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Ready for school? Ready for learning? An empirical contribution to a perennial debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

Trevor G. Bond*
Affiliation:
School of Education, James Cook University
*
School of Education, Jarnes Cook University, Queensland 4811, Phone: 61 7 4781 4637, Fax: 61 7 4725 1690, E-mail: [email protected], website: http://www.soe.jcu.edu.au/staff/bond/
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Extract

The Rasch measurement principles espoused in the Bond & Fox (2001) volume reviewed elsewhere in this journal are routinely adopted by Australia's major educational measurement projects (e.g., by Australian Council for Educational Research, Educational Testing Centre). Yet those ideas are yet to have their full impact in smaller research projects in educational and developmental psychology. A number of quantitative analytical techniques used in our disciplines are able to help us to draw conclusions like “Betty is better than or more developed than Bob”, but Rasch measurement is uniquely placed to help us conclude that “Betty is this much better than or more developed than Bob.” In educational and psychological statistics, we regularly presume the “interval” nature of our research data, but only the Rasch model sets about to ensure that the units of measurement maintain their unit value across the whole achievement or development scale.

Type
Research Note
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society 2001

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References

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