Some pre-instructional misconceptions held by children can persist through scientific instruction and resist changes. Identifying these misconceptions would be beneficial for science instruction. In this preliminary study, scores on a 60-item true-false test of knowledge and misconceptions about earthquakes were compared with previous interview…

A study examined the information collected by the Department of Defense on both the quality of its new recruits and the effectiveness of its training in preparing recruits to operate in a technologically sophisticated environment. It found that data were collected at a recruit's entrance to military life, during and upon completion of formal…

Measures of both preferred and actual classroom and school environment were administered to 1,675 secondary school students in New South Wales (Australia). Shortened versions of the My Class Inventory, Classroom Environment Scale, and Individualized Classroom Environment Questionnaire, as well as the Quality of School Life questionnaire were…

This paper deals with the evaluation of an out-of-school tutorial program, CROSSROADS, which was funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Basic Skills Improvement Program. Like many projects funded under the Basic Skills program, CROSSROADS was terminated after two years even though it had been funded with the expectation of four years for…

In a 6-month study of a small private school (Fielding) in central Virginia, seven participants in a curriculum practicum tested a research strategy for investigating the knowledge, skills, and attitudes fostered by a school's environment. Given the subjectivity of environmental influences, the team rejected scrupulous data collection to…

A method for understanding and controlling the multiple facets of an oral examination (OE) or other judge-intermediated examination is presented and illustrated. This study focused on determining the extent to which the facets model (FM) analysis constructs meaningful variables for each facet of an OE involving protocols, examiners, and…

Eighteen papers, 11 in English, and 6 in Finnish and 1 in German are presented on the general theme "Language--Knowledge and Skill," a theme that emphasizes the need to examine the communicative goal in foreign language education from the perspective of both theory and practice. The English-language articles on foreign language testing,…

The eight articles in this compilation provide various approaches and techniques for use by classroom teachers in the informal evaluation of student reading performance. The first article outlines the many purposes for which informal measures may be used and briefly describes the various forms such measures may take, while the second focuses on…

Standardized tests of writing ability have individual and shared limitations and deficiencies that should be acknowledged by test designers and users. Most institutions use the portions of standardized tests that test ability to proofread and edit, but they do not use the optional essay sections that actually require students to write. To assure…

This instructional training package introduces practitioners to methods for developing, validating, using, and reporting criterion-referenced tests. It provides a comprehensive presentation of criterion-referenced testing technology. The package emphasizes the most recent substantive and technological advances in the field that are both important…

Principles and guidelines for the use of expert judgment of experiential learning are outlined. The report deals with a number of basic issues that apply to expert judgment, such as the role of the evaluator in defining criteria, and structuring the assessment procedure so that it will be reliable and valid. The importance of establishing…

The Parent Opinion Inventory was developed to accomplish three goals: (1) to assess parents' attitudes toward their children's school and its programs; (2) to provide an opportunity for parents to make specific recommendations for improvement; and (3) to provide decision-making data relative to program development, policy formation, administrative…

An important part of any school's self-evaluation is student input or feedback. This inventory was developed in order to accomplish two goals: assessing student attitudes toward many facets of the school, and providing an opportunity for students to make recommendations for improvement. Thirty-four multiple choice items collect information on…

This paper presents a critique of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's (N.W.R.E.L.) review of the Mat-Sea-Cal Oral Proficiency Tests in their publication, Oral Language Tests for Bilingual Students. That publication was released in July, 1976 as a guide to administrators and program coordinators in the selection of instruments for…

Because the achievement battery traditionally administered to Brazilian college bound students may discriminate against those who cannot afford to attend the best high schools or preparatory courses, tests were developed to measure aptitude for higher education, independent of ability or actual knowledge of course content. The focus of the…