Developing Score Reports for Cognitive Diagnostic Assessments

This paper presents a framework to provide a structured approach for developing score reports for cognitive diagnostic assessments (CDAs). Guidelines for reporting and presenting diagnostic scores are based on a review of current educational test score reporting practices and literature from the area of information design. A sample diagnostic report is presented to illustrate application of the reporting framework in the context of one CDA procedure called the Attribute Hierarchy Method. Integration and application of interdisciplinary techniques from education, information design, and technology are required for effective score reporting. While the AHM is used in this paper, this framework is applicable to any attribute-based diagnostic testing method.     

A Review of Recent Research on Individual‐Level Score Reports

As the primary interface between test developers and multiple educational stakeholders, score reports are a critical component to the success (or failure) of any assessment program. The purpose of this review is to document recent research on individual‐level score reporting to advance the research and practice of score reporting. We conducted a search for research studies published or presented between 2005 and 2015, examining 60 scholarly works for (1) the research focus, (2) stated or implied theoretical frameworks of communication, and (3) the characteristics of data sets employed in the studies. Results show that research on score properties, especially subscores, and score report design/layout are well‐represented in the literature base. The predominant approach to score reporting has been through a cybernetics tradition of communication. Data sets were often small or localized to a single context. We present example research questions from novel communication frameworks, and encourage our colleagues to adopt new roles in their relationships to stakeholders to advance score reporting research and practice.     

Five Essential Practices for Communication: The Work of Instructional Coaches

The work of instructional coaches, both general and discipline-specific, has become increasingly important as more schools rely on their leadership for improvements in teaching and learning. Much of their work hinges upon their effective communication with teachers and school administrators. This article outlines five practices for instructional coaches to use in order to achieve and maintain effective communication; these five practices draw upon the author's prior work as an instructional coach and upon her own research. The practices are presented by sharing the voices of three mathematics instructional coaches, their teacher colleagues, and their school administrators.     

Reporting the Percentage of Students above a Cut Score: The Effect of Group Size

Large‐scale assessment results for schools, school boards/districts, and entire provinces or states are commonly reported as the percentage of students achieving a standard—‐that is, the percentage of students scoring above the cut score that defines the standard on the assessment scale. Recent research has shown that this method of reporting is sensitive to small changes in the cut score, especially when comparing results across years or between groups. This study builds on that work, investigating the effects of reporting group size on the stability of results. In Part 1 of this study, Grade 6 students’ results on Ontario's 2008 and 2009 Junior Assessments of Reading, Writing and Mathematics were compared, by school, for different sizes of schools. In Part 2, samples of students’ results on the 2009 assessment were randomly drawn and compared, for 10 group sizes, to estimate the variability in results due to sampling error. The results showed that the percentage of students above a cut score (PAC) was unstable for small schools and small randomly drawn groups.     

论唐诗在日本传播的历程及文化意义

分析了唐王朝时期唐诗在日本传播的情况,认为政治影响、儒佛思想的东渐、汉文教育与汉字本身的特点是唐诗能够在日本广泛传播的三大历史原因。指出唐诗在日本传播的主要方式为"顺流""逆流""交流"三种形态,在古代东亚,唐诗还是亲善外交的手段与衡量文明程度的重要标准。     

Consequences of Test Score Use as Validity Evidence: Roles and Responsibilities

This article has three goals. The first goal is to clarify the role that the consequences of test score use play in validity judgments by reviewing the role that modern writers on validity have ascribed for consequences in supporting validity judgments. The second goal is to summarize current views on who is responsible for collecting evidence of test score use consequences by attempting to separate the responsibilities of the test developer and the test user. The last goal is to offer a framework that attempts to prescribe the conditions under which the responsibility for collecting evidence of consequences falls to the test developer or to the test user.     

Training Online Technical Communication Educators to Teach with Social Media: Best Practices and Professional Recommendations

ABSTRACT

The author reports on social media research in technical and professional communication (TPC) training through a national survey of 30 professional and technical communication programs asking about their use of social media in technical communication. This research forms the basis of recommendations for training online TPC faculty to teach with social media. The author offer recommendations throughout for those who train online TPC faculty as well as for the teachers themselves.     

