Psychometrics in Practice at RCEC

A broad range of topics is dealt with in this volume: from combining the psychometric generalizability and item response theories to the ideas for an integrated formative use of data-driven decision making, assessment for learning and diagnostic testing. A number of chapters pay attention to computerized (adaptive) and classification testing. Other chapters treat the quality of testing in a general sense, but for topics like maintaining standards or the testing of writing ability, the quality of testing is dealt with more specifically.\ud All authors are connected to RCEC as researchers. They present one of their current research topics and provide some insight into the focus of RCEC. The selection of the topics and the editing intends that the book should be of special interest to educational researchers, psychometricians and practitioners in educational assessment

English teaching in New Zealand: The current play of the state

Curriculum, assessment and qualifications reforms in New Zealand have wrought significant changes in the construction of English as a subject and in the practices of English teachers. While the content of the new English curriculum suggests continuities with past syllabuses, its structural parameters indicate a different discursive agenda. Reforms in senior secondary school qualifications have also acted to construct English in ways that need to be contested and which may be making the subject less responsive to changes in textual practice resulting from the rise in digital technologisation. In a variety of ways, the reforms are also serving to reshape the everyday classroom practices of English teachers, both overtly and covertly through a process of discursive colonisation. Because the reforms have been highly centralised, state initiated and state managed, they have posed a huge challenge to teacher professionalism and identity. Through all of this, the hegemonic status of English as the vehicle through which literature is studied remains unchallenged. The article concludes by listing five challenges to English teachers

SemEval-2016 Task 13: Taxonomy Extraction Evaluation (TExEval-2)

This paper describes the second edition of the shared task on Taxonomy Extraction Evaluation organised as part of SemEval 2016. This task aims to extract hypernym-hyponym relations between a given list of domain-specific terms and then to construct a domain taxonomy based on them. TExEval-2 introduced a multilingual setting for this task, covering four different languages including English, Dutch, Italian and French from domains as diverse as environment, food and science. A total of 62 runs submitted by 5 different teams were evaluated using structural measures, by comparison with gold standard taxonomies and by manual quality assessment of novel relations.Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2289 (INSIGHT

Developing effective practice learning for tomorrow's social workers

This paper considers some of the changes in social work education in the UK, particularly focusing on practice learning in England. The changes and developments are briefly identified and examined in the context of what we know about practice learning. The paper presents some findings from a small scale qualitative study of key stakeholders involved in practice learning and education in social work and their perceptions of these anticipated changes, which are revisited at implementation. The implications for practice learning are discussed