Educational Measurement

Educational measurement refers to the use of educational assessments and the analysis of such data such as scores obtained from educational tests to infer the abilities and proficiencies of students. The approaches overlap with those in psychometrics. Educational measurement is the assigning of numerals to traits such as achievement, interest, attitudes, aptitudes, intelligence, and performance.

The aim of theory and practice in educational measurement is typically to measure abilities and levels of attainment by students in areas such as reading, writing, science, mathematics and so forth. Traditionally, attention focuses on whether assessments are reliable and valid. In practice, educational assessment is largely concerned with the analysis of data from educational assessments or tests. Typically, this means using total scores in assessments, whether they are multiple choice or open-ended and marked using marking rubics or guides.

In technical terms, the pattern of scores by individual students to individual items is used to infer so-called scale location of students, i.e. the "measurements." This process is one way of scaling. Essentially, higher total scores give higher scale locations, consistent with the traditional and everyday use of total scores. If certain throry is used, though, there is not a strict correspondence between the ordering of total scores and the ordering of scale locations. The Rasch model provides a strict correspondence provided all students attempt the same test items, or their performances are marked using the same marking rubics.

In terms of the broad body of purely mathematical theory drawn on, there is substantial overlap between educational measurement and psychometrics. However, certain approaches considered to be a part of psychometrics, including Classical Test Theory, Items Response Theory, and the Rasch Model, were originally developed more specifically for the analysis of data from educational assessments.

One of the aims of applying theory and techniques in educational neasurement is to try to place the results of different tests administered to different groups of students on a single or common scales through processes known as test equating. The rationale is that because different assessments usually have different difficulties, the total scores cannot be directly compared. The aim of trying to compare results on a common scale is to allow comparison of scale locations inferred from the totals via scaling processes.

x------------x

Picture from Pexels.

Comments

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...

Simple Machine

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines that were defined by Renaissance scientists: Lever Wheel and axle Pulley Inclined plane Wedge Screw A simple machine uses a single applied force to do work against a single work load. Ignoring friction losses, the work done on the load is equal to the work done by the applied force. The machine can increase the amount of the output force, at the cost of a proportional decrease in the distance moved by the load. The ratio of the output to the applied force is called the mechanical advantage. Simple machines can be regarded as the elementary "building blocks" of which all more complicated machines (sometimes called compound machines) are composed. For example, wheels, levers, and pulleys are all use...

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to conquer Jerusalem and its surrounding areas from Muslim rule. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organized, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century. In 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the first expedition at the Council of Clermont. He encouraged military support for Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos and called for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Across all social strata in western Europe there was an enthusiastic response. Participants came from all over Europe and had a variety of motivations, including religious salvation, satisfying feudal obligations,...

Search This Blog