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Background: Engineering-oriented bridge programs and camps are popular strategies for broadening participation. The students who often serve as counselors and mentors in these programs are integral to their success. Purpose: Predicated on the belief that mentoring contributes to positive outcomes for the mentors themselves, we sought to understand how undergraduate student mentors approached and experienced their work with a 6-day overnight, NSF-sponsored youth engineering camp (YEC). This study was guided by the question: How did YEC camp counselors approach and experience their roles as mentors? Design/Methods: We conducted an exploratory qualitative study of four Black undergraduate engineering students' experiences with and approaches to near-peer mentorship in the YEC program. Data consisted of transcripts from two post-program interviews and one written reflection from each participant. We analyzed data through abductive coding and the funds of knowledge framework. Results: Through subsequent interpretation of code categories, we found YEC mentors: (1) engaged in altruistic motivations as YEC mentors, (2) leveraged previous experiences to guide their approaches to mentorship, and (3) engaged in self-directed learning and development. Conclusions: This study highlights the knowledge and strategies that YEC mentors drew upon in their roles, and how they sought and achieved various personal, academic, and professional benefits. Insights from this study illustrate how near-peer mentors can support their and others' engineering aspirations.

Rural schools, especially smaller ones, offer enormous opportunities for teachers to get to know their students and to cultivate their academic talents. However, students with potential in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) face specific obstacles to having their talents fully realized in rural schools. Joni Lakin, Tamra Stambaugh, Lori Ihrig, Duhita Mahatmya, and Susan G. Assouline describe the STEM Excellence and Leadership project from the University of Iowa, which seeks to equip rural teachers in grades 5-8 with the skills and knowledge to recognize and grow STEM talent in rural areas. Examples of success and lessons learned are shared.

The purpose of this article was to describe the foundational development of a conceptual framework for cultural competence of educational leaders based on an extensive literature review and to develop the CCEL instrument. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) procedures were used on the data (n = 252) to determine the psychometric properties of the CCEL and its validity and reliability. The purposefully selected participants were Master's degree students in educational leadership programs with University Council for Educational Administration institutional membership. EFA of the data revealed three factors of cultural competence: cultural beliefs and motivation, cultural skills, and cultural knowledge.

Science and Engineering (S&E) fairs are a valuable educational activity and are believed to increase students' engagement and learning in science and engineering. However, due to differences in resources, many schools do not implement fairs to achieve these benefits for their students. This study reports the findings of a program intended to increase the participation of students from low-achieving and under-resourced schools in a regional fair program that feeds into the international fair competition. We found that the number of schools and projects participating in our regional fair increased dramatically since the start of the program. Teachers had mostly positive expectations for the project and expressed buy-in for the effort the project would take. They recruited a diverse pool of students to participate in the school fairs. Quasi-experimental methods allowed us to explore the impact of completing S&E fairs on student gains on science self-efficacy, interest and value perceptions. Controlling for pre-existing differences in these attitudes, we found that students not completing projects showed declines in their science attitudes during the year. Students who completed projects maintained similar attitudes, while those whose projects advanced to the regional fair had substantial gains on all three variables. It is unknown whether this gain can be attributed to the experience of engaging with a quality project, from being the kind of student who completes a quality project, or some other factor. Future research with greater experimental control could address these questions.

Spatial reasoning -- the ability to mentally visualize, transform, and recognize symbolic information -- is known to predict long-term success in many educational and occupational areas, including in STEM. Despite this, spatial reasoning measures are virtually absent in K-12 tests. Thus, such strengths are not prioritized in gifted identification and talent development. Joni Lakin and Jonathan Wai discuss why spatial reasoning matters for finding and developing talent, services schools might provide for students with these strengths, and how understanding spatial reasoning can help education leaders expand access to gifted education.

