For ages, Masters of spirituality have been teaching the simple principles of living and of being. In our modern time, it has become increasingly difficult to implement the teachings to our everyday lives. Attributes of Mastery is a revised interpretation of specific states of being that can lead us to walk and to experience the wisdom and bliss that sages and gurus have been teaching and inspiring us to follow. Blanca Beyar, a modern time Guru and healer, intimately shares her own initiations of struggle and perseverance as she walked the journey to spiritual freedom and how the attributes of mastery created a foundation for her life’s purpose. Discover the attributes that will provide the keys to your own unique Mastery! ,

This book introduces a new methodology for the analysis of test results. Free from ambiguous interpretations, the results truly demonstrate an individual’s progress. The methodology is ideal for highlighting patterns derived from test scores used in evaluating progress. Dr. Tatsuoka introduces readers to the Rule Space Method (RSM), a technique that transforms unobservable knowledge and skill variables into observable and measurable attributes. RSM converts item response patterns into attribute mastery probabilities. RSM is the only up-to-date methodology that can handle large scale assessment for tests such as the SAT and PSAT. PSAT used the results from this methodology to create cognitively diagnostic scoring reports. In this capacity, RSM helps teachers understand what scores mean by helping them ascertain an individual’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. For example, two students may have the exact same score, but for different reasons. One student might excel at processing grammatically complex texts but miss the main idea of the prose, while another excels at understanding the global message. Such knowledge helps teachers customize a student’s education to his or her cognitive abilities. RSM is also used for medical diagnoses, genetics research, and to help classify music into various states of emotions for treating mental problems. The book opens with an overview of cognitive assessment research and nonparametric and parametric person-fit statistics. The Q-matrix theory is then introduced followed by the Rule Space method. Various properties of attribute mastery probabilities are then introduced along with the reliability theory of attributes and its connection to classical and item response theory. The book concludes with a discussion of how the construct validity of a test can be clarified with the Rule Space method. Intended for researchers and graduate students in quantitative, educational, and cognitive psychology, this book also appeals to those in computer science, neuroscience, medicine, and mathematics. The book is appropriate for advanced courses on cognometrics, latent class structures, and advanced psychometrics as well as statistical pattern recognition and classification courses taught in statistics and/or math departments.

During the past two or three decades, research in cognitive science and psychology has yielded an improved understanding of the fundamental psychological nature of knowledge and cognitive skills that psychological testing attempts to measure. These theories have reached sufficient maturity, making it reasonable to look upon them to provide a sound theoretical foundation for assessment, particulary for the content of assessments. This fact, combined with much discontentedness over current testing practices, has inspired efforts to bring testing and cognitive theory together to create a new theoretical framework for psychological testing -- a framework developed for diagnosing learners' differences rather than for ranking learners based on their differences. This volume presents some initial accomplishments in the effort to bring testing and cognitive theory together. Contributors originate from both of the relevant research communities -- cognitive research and psychometric theory. Some represent collaborations between representatives of the two communities; others are efforts to reach out in the direction of the other community. Taking fundamentally different forms, psychometric test theory assumes that knowledge can be represented in terms of one or at most a few dimensions, whereas modern cognitive theory typically represents knowledge in networks -- either networks of conceptual relationships or the transition networks of production systems. Cognitively diagnostic assessment is a new enterprise and it is evident that many challenging problems remain to be addressed. Still, it is already possible to develop highly productive interactions between assessment and instruction in both automated tutoring systems and more conventional classrooms. The editors hope that the chapters presented here show how the reform of assessment can take a rigorous path.

There is no doubt that the onset of a new decade has brought high expectations of academic progress for scholars, especially for researchers in mathematics education. The International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education was born in 1976, which focused on the international exchange of knowledge in the psychology of mathematics education, the promotion of interdisciplinary research with psychologists, mathematicians and mathematics teachers, and the development of the psychological aspects of teaching and learning mathematics and its implications.

The Asia-Pacific region needs to maximize the benefits of education to enable it to compete in an economic future dominated by innovation, in which assessing student progress must be an empowering rather than delimiting factor. This detailed exposition of the theoretical basis and application tools of self-directed learning-oriented assessment (SLOA) reflects the very latest research championed by the Assessment Research Centre at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Featuring a range of relevant case studies, it explores the varied theoretical issues related to SLOA and offers an integrated view of the system fully in line with the constructivist paradigm of learning which advocates formative rather than summative assessment. Many of the initiatives outlined here are firsts in the region. SLOA is already being applied in many schools with links to the ARC. It is an approach to assessment that acknowledges the centrality of self-directed learning and which positions assessment as a tool to enable and enhance self-directed learning. It draws on several theories of learning and assessment, including the constructivist notion that learning is best achieved when students take ownership of their educational process, setting their own goals and monitoring their own progress towards those goals. SLOA has been the research and service approach of the ARC since 2005. In the intervening years the centre has developed a number of tools to facilitate SLOA learning and assessment, including vertical ability scales, teacher-friendly computer software and packages for self-directed learning.