This paper examines political influences on assessment programs and their effects on local school systems. Specifically, it describes North Carolina's political climate and examines the impact of political influences on educational assessment in the state. The political climate in North Carolina has produced a plethora of state-mandated tests,…

This paper describes a study of the connections between beliefs about mathematics, autonomy, and knowledge structures in mathematics. Assumptions underlying the study were (1) that students' beliefs and knowledge are constructs of the individual and play a dynamic role in the learning and doing of mathematics; and (2) that autonomy theoretically…

The relative contribution of students' capability to perceive structural versus surface similarity on their motivation transfer was studied. It was hypothesized that surface similarity would lead to greater transfer of self-efficacy among tasks due to its readily perceptible nature. More specifically, it was hypothesized that the perception of…

Students are often evaluated on the basis of their aggregate or average performance on diverse tasks in each school subject. When the target of prediction is such global measures as course grades, academic self-efficacy, too, should be able to reflect equivalent scope and generality to maximize its predictive utility. Academic self-efficacy in the…

This study presents a process used to assess the general education component of the undergraduate curriculum, focusing particularly on the components of the methodology that provided the data used to suggesting changes in the program. The study was undertaken at an urban institution with an undergraduate population of 6,000, and involved analysis…

This paper examines the implementation of an alternate block (A/B) schedule in three high schools in Irving, Texas. The purpose is to review how time was used in 48 randomly selected high school Algebra 1, Biology 1, English 2, and U.S. History classes. Of the 48 classes, 12 observations were conducted for each course. The findings revealed a…

At many postsecondary institutions, there are two levels of first-year courses: a "standard" course in which most students enroll; and a "remedial" course for academically underprepared students. This paper is concerned with determining whether taking a remedial course increases the cognitive skills that students need to succeed in a standard…

Arguing that transformative teacher professional development may require more than a shift in the content of teachers' thinking, this paper examines how the structure of teachers' meaning-making systems might affect their experiences in three mathematics teacher professional development programs. The paper describes the change goals of three…

Although high schools typically concentrate on preparing students to enter baccalaureate degree programs, it is estimated that by the year 2000 more than 70% of the jobs in America will not require a four-year college degree. The Tech Prep program is designed to provide technically oriented backgrounds to the middle fifty percent of high school…

Two operational item pools were used to investigate the performance of stratum computerized adaptive tests (CATs) when items were assigned to strata based on empirical estimates of item difficulty or human judgments of item difficulty. Items from the first data set consisted of 54 5-option multiple choice items from a form of the ACT mathematics…

An evaluation of the Mathematics and Computer Assisted Remedial Teaching (MASCART) project in the Pre-Entry Science Course (PESC) at the University of Botswana focused on two questions: (1) Considering the conditions for successful implementation highlighted in the literature, has the implementation of computers in the PESC department been such…

This paper speaks to the challenges, risks, and rewards of teaching about linear functions in a technology-rich environment from a constructivist perspective by describing a Foundations of Algebra class, which was designed and taught to junior high school students in such an environment in the summer of 1991. The design and implementation of the…

The cognitive structure of an algebra test was defined and validated using the linear test model (LLTM) and quadratic assignment (QA) techniques. The LLTM is an extension of the Rasch model with a linear constraint that describes item difficulty in terms of the cognitive operations required to solve the item. The model permits the specification of…

Since the authorization of the use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) through the Trial State Assessment to provide state-based data, debate over the proposed expansion of the NAEP has strengthened. To assist states in analyzing and interpreting 1990 data on eighth-grade mathematics and to assist in planning subsequent NAEP…

A model of graph comprehension is proposed including perceptual and memory processes. Multidimensional scaling (MDS), cluster analysis, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine how college students with different mathematical experience read different types of bar graphs. Data were collected at the University of Oklahoma (Norman)…