The study examined differences in reading achievement and mastery skill development among Grade‐6 students with different language background profiles, using cognitive diagnosis modeling applied to large‐scale provincial reading test performance data. Our analyses revealed that students residing in various home language environments show different reading achievement growth patterns. Earlier gaps in their reading achievement disappear the longer they reside in the target language community. Additionally, students who come from home environments where they use English and another language equally demonstrate higher skill mastery achievement levels, indicating that immigrant students' diverse home language environments do not adversely affect their reading achievement in the longer term. The study results support the evidence that multilingual home language environments are not a cause of low achievement; however, the achievement patterns of Canadian‐born English language learners (ELLs) do differ from their immigrant counterparts, revealing that time alone is not a sufficient condition of reading skill achievement. ELLs' outperformance of monolinguals after 5 years of residence is a result of ongoing instructional support and a rich linguistic environment. The study results hold important policy implications: The evaluation of ELLs' academic achievement and school effectiveness for accountability purposes should be based on longitudinal data that track their developmental growths.
Diagnostic assessment enables teachers to make inferences about learners’ strengths and weaknesses in the skills being taught. Teachers may provide students with diagnostic feedback to make positive changes in their learning. This pedagogical desire for classroom diagnostic assessment resonates well with formative assessment and differentiates it from clinical diagnosis. However, this formative potential to advance student learning is only realized when diagnostic feedback is used by teachers and learners. The ways in which this feedback is interpreted and utilized depend on a range of variables at individual and structural (e.g., classroom, schools, and community) levels. Questioning the assumption that learners are passive recipients of feedback, the chapter probes conditions and variables that enable or inhibit the maximal use of diagnostic feedback. While the focus of diagnosis is students’ cognitive competence, the parameters of diagnostic assessment involve more than a cognitive dimension. Viewing students as change agents in diagnostic assessment requires consideration of noncognitive learner characteristics such as students’ attitude to learning and assessment, especially their goal orientations. Students’ mastery goals are shown to be related to adaptive outcomes, persistence, and effective self‐regulatory strategies that facilitate performance on assessment tasks. Few studies have examined whether there is a direct link between students’ goal orientations and their attitudes to and use of diagnostic feedback. The chapter examines whether students’ goal orientations serve as a gateway to understanding how students may interpret assessment feedback and use it in their learning. Other structural conditions, beyond individual orientations, are also explored in order to understand the role of context, where individual learners’ attitudes and goal orientations are shaped and influenced through the interaction with other learners, teachers, parents, and social norms. The chapter examines these relationships by drawing from multiple small‐scale studies engaging English language learners, and argues that the effectiveness of diagnostic feedback is achieved when the complex nature of language learners’ goal structures situated in sociocultural learning contexts is considered.
As an alternative paradigm, mixed methods research (MMR), in general, endorses pluralism to understand the complex nature of a social world from multiple perspectives and multiple methodological lenses, each of which offers partial, yet valuable, insights. This methodological mixing is not limited to mixing of methods, but extends to the entire inquiry process. Researchers in language testing and assessment (LTA) are increasingly turning to MMR in order to understand the complexities of language acquisition and interaction among various language users, and also to expand opportunities to investigate validity claims beyond the three traditional facets of construct, content, and criterion validity. We use current conceptualizations of validity as a guiding framework to review 32 empirical MMR studies that have been published in LTA since 2007. Our systematic review encompassed multiple areas of foci, including the rationale for the use of MMR, evidence of collaboration, and synergetic effects. The analyses revealed several key trends including: (a) triangulation and complementarity were the prevalent uses of MMR in LTA; (b) the majority of the studies took place predominantly in higher education learning contexts with adult immigrant or university populations; (c) aspects of writing assessment were most frequently the focus of the studies (compared to other language modalities); (d) many of the studies explicitly addressed facets of validity, and others had significant implications for expanding notions of validity in LTA; (e) the majority of the studies avoided mixing at the data analysis stage by distinguishing data types and reporting results separately; and (f) integration occurred primarily at the discussion stage. We contend that LTA should embrace MMR through creative designs and integrative analytic strategies to seek new insights into the complexities and contexts of language testing and assessment.
Technology-rich learning environments (TREs) provide opportunities for learners to engage in complex interactions involving a multitude of cognitive, metacognitive, and affective states. Understanding learners’ distinct learning progressions in TREs demand inquiry approaches that employ well-conceived theoretical accounts of these multiple facets. The present study investigated learners’ interactions with BioWorld, a TRE developed to guide students’ clinical reasoning through diagnoses of simulated patients. We applied person-oriented analytic methods to multimodal data including verbal protocols, questionnaires, and computer logs from 78 task solutions. [...
Supramolecular chemistry, or "chemistry beyond the molecule", is a hot topic in current chemical research (1-9). It deals with highly organized structures involving two or more individual molecules held together only by intermolecular forces (1). It is easily distinguishable from molecular chemistry by the lack of covalent bonding interactions between the species involved. Supramolecular systems are becoming increasingly important in various areas of chemistry, including control and catalysis of chemical reactions (1, 2), organic synthesis (3), molecular recognition (1, 2, 4), design of materials for molecular-scale electronics (5), chemical separations (6 ), and bioorganic chemistry (4, 7 ). It is therefore useful and appropriate to provide an introduction to the concepts and applications of this interesting field of chemical research to advanced undergraduate students; this would be particularly suitable for an advanced organic or physical chemistry class.
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