An Empirical Investigation of Impact Moderation in Test Construction

This investigation constructed four different kinds of test sections using three methods of test assembly that incorporate the goals of simultaneous moderation of three kinds of impact-gender impact, African-American impact, and Hispanic- American impact. The test sections were administered undetectably to random samples from the appropriate population. The results were evaluated by comparison of the characteristics of moderated sections with those of parallel operational sections. Almost all methods of test assembly produced either moderation of impact in the appropriate direction or no change in impact. Taking impact into account in test assembly tended to lower reliability slightly, raise concurrent validity slightly, and maintain the construct measured by the parallel operational section. It also reduced the relative efficiency for test takers in the middle score range while increasing efficiency for those with more extreme scores.     

The Rise and Fall of a Promotions Committee: some reflections on the interrelationship between micro and macro machinations of power

This paper is concerned with a case study regarding the ‘rise and fall’ of a promotions committee within an Australian College of Advanced Education. The paper considers the internal organisational factors involved with the abolition of promotion by merit as part of increasingly dominant managerialist practices. The paper attempts to contextualise these institutional developments in terms of the restructuring of the Australian economy and concomitant pressures upon state expenditure and consequent increasing pressures on tertiary education institutions to ‘pay their own way’. The study fits within the ‘imperialist strategy’ within organisational analyses where the study of organisations is “merged within a wider analytical framework geared to the examination of historical transformations in institutional structures and the principles which underlie these long‐term historical movements”. In the concluding section, some critical remarks are proffered regarding the way senior administrators within tertiary education institutions have responded to these privatisation pressures upon them.

     

Alternative Conceptions: Turning Adversity into Advantage

Research in Science Education - While a vast body of research has identified difficulties in students’ understanding about forces and acceleration and their related alternative conceptions,...     

(<Emphasis Type="Italic">CF</Emphasis>)<Superscript>2</Superscript> architecture: contextual collaborative filtering

Recommender systems have dramatically changed the way we consume content. Internet applications rely on these systems to help users navigate among the ever-increasing number of choices available. However, most current systems ignore the fact that user preferences can change according to context, resulting in recommendations that do not fit user interests. This research addresses these issues by proposing the \(({ CF})^2\) architecture, which uses local learning techniques to embed contextual awareness into collaborative filtering models. The proposed architecture is demonstrated on two large-scale case studies involving over 130 million and over 7 million unique samples, respectively. Results show that contextual models trained with a small fraction of the data provided similar accuracy to collaborative filtering models trained with the complete dataset. Moreover, the impact of taking into account context in real-world datasets has been demonstrated by higher accuracy of context-based models in comparison to random selection models.     

A Spiral Task as a Model for In-service Teacher Education

The spiral approach has long been used by curriculum designers to deepen students’ knowledge of scientific and mathematical concepts and to bring students to higher levels of abstraction. The benefits of a spiral approach, however, can also be extended to teacher education. This paper describes a spiral activity employed by the Kidumatica program not only to raise the level of teachers’ content knowledge, but also to promote discussion and collaboration among teachers teaching at different grade levels. The activity was designed to take a single problem situation and develop it in ways appropriate to the different grade levels. At each stage, the teachers are encouraged to discuss teaching approaches required by the students at each grade level and the relationships between the different stages of the development.     

Evaluation of a Teaching Kit for Family and Consumer Science Classrooms: Motivating Students To Use a Food Thermometer with Small Cuts Of Meat

ABSTRACT: The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture recommends use of food thermometers to safely cook small cuts of meat, yet most consumers do not use them. Consumers lack knowledge about how and why to use food thermometers with small cuts of meat. Opportunities exist for family and consumer science classes to provide education about thermometers to adolescents, who may disseminate this information to parents. The most successful nutrition programs are based on behavior-change theories compared with standard interventions. A teaching kit for high school students was developed, based on the Health Belief and Transtheoretical Models, covering the "how's" and "why's" of using food thermometers. After participating in the lessons, students' knowledge about the reasons for using a thermometer and their self-confidence in using thermometers increased. In addition, students were more ready to use a thermometer with small cuts of meat after completing the intervention.