Psychometric characteristics of integrated multi-specialty examinations: Ebel ratings and unidimensionality

Over recent years, UK medical schools have moved to more integrated summative examinations. This paper analyses data from the written assessment of undergraduate medical students to investigate two key psychometric aspects of this type of high-stakes assessment. Firstly, the strength of the relationship between examiner predictions of item performance (as required under the Ebel standard setting method employed) and actual item performance (‘facility’) in the examination is explored. It is found that there is a systematic pattern of difference between these two measures, with examiners tending to underestimate the difficulty of items classified as relatively easy, and overestimating that of items classified harder. The implications of these differences for standard setting are considered. Secondly, the integration of the assessment raises the question as to whether the student total score in the exam can provide a single meaningful measure of student performance across a broad range of medical specialties. Therefore, Rasch measurement theory is employed to evaluate psychometric characteristics of the examination, including its dimensionality. Once adjustment is made for item interdependency, the examination is shown to be unidimensional with fit to the Rasch model implying that a single underlying trait, clinical knowledge, is being measured.     

Instructions to Adopt an External Focus Enhance Muscular Endurance

Abstract

The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench-press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.     

Situated Learning with Online Portfolios, Classroom Websites and Facebook

In this article we describe the evolution of an elective course designed specifically for undergraduate students in our pre-service teacher education program. This course is intended to prepare these undergraduate students as future teachers—helping them to make effective and creative uses of technology in learning settings. This course emphasizes learning to learn with and about technology, in the ever-changing context of educational technology. Generally speaking, we outline and describe three key goals of teaching young teachers to thoughtfully integrate technology into a real-world classroom. First, the course emphasizes learning to explore and learn proactively by engaging in learning by design activities. Second, students are given an opportunity to try a wide variety of innovative technologies through explorations of their own choosing. Finally, we attempt to leverage the power of online community building for learning by harnessing the ubiquity and convenience of tools like Facebook. We look into the future with great hope and enthusiasm that our preservice teachers will lead the way in integrating new technologies into their teaching in ways that will benefit their students, colleagues, and the greater education community.     

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as collaborative working: a case study in shared practice and collective purpose

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has yet to fully enter the mainstream of life in higher education. In this case study, we consider a specific network focused on the reform of engineering education. The network involves global collaboration within the discipline of Engineering and is based around curricular activity that affects entire departments or groups of staff. We suggest that SoTL should pay greater attention to collaboration that addresses substantive disciplinary purposes, further embodying these purposes through spaces, motivations and capacities for action in the disciplinary and departmental setting. We frame our argument around a theoretical model of collaborative working in higher education and go on to offer a synoptic overview of ways to articulate common purpose around teaching and learning at large. Our account highlights potential drivers for such collaborative activity in other settings. In this way, we offer a means for others to develop the collective commitments, structures and understanding needed to mainstream SoTL within specific disciplinary or departmental settings.     

Educational accountability tests,social and legal inclusion approaches to discrimination for students with disability: a national case study from Australia

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability promotes equal and full participation by children in education. Equity of educational access for all students, including students with disability, free from discrimination, is the first-stated national goal of Australian education. Australian federal disability discrimination law, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, follows the Convention, with the federal Disability Standards for Education 2005 enacting specific requirements for education. This article discusses equity of processes for inclusion of students with disability in Australian educational accountability testing, including international tests in which many countries participate. The conclusion drawn is that equitable inclusion of students with disability in current Australian educational accountability testing is not occurring from a social perspective and is not in principle compliant with law. However, given the reluctance of courts to intervene in education matters and the uncertainty of an outcome in any court consideration, the discussion shows that equitable inclusion in accountability systems is available through policy change rather than expensive, and possibly unsuccessful, legal challenges.     

Educational choice in secondary school in Flanders: the relative impact of occupational interests on option choice

The present study aims at unravelling the myriad of student-level (i.e., gender, socioeconomic status [SES], academic self-concept, achievement, ability, and occupational interests) and school-level (i.e., gender composition, maths composition, and SES composition) determinants of option choice in the academic track of secondary school in Flanders. We focused on 2 decisional thresholds in Flemish secondary education, namely, the transition from Grade 8 to Grade 9 (N = 2518) and from Grade 10 to Grade 11 (N = 2871). Data were analyzed through multinomial multilevel analysis. Our results strongly confirm Lent's (2005) jigsaw puzzle metaphor in that different factors go into a complex and dynamic interplay. Especially in the first grades, prior achievement is a major predictor of option choice in secondary education, whereas in the last years occupational interests become increasingly important. From a gender perspective, boys rather choose math/sciences-oriented options than girls. Option choice is mainly determined by student-level rather than school-level predictors.     

A Review of: ““Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out,Materialistic, and Miseducated Students”

The views of Jewish education articulated by Rosenzweig in his essays “It is Time” and in “The Opening of the Lehrhaus” are quite different. So different, in fact, that an account of how one mind can produce such different accounts is necessary. Following the lead of a 1950’s popular television quiz show, the authors ask “Will the Real Franz Rosenzweig Please Stand Up?” The authors end by exploring how the tensions within Rosenzweig's educational thinking can yield new insights into the contemporary challenges of Jewish education.     

Graphic Novels as Tools for Teaching Complexity About Israel

ABSTRACT

Building on the established idea that to provide students with a full portrait of Israeli society and history, educators must introduce greater complexity into their Israel curriculum, the following paper explores three recently published graphic novels about Israel and considers how each offers opportunities for considering Israel in more nuanced ways. The paper is grounded in recent research about Israel education and empirical studies about graphic novels in education. Each of the three texts highlights aspects of Israeli society that are less frequently addressed in curriculum about Israel and therefore provide opportunities for presenting students with primary sources that directly grapple with the complexities of Israeli society.     

Instructions to adopt an external focus enhance muscular endurance

The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.