Assessing university students' perceptions of their Physics instructors' TPACK development in two contexts

Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) has been gaining traction among educational researchers; however, studies documenting university students' perceptions of their teachers' TPACK remain limited. This study intends to investigate the professional development of two physics instructors through the lens of the TPACK framework. Moreover, this study spans an 18‐week semester within both the contexts of Taiwan and China. Multiple data were collected and analyzed, including the pretest and posttest TPACK surveys, instructor interviews, in‐class observations and students' feedback and opinions. The results revealed that John's instructional representations and strategies and technology integration and application scores increased significantly, as well as Mike's knowledge of students' understanding score showing a significant increase from the middle to the end of semester. John (Taiwan) emphasized life examples and the use of multimedia while Mike (China) chose to emphasize students' knowledge and evaluation. Such results showed different teaching characteristics in the two contexts. Implications and suggestions are put forward based on the results of this study.     

Creation of reusable open textbooks: Insights from the Connexions repository

Open textbook initiatives have appeared as an alternative to traditional publishing. These initiatives for the production of alternatively copyrighted educational resources provide a way of sharing materials through the Web. While the open model of peer‐produced materials enables the global reuse of textbooks, the combination of fragments to produce new textbooks tailored to particular needs is not easy. The heterogeneity of topics and target audiences, as well as the cultural and institutional differences of educational systems across the globe, raises the need for new compositional features, fostering—at the same time—the reuse of the newly produced combinations. This paper reviews the current models of reuse and sharing, and presents a quantitative analysis of the Connexions repository which provides evidence about the culture of reuse in open textbook initiatives.     

Variable‐Length Computerized Adaptive Testing Using the Higher Order DINA Model

Cognitive diagnosis models provide profile information about a set of latent binary attributes, whereas item response models yield a summary report on a latent continuous trait. To utilize the advantages of both models, higher order cognitive diagnosis models were developed in which information about both latent binary attributes and latent continuous traits is available. To facilitate the utility of cognitive diagnosis models, corresponding computerized adaptive testing (CAT) algorithms were developed. Most of them adopt the fixed‐length rule to terminate CAT and are limited to ordinary cognitive diagnosis models. In this study, the higher order deterministic‐input, noisy‐and‐gate (DINA) model was used as an example, and three criteria based on the minimum‐precision termination rule were implemented: one for the latent class, one for the latent trait, and the other for both. The simulation results demonstrated that all of the termination criteria were successful when items were selected according to the Kullback‐Leibler information and the posterior‐weighted Kullback‐Leibler information, and the minimum‐precision rule outperformed the fixed‐length rule with a similar test length in recovering the latent attributes and the latent trait.     

SCHOOL ANXIETY INVENTORY: RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY EVIDENCE IN A SAMPLE OF SLOVENIAN ADOLESCENTS

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the School Anxiety Inventory (SAI) using a sample of 646 Slovenian adolescents (48% boys), ranging in age from 12 to 19 years. Single confirmatory factor analyses replicated the correlated four‐factor structure of scores on the SAI for anxiety‐provoking school situations (Anxiety about School Failure and Punishment, Anxiety about Aggression, Anxiety about Social Evaluation, and Anxiety about Academic Evaluation), and the three‐factor structure of the anxiety response systems (Physiological Anxiety, Cognitive Anxiety, and Behavioral Anxiety). Equality of factor structures was compared using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses. Measurement invariance for the four‐ and three‐factor models was obtained across gender and school‐level samples. The scores of the instrument showed high internal reliability and adequate test–retest reliability. The concurrent validity of the SAI scores was also examined through its relationship with the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SASA) scores and the Questionnaire about Interpersonal Difficulties for Adolescents (QIDA) scores. Correlations of the SAI scores with scores on the SASA and the QIDA were of low to moderate effect sizes.