International student assessments have become the "lifeblood" of the accountability movement in educational policy contexts. Drawing upon Stuart Hall's concept of representation, I critically examined who comprises epistemic communities responsible for developing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Assessment of…

The enhancement of critical thinking skills is necessary for students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. A three-year mixed methods study conducted at a Historically Black College and University in Baltimore, Maryland focused on enhancing critical thinking skills for African American students.…

The study concerns whether graduate students could improve the accuracy of their self-evaluations of performance in a statistics class over a semester when feedback was provided and whether such accuracy was related to their Miller Analogies Test scores. (Author/KM)

Three virtues of standardized achievement tests which have enhanced their usefulness are discussed, and three fallacies, all the result of overenthusiasm, that have encouraged the misuse of test scores are examined.

Discusses the effects of a grammar test on student admission to the department of communication at the University of Central Florida. (HOD)

Issues and problems in assessment research are explored, with suggestions to help establish an acceptable correlation between student assessment scores and final grades. Topics include assessing instructor grading variation, instructor grade point average (GPA), success rates, and lack of linearity in grade scales. Solutions to these problems are…

Relationships between faculty ratings and performance on components of the National Board of Medical Examiners Certifying Examination for Primary Care Physician's Assistants were investigated. Results show significant though modest correlation. One implication is that faculty members are able to make discrete judgements about students on more than…

Problems in improving the reliability of essay marks are examined in this Australian study that considers the markings of 338 essays, each marked by one of 13 graders. It is concluded that improvement is needed but the changes necessary for the improvement are not feasible. (LC)

Describes a test used to assess the critical thinking ability of psychology majors. Asserts that the ability to engage in psychological critical thinking separates psychology majors from other students and provides evidence demonstrating that senior psychology majors scored higher on the test than students of other majors and introductory…

The author presents critical comments on a paper by John Siegfried, in which Siegfried reports on a controlled experiment to determine whether the educational experience of being a proctor is sufficiently valuable to justify awarding academic credit. Siegfried argues that a semester of proctoring teaches a student more than a one-semester,…

The following ways of linking results from distinct assessments to use them for multiple purposes are reviewed: (1) equating; (2) calibration; (3) statistical moderation; (4) prediction; and (5) social moderation. The characteristics of these methods, their requirements, and the comparative inferences they support are described. (SLD)

Whether informal subject-oriented prior-knowledge state assessment or information progress-assessment results in increased study pace or a positive effect on final test results was studied with over 9500 open education college students. Student characteristics related to differences in participation in information-assessment procedures were…

Investigates teachers thoughts about test-feedback sessions and their resulting emotions and strategies when delivering feedback to students. Explains that past experiences with feedback sessions, problem students, teachers beliefs about feedback processes, and their goals for providing feedback influence the teachers level of emotion; the…

The report gives the results of the 1974 joint student selection entrance test for English, administered simultaneously at the universities of Joensuu, Jyvaskyla and Turku. The test battery comprised 309 multiple-choice items and was completed by 843 candidates. Hirvonen's paper examines problems of student selection and theoretical aspects of…