Assessing and developing critical-thinking skills in higher education

Generic skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and communication are essential for students' success in higher education and their careers. This article presents findings from an international study of students' (n ≈ 120,000) generic skills from six countries using a performance-based assessment. Results indicate that higher education students, on average, gain generic skills between entry and exit. However, learning gain is less marked than could be expected and varies significantly among country samples. Various background variables such as gender, ethnicity, parental level of education, and primary language are also explored. The authors conclude that it is feasible to reliably and validly measure generic skills in a cross-cultural context and that assessment of these skills is an essential component of best practices in higher education.     

An evaluation framework for cross-lingual link discovery

Cross-Lingual Link Discovery (CLLD) is a new problem in Information Retrieval. The aim is to automatically identify meaningful and relevant hypertext links between documents in different languages. This is particularly helpful in knowledge discovery if a multi-lingual knowledge base is sparse in one language or another, or the topical coverage in each language is different; such is the case with Wikipedia. Techniques for identifying new and topically relevant cross-lingual links are a current topic of interest at NTCIR where the CrossLink task has been running since the 2011 NTCIR-9. This paper presents the evaluation framework for benchmarking algorithms for cross-lingual link discovery evaluated in the context of NTCIR-9.     

Gender and age-appropriate enrolment in Uganda

Secondary school enrolment in Uganda has historically favoured males over females. Recently, however, researchers have reported that the secondary enrolment gender gap has significantly diminished, and perhaps even disappeared in Uganda. Even if gender parity is being achieved for enrolment broadly, there may be a gender gap concerning age-appropriate enrolment. This is an important next step in educational research concerning gender equity in education worldwide. There is little information about what individual, family and regional factors influence age-appropriate enrolment. Therefore, this study investigates a potential age-appropriate enrolment gender gap for secondary-aged youth, and examines the factors that influence gendered enrolment behaviours in Uganda. Implications for policy, practice, and further research are discussed.     

Measurement Invariance of a School Readiness Screener for Use in Preschool and Kindergarten

Research Findings: Public policy has increasingly focused on expansion of preschool access for underserved students and systematic evaluation of preschool quality and students’ readiness for school. However, such evaluation is limited by a lack of thoroughly validated assessments for use with preschool populations. The present study examined the measurement and structural invariance of the Kindergarten Student Entrance Profile (KSEP) across kindergarten and prekindergarten groups to evaluate its potential use across developmental groups. Participants included 522 kindergarten and 548 prekindergarten students in central California. Invariance was tested by fitting a series of multiple-groups confirmatory factor analysis models with parameter constraints across groups. Results indicated that measurement and structural parameters of the KSEP were invariant across kindergarten and prekindergarten groups. Prekindergarten means on both Social–Emotional Readiness and Cognitive Readiness were significantly lower than kindergarten means. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that the KSEP may potentially be used with prekindergarten students to assess school readiness and inform intervention before kindergarten entry.