Developing Effective Transition Reports for Secondary Students: A Nationwide Survey of College and University Disability Support Personnel

This exploratory study analyzes the perceptions of Disability Support Services (DSS) personnel regarding the transition process and documentation requirements to receive services for students with invisible disabilities in postsecondary settings. Invisible disabilities include attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, and traumatic brain injury. DSS personnel from 408 postsecondary institutions across the United States completed the researcher-generated survey online. Results indicated a lack of consistent collaboration with secondary institutions and use of transition plans to determine eligibility for disability services. Participants reported a lackluster view of their usefulness, and analyses of their free responses revealed specific themes for what DSS personnel reported would make transition reports more useful. Results regarding currency requirements, qualified conductors of, responsible parties for, and location of assessments are presented. Applications of the findings of this research are discussed for the preparation of effective transition reports and transition goals.     

Validating Student Score Inferences With Person‐Fit Statistic and Verbal Reports: A Person‐Fit Study for Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment

The goal of this study was to investigate the usefulness of person‐fit analysis in validating student score inferences in a cognitive diagnostic assessment. In this study, a two‐stage procedure was used to evaluate person fit for a diagnostic test in the domain of statistical hypothesis testing. In the first stage, the person‐fit statistic, the hierarchy consistency index (HCI; Cui, 2007 ; Cui & Leighton, 2009 ), was used to identify the misfitting student item‐score vectors. In the second stage, students’ verbal reports were collected to provide additional information about students’ response processes so as to reveal the actual causes of misfits. This two‐stage procedure helped to identify the misfits of item‐score vectors to the cognitive model used in the design and analysis of the diagnostic test, and to discover the reasons of misfits so that students’ problem‐solving strategies were better understood and their performances were interpreted in a more meaningful way.     

College Students With High‐Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: Best Practices for Successful Transition to the World of Work

The transition from college to work is a challenging time for students with autism spectrum disorder. College counselors who understand the challenges students face adjusting to the world of work can position themselves to be change agents for this population. This article illuminates the challenges facing these students to help close the knowledge gap of their career development trajectory. Strategies and best practices to guide these students through successful transition to the world of work are provided.     

The Financial Aid Consortium: Rationales and Best Practices for their Establishment between Community Colleges and Public Universities

ABSTRACT

The financial challenges facing college students in the U.S. are daunting. The majority of these students are incurring substantial debt during their studies. For many this likely debt level is sufficient to cause them to forgo college, while for others it leads them to drop out before completing a degree. This financial strain places a premium on efforts that the student can take to economize. One of the most substantial ways that the students can economize is through the inclusion of a community college in their plans of study. Consequently, economizing requires the inclusion of multiple colleges and the courses needed to be taken at different institutions seldom fits neatly into full-time semesters. Recent regulatory changes have created an opportunity for institutions to eliminate this type of financial strain through the strategic cooperation of a financial aid consortium.     

Developing Students as Effective Learners: The Student Conditions for School Improvement

This article outlines a Student Conditions instrument which is intended to complement existing IQEA mapping instruments. It briefly conceptualises each condition, using a combination of a review of the literature and findings from empirical research from within IQEA. Data from 6,000 students in 36 schools in various IQEA projects are presented and analysed. It suggests that the findings derived from the conditions survey provide a useful focus for the dialogue between teachers and students which is a critical factor in improving students’ learning.     

新闻传播模式与报道理念变革探究

新闻传播长期受我国传统思维方式影响,显现出整体观念、长官意识、中庸保守、抽象模糊的报道理念与传播模式。由计划经济向市场经济转型后,社会的巨大变迁促使新闻传播进行积极变革,这种变革主要表现为：在报道模式上由综合的整体观向具体的分析观转换;在思想观念上由长官强者意识向平民受众意识转移;在内容取向上由中庸保守向客观真实转变;在新闻表达上由抽象笼统的概述向形象细致的描述转向。     

The Communicative Work of Biology-Journal Captions: Lessons for Technical and Professional Communication

The authors examined a corpus of figure captions from technical and professional communication (TPC)-journal articles to test their sense that TPC captions do not fulfill their communicative potential as well as, they sensed, journals in science often do. The authors performed a content analysis on captions from biology-journal articles and iteratively tested a coding scheme of caption content. The resulting scheme can help in analyzing caption content, developing captions, and imparting a variety of TPC-related skills to students.     

