The influx of technology in education has made it increasingly difficult to assess the validity of educational assessments. The field of information systems often ignores the social dimension... Show moreThe influx of technology in education has made it increasingly difficult to assess the validity of educational assessments. The field of information systems often ignores the social dimension during validation, whereas educational research neglects the technical dimensions of designed instruments. The inseparability of social and technical elements forms the bedrock of socio-technical systems. Therefore, the current lack of validation approaches that address both dimensions is a significant gap. We address this gap by introducing VAST: a validation framework for e-assessment solutions. Examples of such solutions are technology-enhanced learning systems and e-health applications. Using multi-grounded action research as our methodology, we investigate how we can synthesise existing knowledge from information systems and educational measurement to construct our validation framework. We develop an extensive user guideline complementing our framework and find through expert interviews that VAST facilitates a comprehensive, practical approach to validating e-assessment solutions. Show less
Adapting education to students’ diverse educational needs is widely recognised as an important, but also complex aspect of effective teaching. In this chapter, we provide insight into how Dutch... Show moreAdapting education to students’ diverse educational needs is widely recognised as an important, but also complex aspect of effective teaching. In this chapter, we provide insight into how Dutch primary school teachers implement differentiation based on students’ current mathematics achievement level. We review evidence from four independent samples in which the same teacher self-assessment questionnaire was administered (N = 907 teachers in total), supplemented with qualitative data from various perspectives: external observers, students, and teachers. Based on these sources of information, we identify the following general patterns. Teachers generally implement achievement-based differentiation at least to some extent. That is, student achievement is monitored, and efforts are taken to adapt instruction or practice to students’ current achievement level. This is often organised using within-class homogeneous achievement groups. While low-achieving students regularly receive additional instruction, specific instruction for high-achieving students is uncommon. Refined, qualitative strategies to diagnose students’ individual educational needs and to adapt education to these individual needs are also used relatively infrequently. These relatively infrequently used strategies point to areas for improvement. Furthermore, the flexibility of within-class achievement groups seems to vary and deserves more attention in future research and practice. Show less
