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Full-Text Articles in Education

A Top-Down Approach For Optimally Designing Multistage-Adaptive Tests, Hwanggyu Lim Jul 2019

A Top-Down Approach For Optimally Designing Multistage-Adaptive Tests, Hwanggyu Lim

Doctoral Dissertations

In multistage-adaptive testing (MST), there are many interrelated design variables that impact the nature and quality of ability estimation. Previous research has identified general principles for the effective design of MSTs in terms of measurement performance. However, those principles are unlikely to apply uniformly to every testing context. The purpose of this dissertation is to propose a process of finding an MST design that has optimal measurement properties, given a specific set of test circumstances. To achieve this goal, an efficient strategy was introduced at each of three phases to discover the optimal design of the MST; constructing MSTs, systematically …


Bringing Learning Back In: Examining Three Psychometric Models For Evaluating Learning Progression Theories, Duy Pham Mar 2019

Bringing Learning Back In: Examining Three Psychometric Models For Evaluating Learning Progression Theories, Duy Pham

Doctoral Dissertations

Learning progressions provide potentially valuable information to teachers about how to develop a scope and sequence for a group of learning objectives. However, for the learning progressions to be valuable, the progressions must be supported. Although there are several approaches and models that can be used to evaluate the validity of a learning progression, there is a dearth of research examining the advantages and limitations of each approach. The purpose of this study was to examine a multi-dimensional item response theory model and two cognitive diagnostic models (DINA and HO-DINA) for evaluating two learning progressions via a simulation study. In …


Urban Biodiversity Experience And Exposure: Intervention And Inequality At The Local And Global Scale, Evan Kuras Mar 2019

Urban Biodiversity Experience And Exposure: Intervention And Inequality At The Local And Global Scale, Evan Kuras

Masters Theses

As cities expand globally, researchers must clarify how human activities and institutions shape biodiversity and conversely, how ecological processes shape human outcomes. Two features of contemporary cities motivate this thesis. First, urban residents, and especially children, are spending less time in nature and consequently, miss out on healthy and formative experiences with biodiversity. Second, residents with the least access to biodiversity tend to be those with the lowest socioeconomic status (SES). Together, these patterns convey a multi-layered environmental injustice: not only might urbanites become increasingly estranged from biodiversity, disinterested from its conservation, and disconnected from its benefits, but these outcomes …