论大学生心理健康教育与思想政治工作的有效结合

随着大学生的学习和就业压力不断增加，单纯的思想政治工作已不足以有效地对大学生的思想发展起到保障作用，对大学生进行合理的心理健康教育显得尤为紧迫和重要。作为一名高校心理健康教育工作者，笔者认为应有效地把心理健康教育与思想政治工作有效地结合起来，遵循心理学规律，促进大学生的全面发展与和谐校园构建。     

高考命题中的分数分布模拟与预测——难度常模的具体应用

难度常模的构建不仅带来了命题理念的转变和命题过程中控制技术的突破与改进,也大大简化了考试分数分布的模拟与预测过程。借助难度常模模拟和预测考试分数分布有两种方法:逐题比较法和分类合并法,分别适用于题目数较少与题目数较多的试卷。前者通过题目指标预估表和命题蓝图二者的比对,同时在难度常模中比对配对题目的数据预测分数分布;后者先将题目按难度和区分功能类型进行合并,再查询难度常模估取相应题目数据,计算得到各目标群体的得分情况。     

Achieving holistic care for refugees: The experiences of educators and other stakeholders in Surrey and Greater Vancouver,Canada

In 2020, the global number of refugees reached record levels, pressuring asylum countries to determine more effective methods for facilitating integration. This article explores an array of stakeholder practices towards refugees in Surrey and Greater Vancouver, Canada. It is based on questionnaires and interviews that elicit the perceptions and struggles of 40 settlement workers, health and mental health professionals, Members of Parliament, educators, librarians, scholars and grassroots organisations, who work with refugees. The findings show that stakeholders often feel isolated, ‘working in silos’ and wasting time and money due to uncoordinated services and a lack of interagency communication. They feel it is also unreasonable to expect Government-Assisted Refugees (GARs) to learn English and complete job training in preparation for independent living within 1 year of support. Both refugee adults and children suffer from high levels of trauma, often compounded by interrupted or no schooling. Since education is essential to refugee success, I argue that teachers play a role in filling the gap, often uniquely positioned to form ongoing, safe and trusting relationships with refugee students and their families. For many teachers, it is an ethos of care, compassion and social justice acquired in teacher education programmes that increases refugee resilience, sense of belonging and wellbeing. This article identifies what new collaborations between teachers and other stakeholders might accomplish, including communication back to government policymakers. Recommendations encompass initiating online registries of services and low-cost housing in neighbourhoods where community schools and services are interlinked, possibly achieving holistic care for all refugees.     

Discrepancies Between Score Trends from NAEP and State Tests: A Scale-Invariant Perspective

State test score trends are widely interpreted as indicators of educational improvement. To validate these interpretations, state test score trends are often compared to trends on other tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). These comparisons raise serious technical and substantive concerns. Technically, the most commonly used trend statistics—for example, the change in the percent of proficient students—are misleading in the context of cross-test comparisons. Substantively, it may not be reasonable to expect that NAEP and state test score trends should be similar. This paper motivates then applies a "scale-invariant" framework for cross-test trend comparisons to compare "high-stakes" state test score trends from 2003 to 2005 to NAEP trends over the same period. Results show that state trends are significantly more positive than NAEP trends. The paper concludes with cautions against the positioning of trend discrepancies in a framework where only one trend is considered "true."     

大学英语教学的有效途径是培养学生的元认知策略

学习策略特别是元认知策略已经成为外语教学的重要内容。大量研究证实元认知策略的运用成功与否可以直接影响学生学习英语的效果。目前，对学生元认知策略运用能力的培养已成为大学英语教改的一页主要课题。本文根据问卷调查的结果，分析了我校大学生英语学习过程中元认知策略使用的现状，提出了在外语教学中培养学生元认知策略的可行性建议。