Scholastic Aptitudes Research Articles

Prospects of Compulsory English Education in South Korea: What Went Wrong and What Could Be Rectified

This article examines the conceivable rationales as to why Korean students’ English-speaking proficiency scores are not as outstanding as other international standardized test scores such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Despite the efforts of the Korean government to impose compulsory English education policies such as starting English education earlier and arranging for native English speakers to co-teach in English classes, the English knowledge of Koreans is still lacking. Without knowing the details of the English Program in Korea (EPIK) and the curriculum of English education, the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) strategies may sound ideal in terms of effective language pedagogical approach, yet in this article I examine why they are ineffective. I begin by analyzing the results of three tests: PISA, TIMSS, and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to assess Korean students’ scholastic aptitudes. Next, I examine the current stage of compulsory English education in Korea according to the data from the MOE. Finally, prospects and recommendations are proposed on how the Korean compulsory English education could be improved based on the discovery of three critical drawbacks: insufficient instructional time, eligibility of EPIK, and the need for teacher evaluation.

Creatividad e inteligencias múltiples percibidas como predictores de las aptitudes escolares en Educación Primaria

Introducción. La profundización en constructos como creatividad, inteligencia y aptitudes escolares, y comprender cómo se relacionan entre ellos, puede favorecer un mejor entendimiento de las variables implicadas en el rendimiento académico. Por tanto, el objetivo del presente estudio ha sido examinar el valor predictivo de la creatividad y las inteligencias múltiples (auto-percibidas, percibidas por familias y por profesorado) sobre las aptitudes escolares relacionadas con el rendimiento académico en Educación Primaria.Método. Para ello, 98 estudiantes de 3er y 6º curso de varios centros educativos del norte de España cumplimentaron diferentes pruebas: una prueba objetiva de evaluación de inteligencia creativa (CREA), un Test de Aptitudes Escolares (TEA1) y un cuestionario de autoinforme sobre sus inteligencias múltiples percibidas. Así mismo, padres y profesores también cumplimentaron el cuestionario sobre las inteligencias múltiples del alumnado participante.Resultados. Los resultados de la regresión lineal mostraron que la inteligencia creativa de los estudiantes predice, en parte, las aptitudes escolares no verbales de los alumnos y que la inteligencia naturalista y las inteligencias lingüística y lógico-matemática muestran cierta capacidad predictiva sobre las aptitudes escolares de los alumnos, en general, y sobre los componentes verbal y no verbal, en particular.Discusión y conclusiones. Se observa cierta capacidad predictiva de la creatividad y de algunas inteligencias multiples sobre las aptitudes escolares, pero no de la misma forma y sin acuerdo generalizado entre informantes, entendiendo que el profesorado es el colectivo que muestra mayor precisión para valorar el nivel de las inteligencias múltiples que han resultado predictoras en este estudio.

Determining standard of academic potential based on the Indonesian Scholastic Aptitude Test (TBS) benchmark

The aim of this article was to classify The Indonesian Scholastic Aptitude Test or Tes Bakat Skolastik (TBS) results for each subtest and describe scholastic aptitudes in each subtest. The subject of this study was 36,125 prospective students who took the selection test in some universities. Data analysis began by estimating testees’ ability using the Item Response Theory, and benchmarking process using the scale anchoring method applying ASP.net web server technology. The results of this research are four benchmarks (based on cutoff scores) on each subtest, characters which differentiate potential for each benchmark, and measurement error on each benchmark. The items netted give a description of the scholastic aptitude potential clearly and indicate uniqueness so that it could distinguish difference in potential between a lower bench and a higher bench. At a higher bench, a higher level of reasoning power is required in analyzing and processing needed information so that the individual concerned could do the problem solving with the right solution. The items netted at a lower bench in the three subtests tend to be few so that the error of measurement at such a bench still tends to be higher compared to that at a higher bench.

