Studies in Educational Evaluation最新文献

Self-assessment practices can positively impact student learning and achievement. However, less is known about psychological moderators that can influence the impact that self-assessment practice may have on achievement. Integrating the dual processing self-regulation model and the self-assessment cycle framework, this study examined the role of students’ positive well-being in the link between self-assessment practices and domain-specific achievement scores. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses using data from 765 secondary school students revealed that self-assessment practices positively predicted achievement scores. Results also showed that positive well-being moderated the relationship between seeking internal feedback and self-reflection and achievement scores, in that the positive link between such self-assessment practices and achievement was stronger for students who had low or moderate well-being. These findings reinforce the impact of self-assessment on learning and add to the ecological validity of the dual processing self-regulation model. The discussion focuses on how these findings contribute to our understanding of how well-being could influence the adaptive role of internal and cognitive self-assessment practices in student learning. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

Several studies have reported that student evaluation of teaching (SET) presents important problems. First, depending on the area, there are significant differences in the evaluations. Second, numerous noninstructional biases exist, such as when those teachers who award better grades obtain better SETs. Correcting the rankings by considering these biases (e.g., adjusting SETs according to the class grade) has been proposed. In this paper, we analyse a third problem: it is impossible to correct the biases because they are specific to each area, level, and even class. On a sample of 15,439 SETs, we compared the biases present in two very close areas (accounting and finance) and at two levels (undergraduate and postgraduate). Then, we used a procedure based on the analysis of residuals in OLS models to eliminate area- and level-specific biases. However, there are still latent biases apparently linked to each specific group of students.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the various facets of higher education globally. With the migration to online teaching happening at an unprecedented rate, educators are challenged in transforming the way they create opportunities for students’ learning. Specifically, in Australia, education providers have increasingly offered their courses in a dual-mode setting, making them available for both online and face-to-face students. This paper presents the design of a specific type of dual-mode teaching, referred to as mixed-mode teaching used in an introductory economics course at X University. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of the mixed-mode teaching in creating an equitable learning experience for the online and face-to-face groups of students enroled in the course. Such an approach should then translate into there being no significant difference found in the academic performance of the two cohorts. In this study, we used the non-parametric Wilcoxon test and Kruskal-Wallis test to verify if a significant difference exists in learning satisfaction. Further, we utilised regression with dummies, and four different approaches of propensity score matching estimation in excluding self-selection bias, to evaluate differences in academic performance. Our results suggest no statistically significant differences in both the learning experiences and academic performances of our two groups of students. At a time when higher education is facing ongoing challenges presented by the pandemic, these findings offer useful insights for economics educators as well as those in higher education about how to enhance students’ academic performance and learning experience through more equitable, consistent course design.

Educators in large-scale online courses tend to lack the necessary resources to generate and provide adequate feedback for all students, especially when students’ learning outcomes are evaluated through student writing. As a result, students welcome peer feedback and sometimes generate self-feedback to widen their perspectives and obtain feedback, but often lack the support to do so. This study, as part of a larger project, sought to address this prevalent problem in large-scale courses by allowing students to write essays as an expression of their opinions and response to others, conduct peer and self-evaluation, using provided rubric and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled evaluation to aid the giving and receiving of feedback. A total of 605 undergraduate students were part of a large-scale online course and contributed over 2500 short essays during a semester. The research design uses a mixed-methods approach, consisting qualitative measures used during essay coding, and quantitative methods from the application of machine learning algorithms. With limited instructors and resources, students first use instructor-developed rubric to conduct peer and self-assessment, while instructors qualitatively code a subset of essays that are used as inputs for training a machine learning model, which is subsequently used to provide automated scores and an accuracy rate for the remaining essays. With AI-enabled evaluation, the provision of feedback can become a sustainable process with students receiving and using meaningful feedback for their work, entailing shared responsibility from teachers and students, and becoming more effective.

Engagement as an essential factor for active and meaningful learning of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) is affected by both learner external (e.g., teacher support) and internal (e.g., growth language mindset and L2 grit) factors. This study examined the relationship between perceived teacher support, growth language mindset, and academic engagement by considering the mediating role of L2 grit. The participants were 295 Iranian EFL learners selected via multi-stage cluster sampling. The SEM results indicated that perceived teacher support and growth language mindset directly and positively predicted academic engagement. Additionally, L2 grit mediated the relationships ‘between perceived teacher support and academic engagement’ and ‘between growth language mindset and academic engagement’. EFL learners receiving more teacher support and endorsing higher levels of growth language mindset can successfully overcome failures and difficulties in their learning process by showing more persistence in dealing with challenges and sustaining their interest, which could considerably enhance their engagement in learning.

