There has been increasing use and significance of progress testing in medical education. It is used in many ways and with several formats to reflect the variety of curricula and assessment purposes. These developments have occurred alongside a recognised sensitivity for error variance inherent in multiple choice tests from which challenges to its validity and reliability have arisen. This Guide presents a generic, systemic framework to help identify and explore improvements in the quality and defensibility of progress test data. The framework draws on the combined experience of the Dutch consortium, an individual medical school in the United Kingdom, and the bulk of the progress test literature to date. It embeds progress testing as a quality-controlled assessment tool for improving learning, teaching and the demonstration of educational standards. The paper describes strengths, highlights constraints and explores issues for improvement. These may assist in the establishment of potential or new progress testing in medical education programmes. They can also guide the evaluation and improvement of existing programmes.

This study examined the optimal psychological state of flow in a live music performance context at an Australian tertiary music institution in order to advance understanding of this under-researched experience in music performance and education. The Flow State Scale-2 (FSS-2) was administered to 236 students from five instrument families immediately after their performance examinations. A further aim was to examine the psychometric properties of the FSS-2 in order to determine its suitability for use as a measure of flow in music performance domains. The findings provided the first empirical confirmation of the validity and reliability of the flow model in live music performance. The flow experience was found to be consistent with findings from sport performance and did not vary substantially according to instrument type, year level, or gender. Most students in the sample did not believe they were sufficiently skilled to meet the challenge of the performance and most did not experience it as absorbing or enjoyable. The implications of the findings for the enhancement of teaching and learning methods were examined. Future research directions were discussed, particularly in regards to psychological skills training to help improve the music performance experience.

This study investigated ways to improve the quality of music performance evaluation in an effort to address the accountability imperative in tertiary music education. An enhanced scientific methodology was employed incorporating ecological validity and using recognized qualitative methods involving grounded theory and quantitative methods involving confirmatory factor analyses. By distilling the disciplinary consensus, this approach enabled the specific definition of the constructs and standards used in university student classical music performance examinations, and provided their refinement with the empirical development of standards-based, criterion-specific rating scales for five instrument families. The study found that the examiners in each instrument family used between 15 to 17 constructs and associated descriptors, and at least two general dimensions referring to technical proficiency and another relating to musicality and interpretation. Analyses showed acceptable internal consistency and construct validity for the scales. Findings suggested that, although several construct and general dimension commonalities were found among the items across all scales, the presence of significant instrument-specific differences suggested that the use of generic rating scales may not provide sufficient content validity. Implications for the application of standards in music performance assessment were discussed.

Previous studies have suggested that the superior accuracy of preselected (subject-defined) over constrained (experimenter-defined) movements is due to both the availability of a movement plan and efferent-command information. The present experiment examined the contribution of the planning and efferent components to the preselection effect in a location and a distance task. The availability of a movement plan was manipulated by providing preselected and constrained groups of subjects with a rehearsal movement. Furthermore, the amount of efferent information available was varied by requiring both active and passive rehearsal movements. The results suggested that while strategy alone is responsible for the superiority of preselected location, both strategy and efferent information underlie the superiority of preselected distance reproduction.

No abstract