Investigating Gender and Racial/Ethnic Invariance in Use of a Course Management System in Higher Education

This study focused on learning equity in colleges and universities where teaching and learning depends heavily on computer technologies. The study used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to investigate gender and racial/ethnic heterogeneity in the use of a computer based course management system (CMS). Two latent variables (CMS usage and scholastic aptitudes)—with two moderation covariates (gender and ethnicity)—were used to explore their associational relationships with students’ final grades. More than 990 students’ CMS data were collected from courses at a Midwest public university in the United States. The final model indicated that there was gender and racial/ethnic invariance in the use of the CMS. Additionally, CMS use was significantly positively associated with students’ academic achievement. These findings have policy and practical implications for understanding the correlation between technology use and academic achievement in colleges and universities. This study also pointed out future research directions for technology use in higher education.

A Challenge to Assessment <em>for</em> Education: <em>Guest Editorial</em>

Across the education enterprise, assessment, teaching, learning and achievement standards are central. But the explication of what we want learners to know about specific disciplines and to be able to do in meeting these standards must be considered as instrumental as what we want learners to be and to become. Strictly speaking, Binet-rooted are not far from the mark in an effort to achieve distance from specific content covered in diverse national curricula. These scholastic aptitudes can be thought of as generalized developed abilities that not only reflect the capacity to handle academic work, but also, more importantly, they reflect abilities that result from high-quality education. Instead of scholastic aptitudes, however, we think the most appropriate term is competencies. These developed abilities are not so much reflected in the specific discipline-based knowledge a student may have acquired, but in the ability and disposition to use the meta-products of having learned to engage and solve quotidian and novel problems adaptively.Accordingly, the success in developing strong learners and dynamic contributors to American democracy and the global community hinges on the effectiveness with which we stoke intellective competencies across one's educational lifespan. This attention to increasing abilities within the learner is of special importance in reconsidering the troika of assessment, teaching, and learning. How it is that we understand the positioning and the privileging of assessment in the most effective interest of the learner is crucial. Assessment must be ordered and situated in a way that serves the learner, not in a fashion that has the individual as a student of the test, or as a blind consumer of information, therefore, sacrificing the assumption and application of knowledge. This emphasis on how it is that assessment will operate across teaching and learning is particularly important when considering shifts in ontological and axiological mores in education. Accordingly, the fiituring of epistemology-assessment and pedagogy in particular-is requisite in understanding present and potential abilities of the learner as central.Appraisal and assessment within education must move away from prediction and selection based on the measurement of developed abilities and toward diagnosis, prescription and placement, and must ultimately shift to learning situations involving the kinds of interventions that build intellective competence. Assessment for education in such a world-one where diversity, equity and excellence are concurrently privileged-will likely give more attention to the analysis of teaching and learning behavioral processes and situations than to the status of the learner's achievement. The status of one's developed ability will still be of some use, but primarily as it relates to an understanding of the processes by which abilities and competencies develop and are acquired in order to serve a dynamic learner-centric education scaffolding.This may be a challenge for traditional and colloquial approaches to measurement science, as well as to the learning systems that it should serve. Changes consequent in the fiituring of the patterning of the education cycle, as well as focus on learners as diverse and capable, irrespective of context and culture, is against conventional practice, if not conventional norms. Measurement science and the field of education itself have not resolved issues having to do with the juxtaposition of diversity and variation in human characteristics. Because of this, there is the need to intentionally push applied research agendas in which the diversity and variation at issue are inclusive of equity in access to appropriate opportunities to learn, and excellence in the quality of human performance. Competent attention must be paid to better conceptualizing these issues and pursuing research and development that goes beyond the adjustment of scores to compensate for lack of opportunity to learn; the search for evidence of bias in the tests or testing situation; and advocacy for social justice. …

Dynamic Assessment: the Spanish Version of the Application of Cognitive Functions Scale

For the last 30 years, the sphere of educational assessment has been giving consideration to methodology that would focus on the processes more than on the final results obtained. Dynamic Assessment has appeared within this context, making it possible to assess a child's ability to improve on a certain task after receiving mediated training. One of the techniques developed to assess the learning potential of preschoolers is the Application of Cognitive Functions Scale (ACFS: Lidz & Jepsen, 2003). The objective of this study was to verify the criterion validity of the Spanish version of the ACFS which was applied to 87 children in the second year of preschool, at which time a learning potential index was obtained for each child. Two years later, the children were reassessed with respect to intelligence, metacognition and scholastic aptitudes. Results showed that learning potential presented evidences of predictive validity regarding to the progression showed on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test's (K-BIT: Kaufman & Kauffman, 1994) matrices subtest (p = .04, η2 = .04) and on the evaluation subtest of the metacognition questionnaire (p = .02, η2 = .05). Results also showed significant differences between groups on the visual-perceptive aptitude subtest (p = .01) in favor of the children classified as learners.