In the ever-changing higher education climate, university teachers often rely on traditional, teacher-centred educational practices. While universities worldwide attempt to improve teaching quality by investing in professional development, many university teachers do not receive formal teaching training – even though teaching is often the largest part of their job responsibility. This study explores the effects of an evidence-based professional development programme dealing with student-centred, active learning on the teaching competencies of university teachers. A total of 189 Polish university teachers participated in a five-day study visit at Ghent University (Belgium). The university teachers were invited to complete a pre- and post-questionnaire. The results reveal that, after the study visit, the participants do not only feel more capable in their roles as (a) educational designer, (b) classroom manager, (c) assessor, (d) educational technologist, (e) differentiator, (f) lifelong learner/innovator, and (g) quality guard, but also effectively plan to change their behaviour regarding these roles and believe significantly more in their importance. The results show that professionalisation initiatives have the potential to change university teachers’ behaviour, capabilities and beliefs concerning more student-centred teaching for the better. The article concludes, however, by implying that contextual factors, such as the institution’s professionalisation policy, too impact the success of professional development initiatives.

Students involved in peer assessment have interpersonal relationships, partly consisting of reciprocal perceptions. In the domain of argumentative writing, little is known about the way peer assessment is affected by the assessor’s perception of the assessee’s language skills. Dutch 10th grade students (N = 176, age = 15–16) provided feedback and grades on two texts, being under the illusion that the texts had been written by two classmates whom the assessors perceived as a peer with either stronger or weaker language skills than their own (within-subjects design). In reality, students assessed similar texts, created by the researchers. Assessors did not provide different feedback to the two types of assessees. Simultaneously, they provided higher grades to peers perceived to have stronger language skills than their own than to peers perceived to have weaker language skills than their own. Future research should capture assessors’ rationale behind the composition of feedback and grades.

Recent and older studies have reported either a persistence or a widening of the socioeconomic achievement gap—the difference in performance between students in top and bottom socioeconomic groups. Using a panel data technique with country fixed effects for 32 education systems and six waves of data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, we examine whether the sorting of teachers by specialization level in mathematics education and novice status across students of different socioeconomic backgrounds exacerbates mathematics achievement inequity despite the presence of a time-varying control for socioeconomic school segregation. We find modest evidence that sorting by mathematics education is associated with achievement inequity, but no evidence supporting the importance of sorting based on teacher experience. Socioeconomic school segregation, on the other hand, clearly and persistently exacerbates achievement inequity. The results have policy implications regarding the effective distribution of educational resources.

Availability of data and materials

The data are freely available via the TIMSS data repository.

The study aims to investigate the effects of delivery modalities on psychometric characteristics and student performance on cognitive tests. A first study assessed the inductive reasoning ability of 715 students under the supervision of teachers. A second study examined 731 students’ performance on the application of the control-of-variables strategy in basic physics but without teacher supervision due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rasch measurement showed that the online format fitted to the data better in the unidimensional model across two conditions. Under teacher supervision, paper-based testing was better than online testing in terms of reliability and total scores, but contradictory findings were found in turn without teacher supervision. Although measurement invariance was confirmed between two versions at item level, the differential bundle functioning analysis supported the online groups on the item bundles constructed of figure-related materials. Response time was also discussed as an advantage of technology-based assessment for test development.

Although the effectiveness of peer review has been examined, few have tested the joint benefits of providing and receiving feedback features and quality in L2 contexts. The present study investigated variation in key features and quality of feedback provided and received by high and low L2 proficiency students and its benefits on revision in the authentic setting of students experiencing both roles of providing and receiving peer feedback in English academic writing. Analyses on two drafts from 50 students, 1356 idea units of anonymous implementable peer feedback and back-evaluation ratings revealed that the combined effect of providing and receiving feedback on revision was prominent for all students. But the bilateral benefits of providing and receiving feedback features were more significant for high proficiency students, while providing feedback features and quality benefited low proficiency students more. The study implies that students need more bilateral training with both providing and receiving feedback.