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Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

The current trend in Ontario toward greater educational accountability through standardized curriculum and testing appears to be based largely on the hope that compliance with external standards will lead to a more transparent, uniform, and predictable educational system. Through a focus group and individual interviews, this case study explores the experiences and perceptions of three elementary school teachers from one school who are required to implement the Ontario curriculum, as well as to provide annually administered standardized tests to their students in reading, writing and mathematics. The research conducted suggests how specific aspects of the tension between teachers' localized perceptions of classroom life and provincial curricular requirements and Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) testing are redefining the educational realities experienced by students and teachers in one contemporary Ontario school and its classrooms.

Unlike textual description, pathfinder network (an algorithm that results in a kind of concept map) provides a visual way to describe the knowledge structure of a student. It often provides a clear measure of the student's understanding and highlights the student's misconceptions. The traditional approaches of assessment such as multiple-choice questions and word problems often fail to identify these misconceptions. The following steps were carried out for this study. 1. The study assessed the knowledge structures of grade 11 physics students of a public high school of Ottawa and their instructor using pathfinder networks. The work concept (a subset of links around the concept of work) in the students' pathfinder networks was compared to the work concept in the referent network and the similarity between them was calculated. 2. During the intervention phase of the study, individualized instructions and exercises based on the misconceptions about the concept of work, shown by their knowledge structures, were given to the students. 3. The study again assessed the knowledge structures of the students for a change in work concept in their pathfinder networks by comparing it with the referent network. The study also analyzed the control concepts of "mass" and "gravity" in the pathfinder networks of the students and found no significant change in those. In addition to pathfinder networks' utility as a global measure of conceptual knowledge of the students, which is useful for summative assessment, this research is a step forward to provide evidence that an individual node in the pathfinder network can be explored to study a particular concept in the network. Therefore, the research demonstrates the potential utility of pathfinder networks for formative assessment. This offers the possibility of providing the students with extremely comprehensive feedback. Results revealed that the similarity index of work concept in the pathfinder networks of the students increased from pre- to post-intervention phase. Most likely, the major reason for this change was that individualized instructions were given to each student about the concept of work which stimulated and probably changed some of their misconceptions. To address validity, the similarity indices of mass and gravity concepts in the pathfinder networks of the students were also checked for improvement. The result shows that there is no significant improvement in mass and gravity concepts as the individualised instructions were not given to the students about mass and gravity concepts. Findings support the use of structural assessment of knowledge with pathfinder scaling technique for formative assessment as a way to enhance learning.

This qualitative study describes tensions and dilemmas that two secondary mathematics teachers experience in their classroom assessment and how they negotiate these tensions and dilemmas in their practice as they try to implement current reforms. The focus on tensions and dilemmas gives particular insight into the complexities of "doing" classroom assessment in a manner that is aligned with the current reforms and is helpful for identifying areas that need further work in both the research and teaching communities in order for these reforms to be more widely implemented. The tensions and dilemmas that the two participants described included issues in grading and reporting, colleagues resisting current reforms in classroom assessment, difficulties interpreting and implementing policies from different levels, students' poor work habits and study skills and issues in the design and use of performance tasks. These issues were negotiated through discussions and collaboration with other colleagues that support assessment reforms, a general feeling that assessment reforms support and are important to improving students' learning, and a great deal of personal reflection and constant development of assessment practice.

Interpreter certification has been largely ignored by the literature in Interpreting Studies. What little research that does exist on the topic is understandably elementary, discussing concerns that are general in nature or describing the development of individual certification instruments. No research has as yet examined the psychometric properties of certification instruments, despite the urgings of legal precedent, the weight of professional opinion, and the requirements of professional standards. The present study has attempted to bridge this gap in two ways. First, to gain some sense of the current state of affairs in interpreter testing, a validation study of an existing certification test was conducted. Particular attention was paid to information about the test's constructs. Second, in a bid to improve construct validity, a new certification test was constructed and subsequently validated. Constructs in the new test were based on a discursive model of the interpreting process. Validation of the two tests revealed some interesting findings. Constructs in the existing test bore only a weak relationship to the interpreting profession. Also, the constructs did not prove to be useful in predicting relationships among the existing test scores. It was expected that three separate constructs would emerge from the data; instead, empirical evidence suggested that the data were unidimensional in nature. In contrast, constructs in the new test were strongly linked to the interpreting profession. They also proved to effectively predict relationships among the new test scores. It was expected that three separate constructs would emerge from the data, and empirical evidence suggested that this was, in fact, the case. The results of the present study indicate that there is room for improvement in the current state of interpreter testing, and that a test instrument based on discursive constructs is likely to demonstrate acceptable levels of validity. There is obviously a need for a great deal of future research on the psychometric aspects of interpreter certification, and it is strongly recommended that this research adopt a discursive approach.

While most large-scale assessments are designed for one intended use, in many instances, a single administration of an assessment is used for one or more uses in addition to the intended use. I suggest the term multiple-use to refer to this practice. The purpose of this dissertation is to consider the implications of the multiple-use of large-scale assessments for the process of validation. I begin by discussing multiple-use from a theoretical perspective, identifying the challenges this practice creates for the process of validation. I maintain that multiple-use increases the stakes associated with an assessment and argue that where multiple-use is known to occur, the separate validation of each use may not be adequate since interactions between multiple-uses may take place. To build on this theoretical discussion, I report on an in-depth case study of one instance of multiple-use. Using questionnaire data, document analysis, school-level case studies and interviews with test development personnel, I describe the multiple-use of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) Grade 9 Assessment of Mathematics which is administered in Ontario, Canada. I identify the pattern of uses for this assessment and focus on two multiple-uses: the use of the assessment for accountability and the use of the assessment by teachers as part of students' grades. Evidence of interactions between the two uses is provided and the limitations of applying Kane's (2006) argument-based model of validation given these interactions are discussed. I demonstrate how the concepts of boundary objects and boundary encounters, situated within sociocultural theory, contribute to the process of validation for this assessment and may be beneficial for the validation of other instances of multiple-use. A number of ways of rethinking the process of validation to better address the multiple-use of large-scale assessments are suggested and areas for further research are identified.

A new microwave technique has been developed for the experimental study of small amplitude surface waves on an electrically conducting fluid. The fluid forms one of the walls of a resonating, microwave cavity. Surface waves with amplitudes as small as 10⁻³ cm. can be measured by observing the resulting change in the resonant frequency of the cavity. This technique has been successfully used to measure the viscous and magnetic damping coefficient of a small amplitude, standing, surface wave in liquid mercury. The magnetic damping, coefficient (for a vertical, magnetic field) was found to be in good agreement with a calculation that was made, for low magnetic Reynolds numbers. When the viscous damping coefficient was compared with the standard theory, which allows horizontal motion of the. surface, a disagreement of up to a factor of four was found. It, however, showed excellent agreement with a modified theory which assumes that there, is no horizontal motion of the surface. / Science, Faculty of / Physics and Astronomy, Department of / Graduate