Academic success or failure in nursing students: Results of a retrospective observational study

Nursing student academic failure is a phenomenon of growing international interest, not only because of its economic impact but also because it negatively affects the availability of future nurses in different healthcare systems. To recruit the students with the highest probability of academic success, an open challenge for universities is to recruit students who have previously demonstrated superior scholastic aptitudes that appear to be associated with a greater likelihood of academic success. Documenting the relationship between the selection methods used when selecting nursing students and academic failure will contribute to the international debate concerning the optimisation of the selection strategies. The principal aim of this study was to investigate the role in predicting nursing student academic success of (1) the upper-secondary diploma grades and (2) the score obtained by students in the nursing degree program admission test. A retrospective observational study was conducted. Five cohorts of nursing students, matriculated in consecutive academic years from 2004 to 2008, in an Italian bachelor's degree program were observed retrospectively. Overall, 61.2% of the 1006 considered students concluded their degree within the legal duration allowed for the nursing degree. Students who failed were those who had lowest grades associated with their upper-secondary diploma coursework (p=0.000) and were male (p=0.000). The grades associated with the upper-secondary diploma coursework, unlike the admission test score, correlates positively with the final degree grade and the average value of degree program examination scores. No correlation was found between the upper-secondary diploma coursework grades and the scores obtained in the test for the nursing degree program admission test (r=-0.037). These results suggest that upper-secondary diploma coursework grades are a parameter that should receive great consideration, especially in cases where there are planned numbers of incoming nursing degree students.

Salary Schedules, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality

This study investigates how salary rigidities affect teacher quality across teaching subjects and high schools and whether high quality teachers can be compensated sufficiently to attract them into unfavorable schools. For identification, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in compensation across adjacent districts within the same state. The results indicate that, on average, math/science teachers’ scholastic aptitudes are 8.5 percentiles lower and humanities teachers are 4.5 percentiles lower compared to other teachers. Furthermore, we find that schools with higher percentages of student eligible for free lunch hire teachers with, on average, 7 to 17 percentiles lower scholastic aptitudes with the math/science teachers being even lower. Increases in lifetime compensation is found to raise the scholastic aptitude of teachers hired across all schools, with diminishing returns in schools with more favorable working conditions. However, the lower 26% of the teacher aptitude distribution seems to not respond to compensation at all with only marginal gains up to the 60th percentile. Furthermore, bonus/merit pay or additional school activity income do not seem to be significant in recruiting/retaining high aptitude teachers.

Salary Schedules, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality

This study investigates how salary rigidities affect teacher quality across teaching subjects and high schools and whether high quality teachers can be compensated sufficiently to attract them into unfavorable schools. For identification, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in compensation across adjacent districts within the same state. The results indicate that, on average, math/science teachers’ scholastic aptitudes are 8.5 percentiles lower and humanities teachers are 4.5 percentiles lower compared to other teachers. Furthermore, we find that schools with higher percentages of student eligible for free lunch hire teachers with, on average, 7 to 17 percentiles lower scholastic aptitudes with the math/science teachers being even lower. Increases in lifetime compensation is found to raise the scholastic aptitude of teachers hired across all schools, with diminishing returns in schools with more favorable working conditions. However, the lower 26% of the teacher aptitude distribution seems to not respond to compensation at all with only marginal gains up to the 60th percentile. Furthermore, bonus/merit pay or additional school activity income do not seem to be significant in recruiting/retaining high aptitude teachers.

