Benő Csapó

• DSc
• Professor Emeritus at University of Szeged

The skills considered most essential in our modern societies are often called 21st-century skills. Problem solving is clearly one of them. Students will be expected to work in novel environments, face problems they have never seen and apply domain-general reasoning skills that are not tied to specific contents. Computerised dynamic problem solving...

Creativity is one of the most frequently cited 21st century skills, and developing creativity is one of the most often declared goals of modern education systems. However, without easy-to-use assessment instruments available for everyday application in educational practice, systematic improvement of creativity is far from a realistic option. The ai...

In this paper the author outlines a framework for interpreting the concept of competence. In so doing he offers a systematic way for comparing educational standards, curricula and assessment practices that will help us to better identify the goals of learning and design curricula. (DIPF/Orig.) In [diesem] Beitrag untersucht der Autor grundlegende F...

This study explores the potential of using online tests for the assessment of school readiness and for monitoring early reasoning. Four tests of a face-to-face-administered school readiness test battery (speech sound discrimination, relational reasoning, counting and basic numeracy, and deductive reasoning) and a paper-and-pencil inductive reasonin...

Previous research has shown that phonological awareness is one of the most important prerequisites for early reading. Monitoring its development requires reliable, easy-to-use instruments especially in the last years of kindergarten. The present study aims to explore the potential for assessing phonological awareness and some of its subskills throu...

The ability to read is fundamental in determining an individual’s academic success and social integration, and it is also known to have an impact on other cognitive abilities. A lack of foundational pre-reading skills can accumulate later, causing reading and learning problems. Early diagnosis and development of these skills are therefore essential...

This study explores the developmental trend in scientific reasoning in the control of variables strategy (CVS) and how relevant factors contribute to explaining the individual abilities of secondary school students. A cross-sectional investigation involving 807 students from Grades 8 to 12 was conducted in eleven public schools in Vietnam. A 24-ite...

The study aims to investigate the effects of delivery modalities on psychometric characteristics and student performance on cognitive tests. A first study assessed the inductive reasoning ability of 715 students under the supervision of teachers. A second study examined 731 students' performance on the application of the control-of-variables strate...

This study aims to investigate the patterns of students’ performance in inductive reasoning, scientific reasoning and science motivation at different grade levels. We also examined the interaction of these variables with parental factors in predicting students’ STEM achievement. A cross-sectional study assessed 726 participants from the 6th, 8th, 1...

Az 1970-es évek elején Nagy József elindította Magyarországon a tesztek pedagógiai alkalmazásával kapcsolatos kutatómunkát, majd az ezt követő fél évszázadban a pedagógiai értékelés minden területén meghatározó projekteket irányított. Az első munkái az általános iskola alsó tagozatához kapcsolódtak a számolási készségeket mérő tesztek, illetve a sz...

An adequate level of reading comprehension is a prerequisite for successful learning. Numerous studies have shown that without a solid foundation, there can be severe difficulties in later learning and that failure in the first years of schooling can determine attitudes to learning. In the present study, we present the effect size of an online game...

Improving reading skills in English for young Kazakhstani learners is a challenging process, but it was unfortunate that teachers in Kazakhstan do not frequently apply and implement assessments in the context of a school or classroom. Following a pilot study conducted in 2018, a continuous assessment was considered necessary to highlight the errors...

Inductive reasoning is an ability related to student academic achievement and is embedded in 21st-century competency frameworks. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Indonesian students’ inductive reasoning, validate the adapted inductive reasoning test for Indonesia, and classify the difficulty of items and students’ reasoning ability. The pa...

This study aims to investigate the development and the differences in student misconceptions in science based on gender and grade level, and to evaluate the developed two-tier multiple-choice diagnostic test in confirming the test’s validity and reliability. A sample of 856 participants from 10th–12th graders and prospective science teachers were c...

Improving reading skills in English for young Kazakhstani learners is a challenging process, but it was unfortunate that teachers in Kazakhstan do not frequently apply and implement assessments in the context of a school or classroom. Following a pilot study conducted in 2018, a continuous assessment was considered necessary to highlight the errors...