The overarching purpose of this study was to explore the post-transfer factors contributing to transfer shock. More specifically, this study sought to understand what academic normative differences exist between community college and transfer institution contexts and how these differences induced transfer shock. The study focused on STEM majors due to existing research showing they experience the greatest shock and increasing policy emphasis on students in STEM fields. Unlike existing literature that focuses on student characteristics associated with transfer shock, this study used a human capital frame to highlight the role of institutional contexts and norms in relation to shock. Participants in this study were transfer students who hailed from 17 geographically diverse community colleges across five states and completed semi-structured interviews. Results highlight substantial normative differences in terms of faculty interactions, divergent exam norms, and expectations of independent learning. Findings underscore the presence of a disjuncture in academic norms between community colleges and four-year transfer universities that helps explain transfer shock and transitional academic issues transfer students experience.

Background: Spatially talented students have a capacity for success that is too often overlooked by educational services. Because these students may lack appropriate challenge, theorists suggest these students experience greater academic struggles than other gifted students, including behavioural problems and lack of academic engagement. Aims: The goal of this research was to explore empirical evidence for the claim that spatially talented students would experience more academic struggles than other gifted students. We sought to understand the size of the 'spatially talented' population and their patterns of behavioural and academic struggles in high school. We also looked at long-term outcomes, including degree completion. Samples: This article explores characteristics of spatial talent in three US nationally representative data sets: Project Talent (1960), High School and Beyond (1980), and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (1997). Combined, these data provide a 60-year longitudinal study of student outcomes. Methods: This study utilized factor analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression methods to explore the research questions for each data set. Results and Conclusions: From our analyses, we estimate that 4-6% (at least 2 million) of the 56.6 million students in the US K-12 system are spatially talented students that are not identified by common gifted and talented screening processes. These students had greater academic challenges, including reading difficulties, poor study habits, and behavioural troubles. We also found that spatially talented students were less likely to complete college degrees compared to other talented students. Our findings support the need for greater services to these talented students.

Collecting evaluations following a professional development workshop and similar events has become common practice for assessing workshop quality. However, these evaluation forms often do not reflect best practices in survey development and result in average ratings that are uniformly high and uninformative. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of rating scales on workshop evaluations using an experimental design where participants were randomly assigned one of four evaluation forms with different rating scales following workshops. We found that using a typical "poor to excellent" scale yielded the highest average (most homogeneous) ratings while scales that were off-centered, with more positive than negative scale points (positively packed), yielded ratings with more variability. Recommendations for designing workshop evaluations are provided.

Students who transfer between institutions of higher education often experience a transfer penalty or a decrease in the odds of degree completion. While the transfer pathway is deemed a responsibility shared between 2- and 4-year institutions, failures in the transfer process are typically attributed to community colleges. The aim of this study was to examine the post-transfer experiences of STEM community college transfer students with particular emphasis placed on how institutional policies and practices at 4-year institutions contributed to the transfer penalty and poorer attainment rates of this population. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.

Development of a professional identity may contribute to persistence in an engineering major. Further, perceiving alignment of one's career values to engineering as well as believing that one is enacting engineering during coursework are expected to support identity formation. Using mixed methods approaches, we explored data provided by 186 undergraduate students responding to four open-ended questions at the end of an introduction to engineering course. Our results indicated alignment of perceptions of engineering and personal values, such as when students who emphasised the role of engineers as helping others tended to have altruistic professional goals. When considering identification with engineering, we found that definitions focused on the role of math and science as well as altruistic definitions were less likely to co-occur with a belief that students were already practicing engineering. Findings suggest certain definitions of engineering inhibit perceptions that the student is already enacting engineering and may affect identification.

Advancing the science of gifted education requires that researchers and educators better understand when and why (and for whom) programs and services are effective. Assessing Fidelity of Implementation (FoI) is key to achieving this level of understanding and can be incorporated into formative or summative evaluations and formal or informal processes. FoI is especially critical when programs are being scaled up to new contexts. This article explores FoI in terms of defining the program and identifying important moderators of implementation.

