Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Simulating, Experiencing, And Changing Biased Teaching Behaviors, Laura L. B. Border

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Increased awareness of biased teaching behaviors and effects on students can motivate instructors to become conscious of and change their own biased teaching patterns. Nonbiased teaching is subsequently reinforced and students performance enhanced.

Metaphors We Teach By: Understanding Ourselves As Teachers And Learners, Mary Ann Bowman

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Our metaphors of teaching and learning express our views of the roles of teachers and students. Becoming conscious of our own metaphors is an important first step to self-awareness and positive change.

The Phenomenon Of Large Classes And Practical Suggestions For Teaching Them, Frank Gillespie

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Large classes are a phenomenon of higher education today. However, large does not preclude providing an effective teaching and learning environment. The environment can be analyzed, good teaching can be modeled, and practical strategies offered.

Challenges In Using Technology For The Improvement Of Undergraduate Education, G. Roger Sell

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

We may believe that access to more information will improve undergraduate education, but students conceptual foundations and critical thinking skills are essential for using information technologies and constructing knowledge.

Cracks In The Ivory Tower: Conflict Management In The Classroom -- And Beyond, Susan A. Holton

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The very nature of the classroom with its power imbalance and differing expectations can engender conflict. What are the warning signs, and what might we do manage the inevitable conflict?

Teaching And Values: What Values Will We Take Into The 21st Century?, Kathleen Mcgrory

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Our values drive our decision-making about a range of everyday concerns as professionals. This essay identifies some current values being addressed in scholarly inquiry and attempts to predict the role of values inquiry in curriculum and teaching in the 21st century.

The American Professoriate In Transition, Ronald D. Simpson, Thomas G. Dyer

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

After a brief review of the history of the American professoriate, major trends for the future, the lives and work of today’s faculty members will be discussed in terms of forces influencing the direction of higher education in our society.

Integrating Research And Undergraduate Teaching, Anne Bezuidenhout

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

I would like to describe some of the benefits and difficulties I have encountered in my attempt to integrate my research and teaching in an introductory logic course. My introductory logic students work in groups on semester-long research projects. The research that these students are involved in belongs to the scholarship of integration, rather than the scholarship of discovery (Boyer, 1990). It is highly unlikely that most instructors will ever teach a student who will break new ground in their field. However, what most students can begin to do is to think about what role one body of knowledge or …

Students' Reactions To Performance-Based Versus Traditional Objective Assessment, Anthony L. Truog

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

In summary, the struggle to obtain more performance-based evaluation goes on. The results to date support the idea that more student involvement is better. The issue of cost-benefit analysis must be continually addressed, while not losing either the vision to make assessment intrinsic to the learning process, nor the efficiency of objective detachment. The really exciting aspect will be the personal growth of the students and their instructor.

Transactional Analysis Of The Creative Process, Donna Glee Williams

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Teachers of the creative process understand intuitively that different types of students need different types of teaching. The art students who splash paint with abandon over miles of canvas but have no interest in craftsmanship or self-evaluation need a different sort of intervention than the young artists who are so bullied by their own self-criticism that they can hardly bear to make a mark. The music students who by dint of excessive practice produce music-box accuracy--completely without fire--need a different sort of help than their sloppy but passionate colleagues. Our task as instructors is to understand our students’ needs and …

Honoring The Process For Honoring Teaching, Laurie Richlin, Brenda Manning

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Few ideas are as appealing on the surface as encouraging professors to gather and reflect on materials that best represent their teaching excellence. Indeed, developing a teaching portfolio, or dossier, has become a popular faculty development activity in many departments and on many campuses. To create a portfolio, faculty select syllabi, tests, student work, and student evaluations about one or more courses, and add a reflective statement, usually called a teaching philosophy, about their teaching goals. In almost all cases, reports from the field state that professors find reaffirming the teaching portfolio process and the opportunity to reflect on their …

Active Learning Beyond The Classroom, Edward Neal

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Attending class is akin to regular religious observance: The ritual or sermon is less important for what it teaches directly than for its motivational impact on what believers do between services. Lowman, 1984, page 165

Even carrying a full course load, students spend a relatively small proportion of each week in class, typically about 15 hours, and research has shown that most undergraduates spend only a few hours a week studying outside of class. How do they occupy their time? According to a national survey of college students (Boyer, 1987), almost 30 percent of full-time students work 21 or more …

