and hierarchical comprehensive evaluation system for postgraduate training in science and engineering based on the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model…

In physics education research (PER), concept inventories (CIs) have become standard instruments for assessing students' learning throughout instruction. To promote widespread use of concept inventories, previous studies have developed an approach to split a full length CI into short versions of CIs. This research extends the existing method to…

Triangulation -- a combined use of different assessment methods or sources to evaluate psychological constructs -- is still a rarely used assessment approach in spite of its potential in overcoming inherent constraints of individual assessment methods. This paper uses field test data from a new OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills to examine…

Chinese higher education is experiencing rapid development and growth. With tremendous resources invested in higher education, policy makers have requested more direct evidence of student learning. However, assessment tools that can be used to measure college-level learning are scarce in China. To mitigate this situation, we translated the…

This study explored whether American and Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers differ in their evaluations of student oral performance by examining the assessments of two groups of raters in an undergraduate speech competition. Each of the 21 contestants presented a 3-min prepared speech on a required topic, responded to a follow-up…

Describes the chronic and acute subscales (SOMAC and SOMAA) of the Chinese Somatic Scale that was administered to 2150 Hong Kong secondary education students to measure their psychological well being. Results showed that both the SOMAC and SOMAA had acceptable reliability and validity status as compared with similar type tests. (GG)