Decades of research point to the value and importance of spatial skills and have demonstrated the malleability, durability, and teachability of spatial skills across the lifespan. Teachers and caregivers can apply this research in their classrooms or homes through a wide range of strategies. In this article, we offer specific, engaging activities that can be deployed across multiple curricular areas and at home to nurture a range of spatial skills, such as spatial transformations and spatial comparisons. Just as we incorporate reading into thousands of interactions with the children around us, from reading road signs to sharing our favorite books, so too do the children need spatial thinking infused into our daily interactions with them. While we offer ideas for use both in the classroom and at home, that border is permeable; many of the classroom activities can be done at home, and many of the home activities can be adapted for classroom use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' talent and potential cannot be served until they are recognized by schools or caregivers. While the field of gifted education has had success in identifying many students with talents in reading and mathematics, those with spatial talents are often overlooked. This article reviews how we might identify spatial talent using traditional tests as well as observations during planned activities. Identifying spatial talent is an area in need of further research and assessment development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recommendation of using "multiple measures" is common in policy guidelines for gifted and talented assessment systems. However, the integration of multiple test scores in a system that uses cut-scores requires choosing between different methods of combining quantitative scores. Past research has indicated that OR combination rules (where any one score must meet the cutoff) have been shown to identify the largest number of students compared with AND (where all scores must meet cutoff) and AVERAGE (where the numerical average is used) rules. We extended this work to a real data set (Grades K to 5 from the CogAT 7 national standardization data) and found that the different combination rules led to differences in the number and diversity of students identified. However, we found these diversity differences were due mainly to the identified pool size and not to the effects of the particular combination rule. This has important implications for practice.

A research paper by Card and Giuliano took advantage of a natural experiment in a large school district to explore the impact that universal screening policies had on the identification of historically underrepresented minorities in gifted and talented programs. The authors concluded that the universal screening system was more effective than the previous teacher and parent referral system in addressing the underidentification of African American, Hispanic, female, low socioeconomic status, and English learner students. However, the present article identified gaps in the system that allowed new inequities to emerge. This review of their study concludes that districts must be advocates for gifted and talented students who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Implementing universal screening procedures can be an important tool in ensuring fair access to gifted and talented services, but districts must manage the increased resource demands of such programs.

Students who transfer between institutions of higher education often experience "transfer shock", a temporary decrease in academic performance (GPA) hypothesized to be due to changes in academic expectations between institutions. This study used university institutional records to explore the magnitude of transfer shock; the factors contributing to the GPA effects of transfer shock; and the impact of shock and other student characteristics on important academic outcomes, including persistence in a STEM major and baccalaureate degree. We found that STEM majors and students transferring from two-year institutions experienced the largest degree of transfer shock and that shock was a significant predictor of change of major. Most intriguingly, we found interaction effects where shock had a greater impact on institutional retention for two-year transfers and science or mathematics majors. Implications for future research and academic policies and interventions are discussed.

The "Grand Challenges" for Engineering are an effort to portray engineering as a field that has profound impacts on society. This study explores the level of interest first-year engineering students had in various "Grand Challenges" and in nanotechnology topics. We administered a survey to a large sample of students enrolled in a pre-engineering course at a four-year, research-focused institution. The survey measured students' interest in nanotechnology and the "Challenges", their perception of the relationship between nanotechnology and the "Challenges", and their attitudes and self-reported knowledge about nanotechnology. The most interesting topics related to high-profile issues (such as reverse-engineering the brain) as well as topics that have a pro-social component (such as access to clean water). For female students, advancing health informatics and engineering better medicines were especially interesting, while URM students were more drawn to nanotechnology and virtual reality. These results will help educators developing engineering curricula emphasize engaging topics that better promote persistence and diversity in engineering.

Inquiry-based teaching promotes students' engagement in problem-solving and investigation as they learn science concepts. Current practice in science teacher education promotes the use of inquiry in the teaching of science. However, the literature suggests that many science teachers hold incomplete or incorrect conceptions of inquiry. Teachers, therefore, may believe they are providing more inquiry experiences than they are, reducing the positive impact of inquiry on science interest and skills. Given the prominence of inquiry in professional development experiences, educational evaluators need strong tools to detect intended use in the classroom. The current study focuses on the validity of assessments developed for evaluating teachers' use of inquiry strategies and classroom orientations. We explored the relationships between self-reported inquiry strategy use, preferences for inquiry, knowledge of inquiry practices, and related pedagogical content knowledge. Finally, we contrasted students' and teachers' reports of the levels of inquiry-based teaching in the classroom. Self-reports of inquiry use, especially one specific to the 5E instructional model, were useful, but should be interpreted with caution. Teachers tended to self-report higher levels of inquiry strategy use than their students perceived. Further, there were no significant correlations between either knowledge of inquiry practices or PCK and self-reported inquiry strategy use.