Dedication- Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, And Practices, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

The impetus for this book and for my involvement in it are due principally to the efforts of three people: Jimmie Fortune, Howard Stoker, and Barbara Plake. Jimmie edited (and contributed to) an earlier book devoted to licensure testing (Fortune, J. C., & Associates, 1985, Understanding Testing in Occupational Licensing, Jossey Bass: San Francisco.). Shortly after that book was published he told me that he felt some important topics had not been included and that another book was needed. He encouraged me on several occasions to edit a new book that picked up where his left off and expand …

Preface- Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, And Practices, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

This book represents a unique effort for the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements and the Buros-Nebraska Series on Measurement and Testing. All of the previous books in this series have been associated with a symposium sponsored by the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements and the University of Nebraska. This book is "free standing" in that it is an independent effort intended to fulfill a perceived need for a book, but without preceding the book with a symposium. There are few books devoted solely to the topic of licensure testing, but each state and the federal government is involved in this …

Section One: Purposes And Policy Issues

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

No Content

Section Two: Overview Of The Procedures For Developing A Licensure Examination, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

There are a variety of strategies that may be employed in the development of a licensure examination. The following list of activities illustrates typical procedures. Depending on the needs and conditions of the particular occupation, certain variations in specific activities may take place or changes in the sequence may be appropriate. In addition to the procedures listed, many decisions will be made that may add activities. For example, the decision to use a computerized item bank or to enter into a computerized adaptive testing format will require procedures in addition to those described briefly below.

1. Conducting a job (or …

6. Developing And Using Clinical Examinations, Jimmie C. Fortune, Theodore R. Cromack

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

Generally, clinical examinations for licensing (sometimes called performance tests) involve the candidate completing one or more tasks (in licensing this is thought of as "services for a client") that have been selected from the supervised practice Gob analysis) of an occupation or profession. The clinical examination may exist in contexts (occupations) that do not require client interactions. Such contexts include building trades, automobile repair, accounting, etc. The tasks may range from fixing brakes, to preparing a body for burial, to wiring a house, or auditing a set of business interactions.

Other contexts require the candidate to perform services or …

7. Basic Psychometric Issues In Licensure Testing, Howard W. Stoker, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

The number of people in the United States who carry some responsibility for the writing of examination questions and the construction of tests is unknown. In the Preface to The Construction and Use of Achievement Examinations, published by the American Council on Education in 1936, the authors indicated that the number probably exceeded a million. That number has certainly grown in the past 60 years. Questions are posed to students by teachers at all levels of education; the Armed Forces have people whose job it is to construct tests which are used in the promotion of personnel; over …

4. Practice Analysis: Building The Foundation For Validity, Joan E. Knapp, Lenora G. Knapp

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

A review of the literature associated with job analysis reveals two extremes of opinion as represented by the following provocative quotes:

Historically job analysis has been a relatively soporific area of industrial and organizational psychology, characterized by neither heated controversy nor prominent visibility in the research literature. (Harvey, 1991, p. 71)

Validation was once a priestly mystery, a ritual behind the scenes with the professional elite as witness and judge. Today it is a public spectacle combining the attraction of chess and mud wrestling. (Cronbach, 1988, p. 3)

Both our evaluation of practice analysis research and our professional experience …

5. Systematic Item Writing And Test Construction, Anthony Laduca, Steven M. Downing, Thomas R. Henzel

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Standardized objective testing remains the most popular mode of licensure testing. Even where other types of tests are incorporated, it is often the case that they are provided as complimentary to standardized, multiple-choice (MC) tests. Moreover, scoring theories and standard-setting procedures have been developed over the years in the context of standardized MC testing. At the same time, critics have pointed to limitations of contemporary MC testing practices, including lack of fidelity to real-life challenges and emphasis on recall of factual minutiae. In our view, testing professionals should make conscientious attempts to modify test development procedures so as to address …

3. Policy Issues With Psychometric Implications, Michael Rosenfeld, Richard F. J. Tannenbaum, Scott Wesley

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Testing candidates with disabilities, testing repeaters, and coaching involve issues of fairness, the validity of the inferences made from test scores, and protection of the public. Licensing boards must develop policies to deal with each of these issues. It is interesting to note that although all three are of concern to licensing agencies, little of the research on these topics has been conducted in licensure settings. This chapter discusses the results of research conducted on each topic, considers the psychometric implications for policy of each, and suggests steps licensing boards can take when formulating policy.