Socialized Personality, Scholastic Aptitudes, Study Habits, and Academic Achievement: Exploring the Link

Summary: This study analyzed the relationships among Cattellian personality factors, scholastic aptitudes, study habits, and academic achievement. A total of 887 volunteer students from primary education (453 males and 434 females), enrolled in 29 public schools, participated in this research. It was found that the scholastic aptitudes were the most predictive variables of achievement, while the personality traits had a low direct contribution to academic achievement, although the students with higher scores on socialized personality traits showed better study habits than those students with lower scores on personality socialization traits. The relationship between personality and academic achievement seems to be mediated by study habits. Moreover, females obtained higher academic achievement scores than males. These differences could be explained by the fact that females showed a more socialized personality pattern and better study habits.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLIED UTILITY OF A NORMATIVE APTITUDE–ACHIEVEMENT TAXONOMY FOR THE WOODCOCK-JOHNSON PSYCHO-EDUCATIONAL BATTERY-REVISED

This study developed a normative core profile taxonomy of the most common aptitude and achievement scales in the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised (WJ-R; Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). Eight scales were included in the analyses: the WJ-R's four scholastic aptitudes and their four corresponding achievement scales. Cluster analysis was used to sort 2,620 students from the standardization sample of the WJ-R. Results of internal and external validity analyses provided support for eight core profiles. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed in terms of how the ability and achievement scores covary in the population. Practical implications and utility are gained by providing a multivariate procedure through which the distinctiveness of a given child's aptitude-achievement profile can be assessed through comparison to the population core types.

Assessment of Interests and Aptitudes for Career Planning

In order to ensure that the guidance process is effective, career guidance professionals must make decisions about what techniques and interventions to implement with clients in the limited time generally available. Given the variety of interventions in the professional's repertoire, a decision to implement any one of these must be based on a strong probability that the outcome will be constructive. This study reports on the relevance of using vocational interests and aptitude data in the guidance process. The immediate and longer-term aptness of the assessment results is examined through analysis of measured interests, aspirations, scholastic aptitudes and tertiary course entry of 335 female secondary students. Results indicated excellent concurrent and predictive validity for the interest data while also indicating the role played by aptitudes.

The Independence of Aptitudes, Interests, and Career Beliefs

The importance of client beliefs in career counseling depends on their ability to add unique information about the client over and above that contributed by aptitudes and interests. The Career Beliefs Inventory was administered to 200 Australian students in grade 10 together with measures of Holland's RIASEC interest themes and scholastic aptitudes. The correlations between scales from the three domains showed clearly that beliefs made a contribution distinct from that provided by aptitudes and interests. Even though the results may reflect possible sampling or method variance, career beliefs in this sample added unique information to that traditionally used in career counseling.

Teaching dental materials using the personalized system of instruction

Tailoring instruction to the individual needs of students is one approach to ensuring that students with lower scholastic aptitudes obtain the skills and knowledge necessary to function successfully as professionals. This study determined the effects of the personalized system of instruction (PSI) on end-of-course achievement, aptitude-achievement relationships, long-term retention, and course attitudes. The PSI method of instruction was compared to a conventional lecture/laboratory approach for teaching a dental materials course to dental hygiene students. Although there was no significant difference between conventionally taught and PSI students on the end-of-term final examination, lower aptitude students in the PSI class scored significantly higher on the final examination than lower aptitude students in the conventional class. Of students completing a one-year retention examination, those in the PSI class scored significantly higher than students in the conventionally taught class. Student course ratings favored PSI instruction both at the end of the course and at the one-year follow-up interval.

Teacher characteristics and teacher performance

This study investigated effects of seven demographic and psychological characteristics of teachers on their performances during student teaching. Student teachers' performances were examined in relation to their ages, prior student teaching experiences, scholastic aptitudes, attitudes toward teaching, moral reasoning abilities, conceptual levels, and degrees of ego development. Results indicate that student teachers' performances were dependent in a nontrivial way on their ego development and to a much lesser degree on other characteristics.

Some observations on tetra-ataxiametric patterns of static balance and their relation to mental and scholastic achievements.

