Legal and Psychometric Criteria for Evaluating Teacher Certification Tests

Will our teacher certification testing program stand up to a court challenge? What are the critical issues the courts consider in examining teacher certification testing? What do we need to do to strengthen our program legally and psychometrically?     

Informing in the Information Age: How to Communicate Measurement Concepts to Education Policy Makers

Current educational policies rely on educational assessments. However, the technical aspects of assessments are often unknown to policy makers, which is dangerous because sound assessment policy requires knowledge of the strengths and limitations of educational tests. In this article, we discuss the importance of informing policy makers of important psychometric issues that should be considered whenever tests are proposed for specific purposes. We discuss the types of information that are important to communicate to policy makers, how to best convey this information in a manner in which it can be understood, and how to be seen as a valuable source of information to education policy makers. We end with some specific steps organizations such as NCME can take to inform policy makers and advocate for valid educational assessment policies.     

Validity Issues in Test Speededness

Speededness refers to the situation where the time limits on a standardized test do not allow substantial numbers of examinees to fully consider all test items. When tests are not intended to measure speed of responding, speededness introduces a severe threat to the validity of interpretations based on test scores. In this article, we describe test speededness, its potential threats to validity, and traditional and modern methods that can be used to assess the presence of speededness. We argue that more attention must be paid to this issue and that more research must be done to set appropriate time limits on power tests so that speed of responding does not interfere with the construct measured.     

The Invisible Majority: Adult Learners in English Higher Education

The report of the National Inquiry into Higher Education (the Dearing Committee) makes much play of lifelong learning, and the last decade has seen a rapid increase in the proportion of mature learners in higher education overall. In 1993 the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education argued that the advent of lifelong learning and an adult majority in higher education called for a radical rethinking of the nature and purposes of higher education. There has been some positive change, and the Dearing report is broadly positive, but by failing to recognise the nature of the lifelong agenda, it may be too little too late.     

Rethinking fat as a fuel for endurance exercise

Abstract

A key element contributing to deteriorating exercise capacity during physically demanding sport appears to be reduced carbohydrate availability coupled with an inability to effectively utilize alternative lipid fuel sources. Paradoxically, cognitive and physical decline associated with glycogen depletion occurs in the presence of an over-abundance of fuel stored as body fat that the athlete is apparently unable to access effectively. Current fuelling tactics that emphasize high-carbohydrate intakes before and during exercise inhibit fat utilization. The most efficient approach to accelerate the body’s ability to oxidize fat is to lower dietary carbohydrate intake to a level that results in nutritional ketosis (i.e., circulating ketone levels >0.5 mmol/L) while increasing fat intake for a period of several weeks. The coordinated set of metabolic adaptations that ensures proper interorgan fuel supply in the face of low-carbohydrate availability is referred to as keto-adaptation. Beyond simply providing a stable source of fuel for the brain, the major circulating ketone body, beta-hydroxybutyrate, has recently been shown to act as a signalling molecule capable of altering gene expression, eliciting complementary effects of keto-adaptation that could extend human physical and mental performance beyond current expectation. In this paper, we review these new findings and propose that the shift to fatty acids and ketones as primary fuels when dietary carbohydrate is restricted could be of benefit for some athletes.