It has become gradually accepted that proof and proving are essential at all grades of mathematical learning. Among the various aspects of proof and proving, this study addresses proofs and refutations described by Lakatos, in particular a part of increasing content by deductive guessing, to introduce an authentic process into mathematics…

Item response theory (IRT) becomes an increasingly important tool when analyzing "big data" gathered from online educational venues. However, the mechanism was originally developed in traditional exam settings, and several of its assumptions are infringed upon when deployed in the online realm. For a large-enrollment physics course for…

Sample: Fifty-three third and fourth graders from China participated in this study. Method: Participants' working memory (WM) was assessed by the Automated Operation Span task. Then, they solved mental addition problems of different types under low- and high-pressure conditions. Performance was analysed as a function of pressure condition,…

The DINA (deterministic input, noisy, and gate) model has been widely used in cognitive diagnosis tests and in the process of test development. The outcomes known as slip and guess are included in the DINA model function representing the responses to the items. This study aimed to extend the DINA model by using the random-effect approach to allow…

This study investigated the effects of two different true-false questions on memory awareness and long-term retention of knowledge. Participants took four subsequent knowledge tests on curriculum learning material that they studied at different retention intervals prior to the start of this study (i.e. prior to the first test). At the first and…

Research to date has focused mostly on children's representation of their physical self as a prelude to the development of a theory of mind (ToM) and on their understanding of the self as distinct from others over time. Whether children approaching the well-known age of ToM mastery are also accurately appraising their own…

Validated under a Rasch framework (Beglar, 2010), the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) (Nation & Beglar, 2007) is an increasingly popular measure of decontextualized written receptive vocabulary size in the field of second language acquisition. However, although the validation indicates that the test has high internal reliability, still unaddressed…

Understanding genetic drift is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of biology, yet it is difficult to learn because it combines the conceptual challenges of both evolution and randomness. To help assess strategies for teaching genetic drift, we have developed and evaluated the Genetic Drift Inventory (GeDI), a concept inventory that measures…

The current study evaluates guessing behaviors in a vocabulary size test (VST) and examines whether including an "I don't know" in a VST may have an impact on the results of the test. One-hundred-fifty first-year students at a university in China took part in the study. They were randomly assigned to three groups. Each group took a…

The relation of spatial skills to academic success in areas such as math and science has sparked discussion in early education around how spatial thinking skills might be included in early schooling. Planning and evaluating new curricula or interventions requires understanding these skills and having the means to assess them. Prior developmental…

Although calibration has been widely studied, questions remain about how best to capture confidence ratings, how to calculate continuous variable calibration indices, and on what exactly students base their reported confidence ratings. Undergraduates in a research methods class completed a prior knowledge assessment, two sets of readings and…

The usefulness of the l[subscript z] person-fit index was investigated with achievement test data from 20 exams given to more than 3,200 college students. Results for three methods of estimating ? showed that the distributions of l[subscript z] were not consistent with its theoretical distribution, resulting in general overfit to the item response…

There have been great strides made in research on vocabulary in the last 30 years. However, there has been relatively little progress in the development of new vocabulary tests. This may be due in some degree to the impressive contributions made by tests such as the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1983; Schmitt et al., 2001) and the Word…

Guessing behavior is an issue discussed widely with regard to multiple choice tests. Its primary effect is on number-correct scores for examinees at lower levels of proficiency. This is a systematic error or bias, which increases observed test scores. Guessing also can inflate random error variance. Correction or adjustment for guessing formulas…

The software program DIMTEST can be used to assess the unidimensionality of item scores. The software allows the user to specify a guessing parameter. Using simulated data, the effects of guessing parameter specification for use with the ATFIND procedure for empirically deriving the Assessment Subtest (AT; that is, a subtest composed of items that…