Recent experiences and observations gathered in the context of six independent studies in California, France, and Israel with a new method of tetra-ataxiametry based on the use of four footplates, are presented. Two independent postural parameters assessed by this method (fluctuations and anterio-posterior weight displacement) have been shown to be reliable over time and to correlate with scholastic progress at the lower elementary grades (ages 5 to 9 yr.). They also seem to be sensitive to minimal neurological dysfunction and to postural characteristics of deaf children. Results of one study indicate that diagonal balancing movements (between heel and contra-lateral toe) reflected by the tetra-ataxiametric measure of synchrony may play an important role in postural organization. Findings offer new perspectives on problems of postural laterality and on the relationship between static balance, cognition, and scholastic aptitudes at the lower grades of elementary education.

The linguistic maturity of 11-year-olds: some analysis of the written compositions of children in the National Child Development Study

ABSTRACTThe written compositions of 11-year-olds in the National Child Development Study were analysed using the T-unit length (Hunt 1965) as a measure of syntactic maturity, and composition length as a measure of productivity. Only a weak association was found between mean T-unit length (MTUL) and composition length. There were no statistically significant regional differences in either composition length or MTUL. There were statistically significant sex and social class differences in composition length but not in MTUL. Composition length was associated with Reading Comprehension, General Ability test scores, and teachers' ratings of certain scholastic aptitudes. MTUL was associated only slightly or not at all with these measures. The results are discussed in relation to cognitive and linguistic development.

Persistence in Engineering and Technical Institute Programs: A Study of Some Nonintellective Concomitants

This study identifies certain personal attributes and personality factors and variables which might provide a valid pattern of factors characteristic of engineering and technical institute dropouts. The subjects utilized were 134 freshman students at Oklahoma State University. Of this group, 50 were engineering freshmen, and 84 were technical institute freshmen. Those who satisfactorily completed their freshman year of study and returned for their sophomore year of study were considered nondropouts; while those discontinuing their program before their sophomore year were considered dropouts. Data gathered on the subjects included a measure of social attitudes, social values, scholastic aptitude, and a social class grouping. Findings and conclusions were that engineering freshmen (1) came from significantly higher social class backgrounds than technical institute students, (2) had significantly higher scholastic aptitudes, (3) were more theoretically oriented, and (4) were more motivated to achieve than technical institute freshmen. The technician group had a significantly greater need for nurturance than the engineering group. There was no significant difference between the needs of engineering dropouts and technical institute dropouts. The combined dropout group had a significantly higher need for affiliation and nurturance than the nondropouts. The nondropouts had significantly higher economic needs orientation than the dropouts.

Scholastic Aptitudes and Vocational Needs of Original Thinkers and Good Elaborators

This study seeks to expand the concept of creativity by investigating the scholastic aptitudes and vocational needs of highly creative public high school seniors. Torrance's (1962) Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking were administered to 708 seniors. Students scoring highest and lowest on two scales, originality and elaboration, were divided into 12 criterion groups (N = 311) among boys and girls. Significant differences were obtained on the Minnesota Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ) (Weiss, Dawis, England & Lofquist, 1964). Highly original seniors had significantly stronger needs than good elaborators on four MIQ scales. Students highest in both abilities had stronger needs than either high originals or good elaborators on five other MIQ scales.

Characteristics of Achievers and Under‐achievers of a Large Senior High School

To identify scholastic aptitudes, vocational preferences, values, and temperament traits of junior and senior students in high school designated as achievers (A) and under‐achievers (U) within the Otis Intelligence Score range of 110–125, 132 A's within the scholastic rank of 5.0–4.5 and 76 U's within 2.9‐2.0 were selected. Results were: (a) Differential Aptitude Test scores were significantly higher in verbal and numerical for A's and in spatial and mechanical for U's; (b). Neither group could be characterized by a specific occupational interest based on the Kuder Preference Record‐Vocational; (c) Allport‐Vernon‐Lindzey Study of Values revealed higher theoretical, social, and religous scores for the A group; (d) Thurstone Temperament Schedule showed both groups had high reflective scores and low impulsive scores. Conclusions are (a) U's evidenced abilities to make higher grades; (b) 90 per cent of the A's and 70 per cent of the U's were potentially able to do college work; (c) A's and U's should be informed of their aptitudes; (d) Causes of under‐achievement were not directly related to characteristics studied.