The purpose of test directions is to familiarize examinees with a test so that they respond to items in the manner intended. However, changes in educational measurement as well as the U.S. student population present new challenges to test directions and increase the impact that differential familiarity could have on the validity of test score interpretations. This article reviews the literature on best practices for the development of test directions as well as documenting differences in test familiarity for culturally and linguistically diverse students that could be addressed with test directions and practice. The literature indicates that choice of practice items and feedback are critical in the design of test directions and that more extensive practice opportunities may be required to reduce group differences in test familiarity. As increasingly complex and rich item formats are introduced in next-generation assessments, test directions become a critical part of test design and validity.

In recent years, many U.S. states have introduced growth models as part of their educational accountability systems. Although the validity of growth-based accountability models has been evaluated for the general population, the impact of those models for English language learner (ELL) students, a growing segment of the student population, has not received sufficient attention. We evaluated three commonly used growth models: value tables or transition matrices, projection models, and student growth percentiles (SGP). The value table model identified more ELL students as on track to proficiency, but with lower accuracy for ELL students. The projection and SGP models were more accurate overall, but classified the fewest ELL students as on track and were less likely to identify ELL students who would later be proficient. We found that each model had significant trade-offs in terms of the decisions made for ELL students. These findings should be replicated in additional state contexts and considered in the development of future growth-based accountability policies.

Outcomes assessments are gaining great attention in higher education because of increased demand for accountability. These assessments are widely used by U.S. higher education institutions to measure students' college-level knowledge and skills, including students who speak English as a second language (ESL). For the past decade, the increasing number of ESL students has changed the landscape of U.S. higher education. However, little research exists documenting how ESL students perform on outcomes assessments. In this study, the authors investigated ESL students' performance on the Educational Testing Service Proficiency Profile in terms of factor structure, criterion validity, and differential item functioning. The test showed partial measurement invariance between ESL and non-ESL students, consistent criterion validity, and few examples of differential item functioning. The results suggest the critical need for consideration of language background in outcomes assessment research in higher education. (Contains 6 notes, 5 tables, and 1 figure.)

Verbal and quantitative reasoning tests provide valuable information about cognitive abilities that are important to academic success. Information about these abilities may be particularly valuable to teachers of students who are English-language learners (ELL), because leveraging reasoning skills to support comprehension is a critical aptitude for their academic success. However, due to concerns about cultural bias, many researchers advise exclusive use of nonverbal tests with ELL students despite a lack of evidence that nonverbal tests provide greater validity for these students. In this study, a test measuring verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning was administered to a culturally and linguistically diverse sample of students. The two-year predictive relationship between ability and achievement scores revealed that nonverbal scores had weaker correlations with future achievement than did quantitative and verbal reasoning ability scores for ELL and non-ELL students. Results do not indicate differential prediction and do not support the exclusive use of nonverbal tests for ELL students. (Contains 7 tables and 2 footnotes.)

Ability tests are used by teachers to provide additional context for interpreting student achievement and as a tool for differentiating instruction to the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of students. Tests that provide the most useful information for these purposes measure school-related content domains including verbal and quantitative reasoning. However, there is concern that verbal content affects validity for culturally and linguistically diverse students. In this study, the structure of a multidimensional ability test of verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning skills was explored in three groups of students who varied in language and cultural background. Configural invariance and invariant factor loadings were supported, but the verbal battery showed weaker relationships to the other batteries and reduced variability for English learners. Results indicate that battery-level scores are appropriate for all students, but that accounting for educational opportunity may be required for interpreting scores. (Contains 6 tables and 2 figures.)

