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The main purpose of this study was to develop a Rasch Measurement Physical Fitness Scale (RMPFS) based on physical fitness indicators routinely used in Hong Kong primary schools. A total of 9,439 records of students' performances on physical fitness indicators, retrieved from the database of a Hong Kong primary school, were used to develop the Rasch scale. Following a series of iterative Rasch analyses that adopted the "data should fit the model" approach, four physical fitness indicators (i.e., 6-min run, 9-min run, 1-min sit-ups, and dominant handgrip) were successfully calibrated to form the RMPFS. The RMPFS and its scale indicators showed fit to the Rasch model sufficient for the intended purposes of measuring the overall fitness of children. The overall physical fitness measure reflects children's fitness on three key core components of physical fitness (i.e., cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular endurance, and muscular strength). Advantages of the RMPFS are discussed, and recommendations for future research follow. The findings of this study provide a better knowledge basis for interpreting children's physical fitness assessment results. (Contains 1 footnote, 5 tables, and 4 figures.)

Inquiry is seen as an integral part of science education in the USA; however, few American science programs explicitly focus on the higher order thinking skills that are the precursors to inquiry. In this paper, Australian researchers report the result of using a version of the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) program in a school district in Oregon (USA) to address teacher-identified concerns about student competence in scientific inquiry. The substantial effect of CASE on British children's cognitive development and scholastic achievement has been demonstrated convincingly since its inception in the United Kingdom in 1981. The Oregon CASE project was not a mere replication of the original British CASE research: different instruments were employed, and both the measures of cognitive level and student achievement were Rasch-calibrated. The Oregon CASE teachers received comparatively less professional development than did their British counterparts. Neither did they deliver the entire intervention. The results of the study suggest that many of the benefits of CASE still apply when the intervention is conducted in a sub-optimal setting. Cognitive growth was apparent in participating students and high correlations were found between cognitive level and results in some state-mandated tests.

Piaget's investigations into children's understanding of the laws governing the movement of a simple pendulum were first reported in 1955 as part of a report into how children's knowledge of the physical world changes during development. Chapter 4 of Inhelder & Piaget (1955/1958) entitled "The Oscillation of a Pendulum and the Operations of Exclusion" demonstrated how adolescents could construct the experimental strategies necessary to isolate each of the variables, exclude the irrelevant factors and conclude concerning the causal role of length. This became one of the most easily replicable tasks from the Genevan school and was used in a number of important investigations to detect the onset of formal operational thinking. While it seems that the pendulum investigation fits nicely into Piaget's sequence of studies of concepts such as time, distance and speed suggested to him by Einstein, more recent research (Bond 2001) shows Inhelder to be directly responsible for the investigations into children's induction of physical laws. The inter-relationship between the pendulum problem, developing thought and scientific method is revealed in a number of Genevan and post-Piagetian investigations.

Used a suite of Rasch measurement techniques to meet competing demands in establishing statewide benchmarks relating to the School Opinion Survey carried out over 1,200 government schools in 1 Australian state. Solutions to a variety of measurement and reporting problems were all found within the Rasch family of models. (SLD)

Developed school versus benchmark comparison reports based on groups of easily comparable school types for Queensland, Australia schools. The state benchmark for each set of comparable schools estimated how easy it was, on average, for members of the benchmark group (parents or students) to endorse each of the School Opinion Survey Likert-scale items. (SLD)

Logical Operations Test (BLOT) was developed for assessing the transition to formal operational thinking. BLOT is a 35 item multiple-choice test which examines all of the operations which comprise the logico-mathematical structure of formal operations in Piaget’s theory. The test was translated into Serbian and used in previously reported research. This work deals with two additional parallel versions of the Serbian BLOT. For each original BLOT item two more parallel items have been constructed by changing the item content and leaving the logical structure of the item the same. Sample consisted of 517 primary and secondary school students. Rasch analysis confirmed that the vast majority of items maintained invariance across at least two test versions: for 19 original items both parallel items maintained their invariance, for 14 items one of the parallel items had similar parameters and only 2 items did not remain invariant in the parallel tests.

The article focuses on the use of Rasch measurement quantification to compare the cognitive development in humans with décalage in the formal operational thinking in the theory of Jean Piaget. It mentions that the multiple-choice Bond's Logical Operations Test (BLOT) and the short-answer Piagetian Reasoning Test III-Pendulum were analyzed to describe the cognitive development. Results show that the use of Rasch analysis detects the changes in human cognitive development.

As one part of a series of studies undertaken to investigate the contribution of developmental attributes of learners to school learning, a representative sample of forty-two students (age from 5 years and 3 months to 13 years and 1 month) was randomly selected from a total student population of 142 students at a small private primary school in northern Australia. Those children's understandings of area concepts taught during the primary school years were assessed by their performance in two testing situations. The first consisted of a written classroom test of ability to solve `area' problems with items drawn directly from school texts, school examinations and other relevant curriculum documents. The second, which focused more directly on each child's cognitive development; was an individual interview for each child in which four "area" tasks such as the Meadows and Farmhouse Experiment taken from Chapter 11 of The Child's Conception of Geometry (Piaget, Inhelder and Szeminska, 1960, pp. 261-301) were administered. Analysis using the Rasch Partial Credit Model provided a finely detailed quantitative description of the developmental and learning progressions revealed in the data. It is evident that the school mathematics curriculum does not satisfactorily match the learner's developmental sequence at some key points. Moreover, the children's ability to conserve area on the Piagetian tasks, rather than other learner characteristics, such as age and school grade seems to be a precursor for complete success on the mathematical test of area. The discussion focuses on the assessment of developmental (and other) characteristics of school-aged learners and suggests how curriculum and school organization might better capitalize on such information in the design and sequencing of learning experiences for school children. Some features unique to the Rasch family of measurement models are held to have special significance in elucidating the development/attainment nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]