Report on Research Activities in 2010 (Jan. 2011)
CRET's Assessment and Analysis of Educational Testing Department has been giving presentations at academic societies on research themes mainly compiled in the latter half of the previous year, and engaged in the preparation of academic papers.
1. An oral presentation on "An Item Response Model for Probability Testing" was given at the International Meeting on Psychometric Society (IMPS 2010) held at the University of Georgia, U.S.A. This was on the item response model that can be applied to response data from probability testing.
2. An oral presentation on "Detection of aberrant response patterns in web test data" was given at the 8th Convention of Japan Association for Research on Testing (JART) held at Tama University in August 2010. The detection method of unusual response patterns and its application to the data from web surveys were presented.
3. An oral presentation on "Changes in vocabulary skills of subjects: Japanese and mathematics" was given at the 52nd General Assembly of Japanese Association of Educational Psychology held at Waseda University in August 2010. It was on the research outcome of subject-specific vocabulary skills taught in school.
4. A presentation on "Problem solving capabilities as the 21st century skills and the framework of international assessment" was given at the Planning Session of the 8th Convention of Japanese Association for Research on Testing held at Tama University in August 2010. It reported the outcome of a continuing survey on the skills required in the 21st century.
5. A presentation on "New generic skills required for workers in the 21st century - their assessment and development" was given at the Planning session of the 2010 Convention of the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Association (JFSSA) held at Waseda University in September 2010. It was on the development of statistical and mathematical processing tests and training materials for university students. The study was jointly conducted with Benesse Corporation.
We plan to compile the presentations from 1-3 into academic papers.
An oral presentation on "Research on developmental teaching materials that can teach the joy of learning mathematics " was given at the 92nd National Mathematics Education Convention held at Niigata University in July 2010. This was a joint research with Mr. Akihiro Yoshida, a lecturer at Musashi University and Komaba High School affiliated with Tsukuba University.
In June 2010, we invited Dr. Maomi Ueno to lecture on the latest methods of learning assessment leveraging technology.
We plan to pursue theoretical and demonstrative research on the development and assessment of educational testing in the future.
(Yiping Zhang, Ph.D., CRET Researcher)
