Development of Automated Scoring Algorithms for Complex Performance Assessments: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Performance assessments are typically scored by having experts rate individual performances. The cost associated with using expert raters may represent a serious limitation in many large-scale testing programs. The use of raters may also introduce an additional source of error into the assessment. These limitations have motivated development of automated scoring systems for performance assessments. Preliminary research has shown these systems to have application across a variety of tasks ranging from simple mathematics to architectural problem solving. This study extends research on automated scoring by comparing alternative automated systems for scoring a computer simulation test of physicians'patient management skills; one system uses regression-derived weights for components of the performance, the other uses complex rules to map performances into score levels. The procedures are evaluated by comparing the resulting scores to expert ratings of the same performances.     

The impact of a professional development model on middle school science teachers' efficacy and implementation of inquiry

This study investigated a professional development model designed to improve teachers' inquiry teaching efficacy as well as the quality of their inquiry instruction through engaging teachers in practice-teaching and reflection sessions. The programme began with a two-week summer Institute focused on both inquiry pedagogy and science content and continued with academic year support for participants' inquiry implementation. An inquiry teaching efficacy instrument was administered 3 times to 25 teacher participants to gauge changes in their personal self-efficacy and outcome expectancy across 5 essential features of classroom inquiry. To examine actual practices, pre/post classroom observations of the teachers' inquiry enactments were evaluated using a quality of inquiry observation protocol. Following the summer Institute, teachers had statistically significant increases in their self-efficacy for teaching inquiry in four of the five essential features and increases in one of the five essential features for outcome expectancy. Teachers' quality of inquiry teaching also increased after the professional development programme. We discuss implications of this PD model for moving teachers towards implementation of new instructional techniques as well as the influence of a supportive school community on teachers’ efficacy with inquiry instruction.     

Assessing Model Similarity in Structural Equation Modeling

Two models can be nonequivalent, but fit very similarly across a wide range of data sets. These near-equivalent models, like equivalent models, should be considered rival explanations for results of a study if they represent plausible explanations for the phenomenon of interest. Prior to conducting a study, researchers should evaluate plausible models that are alternatives to those hypothesized to evaluate whether they are near-equivalent or equivalent and, in so doing, address the adequacy of the study’s methodology. To assess the extent to which alternative models for a study are empirically distinguishable, we propose 5 indexes that quantify the degree of similarity in fit between 2 models across a specified universe of data sets. These indexes compare either the maximum likelihood fit function values or the residual covariance matrices of models. Illustrations are provided to support interpretations of these similarity indexes.     

La Parte Chusca of a Pedagogical Here and Now: Oaxacan Teachers’ Heteroglossic Joking About State Repression and Educational Reform

Faced with repression and reform, humor has become tactical for public school teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, engaged in a decades-old movement that after 2006 involved intensified street- and school-based pedagogies. This piece explores how humor adds to a political project via mocking names, images, and dictates of elite leaders to bring a here and now to what is taken as inaccessible in the teachers’ political lives. Humor forms part of an (e)sc(h)atology in which critical practices are part eschatological, a call for definite transformation, and part scatological, embodied vulgarity. La parte chusca (the funny part), its (e)sc(h)atological contribution, angles toward critical literacies in Oaxaca and beyond.     

School quality, child wellbeing and parents’ satisfaction

Child wellbeing at school and enjoyment of the learning environment are important economic outcomes, in particular because a growing body of research shows they are strongly linked to later educational attainments and labour market success. However, the standard working assumption in the economics of education is that parents choose schools on the basis of test-score performance, and concerns about child happiness are largely ignored. In this paper, we address this omission and investigate to what extent parents’ and children's views of their school are linked to test-score based performance, and to what extent parents’ judgements of school quality are linked to their child's happiness. To do so, we use information on stated attitudes from the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to administrative records on pupil achievements in England. Our results suggest that test-score based measures of school quality tend to dominate parental satisfaction with the learning environment. However, school quality along this dimension is not strongly associated with pupil happiness and wellbeing at school.     

Letters to the editor

This study examines editorial photography in nine major erotica magazines to determine how pictures vary as a function of the social class, gender and sexual preference of the intended readership. The analysis reveals that upwardly‐mobile, heterosexual men are treated to idealized images, whereas working‐class, heterosexual men are presented with more mundane yet highly‐sexualized images. Heterosexual women are provided with photographs of nude males in a low‐sexual context. Magazines for homosexual men present images, except for gender, very similar to those created for upwardly‐mobile, heterosexual men. These patterns are discussed from a functionalist perspective to show how erotica magazines contribute to social‐order maintenance.     

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority takes the credit for education

Education in many Western countries is being reformed. The paper examines the role of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in the neo-liberal reforms and their revenue gathering from students credits in a contradictory neo-liberal policy context.