For educators seeking to differentiate instruction, cognitive ability tests sampling multiple content domains, including verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning, provide superior information about student strengths and weaknesses compared with unidimensional reasoning measures. However, these ability tests have not been fully evaluated with respect to fairness and validity for English-language learners (ELL). In particular, reliability is an important aspect of validity that has not been sufficiently evaluated. In this study, multivariate generalizability methodologies were used to explore the differential reliability of the Cognitive Abilities Test across ELL and non-ELL students in two schools with large Hispanic populations. Results suggest that verbal and quantitative reasoning skills are measured less precisely for ELL students than for non-ELL students. However, the composite score of the three batteries showed strong reliability in both groups. We conclude that multidimensional tests provide reliable information about the academic strengths of ELL and non-ELL students, though further research is needed. (Contains 6 tables, 1 figure, and 8 notes.)

Measures of broad fluid abilities including verbal, quantitative, and figural reasoning are commonly used in the K-12 school context for a variety of purposes. However, differentiation of these domains is difficult for young children (grades K-2) who lack basic linguistic and mathematical literacy. This study examined the latent factor structure of a picture-based measure of broad fluid reasoning abilities using a bifactor MIRT model to separate general and broad domain factors in a large representative sample of U.S. school children. Substantial evidence showed that picture-based item formats can distinguish between general and domain-specific fluid reasoning abilities in the early school grades. The verbal tasks showed the strongest domain factor and discriminant validity, although the quantitative tasks also showed considerable evidence of a domain factor. Furthermore, comparisons of ELL vs. non-ELL, FRL-eligible vs. non-FRL, Black-White, Hispanic-White, and Asian-White students all yielded small to negligible group differences (below 0.4 "SD") on these measures. These results compare favorably to differences observed on tests using traditional item formats, and are smaller than the 0.50-1.0 "SD" group differences often observed in older students. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

Effective talent-identification procedures minimize the proportion of students whose subsequent performance indicates that they were mistakenly included in or excluded from the program. Classification errors occur when students who were predicted to excel subsequently do not excel or when students who were not predicted to excel do. Using a longitudinal sample, we assessed the accuracy of measures of verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, and current achievement for predicting later achievement. We found that seemingly small differences in predictive validity substantially changed the number of students erroneously included or excluded from the program. Surprisingly, nonverbal tests not only led to more classification errors but also failed to identify more English language learners and minority students. To increase equity and maintain fairness, practitioners should carefully evaluate claims that scores from alternative assessments are as valid as scores from conventional ability tests and verify that the use of these tests result in greater diversity. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

Background: Strand, Deary, and Smith (2006) reported an analysis of sex differences on the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) for over 320,000 UK students 11-12 years old. Although mean differences were small, males were overrepresented at the upper and lower extremes of the score distributions on the quantitative and non-verbal batteries and at the lower extreme of the verbal battery. Aims: We investigate whether these results were unique to the UK or whether they would be seen in other countries, at other grades, cohorts, or forms of the test. Sample: The sample consisted of three nationally representative cohorts of US students in grades 3 through 11 (total N=318,599) for the 1984, 1992, and 2000 standardizations of the US version of the CAT. Methods: We replicated and extended the Strand "et al." (2006) results by comparing the proportions of males and females at each score level across countries (UK vs. US), grades (3-11), and cohorts/test forms (Forms 4, 5, and 6 standardized in 1984, 1992, and 2000, respectively). Results: The results showed an astonishing consistency in sex differences across countries, grades, cohorts, and test forms. Conclusions: Implications for the current debate about sex differences in quantitative reasoning abilities are discussed.

In this study, the authors compare the validity of three nonverbal tests for the purpose of identifying academically gifted English-language learners (ELLs). Participants were 1,198 elementary children (approximately 40% ELLs). All were administered the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices (Raven), the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), and Form 6 of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). Results show that the U.S. national norms for the Raven substantially overestimate the number of high-scoring children; that because of errors in norming, the NNAT overestimates the number of both high-scoring and low-scoring children; that primary-level ELL children score especially poorly on the NNAT; that the standard error of measurement was twice as large for the NNAT as for the Raven or the CogAT; that ELL children scored 0.5 to 0.67 standard deviations lower than non-ELL children on the three nonverbal tests; and that none of the nonverbal tests predict achievement for ELL students very well. (Contains 8 tables, 5 figures and 5 notes.)