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The aim of this research is to study the merits and complementarity of Construct Mapping and Categorical Principal Components Analysis as two approaches that explore the dimensionality of multiple-choice items in achievement tests. Data from the two forms of the Romanian National Assessment Tests on Science were used to explore the dimensionality of items and to identify potentially problematic items that affect the equivalence of the two parallel forms. The findings confirm that the two tests have at best partial equivalence, but while the two methods both agree on test unidimensionality, they flag in part different items as potentially problematic. The results enable researchers and practitioners to make coherent data-driven decision regarding the use of unidimensional vs multidimensional IRT models.

This qualitative study presents the opinions of two geography teachers who use graphic organizers in their activity with secondary school students and geography students who train to become geography teachers. These were collected through a postmodern interview. The initiative searched the answers to several questions: the information sources about the graphic organizers and the learning methods for their implementation; the most used graphic organizers and the motivation for their use; the way students are trained to elaborate graphic organizers; the context of the graphic organizers (the type of interaction, the location), indications and rules given to the students, the achieving ways, their importance for the development of the geographic thinking. Both interviewed teachers formed the foundation of their competence to elaborate graphic organizers during training programs held by American and Romanian trainers, not by studying books. In relation to making of the graphic organizers by the pupils and students, certain similarities are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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