TESTING CANDIDATES WITH DISABILITIES IN …

Section Three Emerging Practices

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

No abstract provided.

8. Item Banking, Betty A. Bergstrom, Richard C. Gershon

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Item banks developed by licensure agencies range from a collection of items stored on index cards to highly sophisticated electronic databases. Regardless of the storage mechanism, most banks contain items that have been organized and referenced according to procedures established by the licensure agency. This chapter outlines useful practices for building and maintaining a computerized item bank. We address storage of item text, graphics, and statistical history. We deal with the creation of paper-and-pencil and computerized tests from an item bank and the use of Item Response Theory (lRT) to calibrate and equate item banks. New directions in item banking …

12. Computerized Testing In Licensure, C. David Vale

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Computerized testing has come out of the laboratory and into the field. By rough estimates, over a million licensure and certification examinations are currently given by computer each year, and the number is rising. Computerized testing is not appropriate for every application, however. Computerized tests always result in significantly greater direct costs than paper-and-pencil tests. To justify their use, a computerized test must result in a net dollar saving. This means that something in the process of computerization must offer a cost reduction that more than offsets the direct cost of computerization. The purpose of this chapter is to identify …

9. Differential Item Functioning In Licensure Tests, Barbara S. Plake

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

When test scores are used to make important decisions, as is typically the case with licensure tests, the validity of test score interpretations is extremely critical. The validity of the decision (e.g., pass or fail the licensure examination) relies heavily on the validity of the test score that is used in making the licensure decision. So, although validity is always a critical component in test score interpretation, it has increased importance when the score is used in high-stakes decision situations such as licensure testing.

Issues in validity for licensure tests have been addressed in Chapter 4 of this volume. The …

13. Future Psychometric Practices In Licensure Testing, Steven S. Nettles

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

New technologies continue to emerge each year, and influence testing practices. In particular, in the last 10 years the personal computer has evolved from a curious and minimally useful tool to an indispensable partner in many certification and licensure testing programs. It is involved in every aspect- including candidate scheduling, test assembly, test administration, test scoring and analysis, and score reporting. Initially, it is used to determine the content to be included in the job analysis instrument, and later, to analyze the returned surveys. After the job analysis is completed and test specifications prepared, it can be used to bank …

11. Equating, Judy A. Shea, John J. Norcini

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

Testing programs nearly always need examinations that measure the same thing, but are composed of different questions (i .e., alternate forms of the same test). When different questions are used, however, there is no assurance that scores on the forms are equivalent; different sets of items might be easier or harder and, therefore, produce higher or lower scores. Equating is used to overcome this problem. Simply stated, it is the design and statistical procedure that permits scores on one form of a test to be comparable to scores on an alternate form.

A hypothetical example will help explain why …

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, And Practices [Complete Work], James C. Impara, Linda L. Murphy

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices (374 pages)

Copyright © 1995 by Buros Institute of Mental Measurements All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Buros Institute of Mental Measurements 135 Bancroft Hall University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588-0348

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Family Assessment- Epilogue

Family Assessment

The previous chapters have illustrated in great depth the intricacies of family assessment. The meaning of family across cultures, the effects of emotional, physical, and mental challenges on family functioning, and the frameworks useful in defining important family constructs have all been explored.

Although there are many measures for the many constructs that have been created to capture the meaning of family interaction, most are rather exploratory or useful only with limited populations. Clinical judgement and research acumen are required to be sure valid assessments are accomplished. There are significant challenges left to meet in designing assessment programs to illuminate …

Family Assessment- Complete Work, Jane Close Conoley, Linda L. Murphy, Elaine Buterick Werth

Family Assessment

Assessing families suggests both interesting measurement issues

and significant clinical applications. This volume is a collection of

important papers to explore the topic in some depth.

Some of these papers were first given at the Buros-Nebraska

Symposium on Testing and Measurement. Others have been written

especially for this volume. All are outstanding examples of scholarship

in this very thorny area of psychological measurement beyond the

individual. We commissioned papers that examined the history of

measurement with families and to cover family issues that are of

particular interest to both clinicians and researchers. Overall, the authors have tackled very big issues. …