According to a popular belief, test takers should trust their initial instinct and retain their initial responses when they have the opportunity to review test items. More than 80 years of empirical research on item review, however, has contradicted this belief and shown minor but consistently positive score gains for test takers who changed…

This qualitative portraiture study explored how race becomes a conscious and salient dimension of teacher licensure exams for black preservice teachers. The findings focus on one black preservice teacher and how she identified as white on the demographic survey preceding her licensure exam due to the racialized nature of the experience and the…

Based on relevant literature and recent qualitative findings, the purpose of this survey research was to identify pedagogical approaches to melodic dictation employed by Advanced Placement (AP) Music Theory teachers across the United States. The researcher-designed survey questions focused on pitch and rhythm skills, instructional resources,…

Recent calls for an increase in educational accountability in K-16 resulted in an uptick of low-stakes testing and, consequently, an increased need for ensuring that students' test scores are reliable and valid representations of their true ability. Focusing on accountability testing in higher education, the current program of research was…

Background: Large-scale survey assessments have been used for decades to monitor what students know and can do. Such assessments aim at providing group-level scores for various populations, with little or no consequence to individual students for their test performance. Students' test-taking behaviors in survey assessments, particularly the level…

Chemistry faculty members are highly skilled in obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting physical measurements, but often they are less skilled in measuring student learning. This work provides guidance for chemistry faculty from the research literature on multiple-choice item development in chemistry. Areas covered include content, stem, and…

In the last two decades, much empirical research has been done in the field of behavioral economics to explain the psychological foundations for economic decisions. In particular, it has been shown that people exhibit time-inconsistent behavior when making intertemporal decisions, i.e., they demand higher interest rates for a delay of their…

The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) is a 5-level, criterion-referenced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) testing system implemented in Taiwan to assess the general English proficiency of EFL learners. In 1999, with the aim of encouraging the general study of English and to result in beneficial washback effects on the teaching and…

Test-enhanced learning has successfully been used as a means to enhance learning and promote knowledge retention in students. We have examined whether this approach could be used in a biochemistry course to enhance student learning about lipids-related concepts. Students were provided access to two optional learning modules with questions related…

Test scores are used to assess one's general knowledge of a specific area. Although strategies to improve test performance have been previously identified, the consistency with which one uses these strategies has not been analyzed in such a way that allows assessment of how much consistency affects overall performance. Participants completed one…

As academics we often assume that allocating marks to a task will influence student decision-making when it comes to completing that task. Marks are used by lecturers to indicate the relative importance of each of the criteria used for marking the assessment task and we expect the student to respond to the marks' allocation. This Postcard suggests…

The first step in teaching-to-understand economics is not teaching "the rules," but working with fundamental economic models from the outset. Many of the concepts in economics are illustrated through models. Students must: (1) be able to draw these models; (2) understand the assumptions of the models; and (3) use the models for analysis.…

In this report, the authors examine the impact of scoring a 1 or 2 on an AP® Exam in 10th grade on later AP Exam participation and performance. As access to AP courses increases within and across schools, a growing number of students are taking AP courses and exams in the earlier grades of high school. Using a matched sample of AP and no-AP…

This article reports findings from a 3-year qualitative study exploring the experiences of African American preservice teachers as they prepared for the Praxis "basic skills" teacher-licensure exam, a gatekeeper to many teacher-education programs. Using the construct of self-efficacy, results illustrate how students assess their Praxis…

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) gifted-and-talented programs aim to support all students of exceptional learning potential within the public school system. Using proprietary data made available to us by the NYC DOE, we show, however, that substantial disparities exist in the rates of gifted-and-talented admission test taking,…