One of the main aims of national assessment programmes is to improve the efficacy of education systems; realizing this aim often takes the form of implementing a variety of accountability measures. Using assessment results for accountability purposes is highly controversial, while one of its undesirable impacts is that it generates negative attitud...

This review shows how the Sputnik shock in the USA and the reunification in Germany initiated comparative studies that shed light on the role of the economic, cultural, political and social contexts of education. The results of waves of research on factors of effective mathematics teaching have shown that different socio-political circumstances cre...

This study explores the reading strategies (RSs) of bilingual and monolingual young learners in their first and second languages (L1 and L2, respectively)—either Kazakh or Russian as the L1 and L2—and English as a foreign language (L3). It also examines the influence of RSs on the learners’ performance on reading comprehension tests in the three la...

This study examines the relation between reading attitude and reading achievement in three languages among sixth- and eighth-grade students in Kazakhstan. Participants were randomly chosen from seven secondary schools in a major city. Their native languages were Kazakh or Russian (N=1,505). Reading tests in English, Kazakh and Russian and a reading...

Inductive reasoning is a cognitive process of drawing general conclusions from individual facts; it is one of the core components of fluid intelligence. This paper aims to explore characteristics of assessment instruments and trends in measuring inductive reasoning through a systematic review based on the PRISMA guidelines. The article reviews 38 e...

Understanding item difficulty in science concepts is essential for teachers in teaching and learning to avoid student misconceptions. This study aims to evaluate the patterns of item difficulty estimates in science concepts exploring student misconceptions across physics, biology, and chemistry and to explore differential item functioning (DIF) ite...

This study focuses on constructing an instrument based on cross cultural validation. The constructed motivation questionnaire (CMQS) in science to measure student motivation. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were achieved with acceptable criteria. The reliability of latent factors in the CMQS ranges from 0.82...

Control of variables strategy (CVS) is a core scientific reasoning skill related to domain-general experimentation for evaluating an experimental system and deducing valid conclusions. This study aims to develop, validate, and explore latent factors predicting item difficulty in the test, measuring CVS in physics for high school students. The origi...

The purpose of this study is to explore students’ motivation towards science learning at different grade levels and to investigate whether inductive reasoning can contribute to an explanation of science motivation. The study conducted a cross-sectional assessment in six public schools in Vietnam with a total population of 813 students from the 5th,...

Most researchers have studied students’ academic self-concept within native language and mathematics, indicating the multidimensional nature of academic self-concept. However, there is a shortage of studies that examined the twofold multidimensional structure of verbal self-concept within the internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model of two...

The article enhances practical effectiveness of English proficiency reading skills among young language learners in Kazakhstan requires the improvement and development of knowledge regarding Educational standard of European framework. Since 2009 when Kazakhstan has started to participate in the Program for International Students Assessment (PISA) l...

This study aimed to evaluate whether cognitive and affective dimensions of reading self-concepts in English and Russian are distinct constructs and to examine whether the relationships among cognitive and affective variables are invariant across gender. A total of 349 tenth-grade Azeri students were selected from 12 schools in Baku, Azerbaijan. Thi...

The aim of this study was to show how technology-based assessment can support personalized learning. The paper outlines the theoretical foundations and realizations of an online assessment system, eDia, which was designed to provide students and teachers regular feedback from the beginning of schooling to the end of the six years of primary educati...

A kombinatív gondolkodás meghatározó szerepet játszik sok más komplex gondolkodási folyamatban, többek között a változók kezelésében, a valószínűségi és a korrelatív gondolkodásban, a kreativitásban és a problémamegoldásban. Vizsgálatunk célja egy korábban papíralapú mérőeszköz számítógépre adaptált változatának pszichometriai jellemzése, valamint...

Hungary is located in Central Europe with an area of 93,000 km². Budapest is the largest city in the country; it is also the capital. According to the latest census, the current population was 9,804,000 in 2016. Since 2011, the population had decreased by 134,000. The younger, active population dropped the most in the last decade: in 2016, there we...

Inductive reasoning is one of the main factors predicting academic success and a cognitive process of fluid intelligence. The main purposes of this study are to examine the psychometric characteristics of an inductive reasoning test and to explore the development of students’ inductive reasoning across school age groups. A random sample of 701 stud...

The internal/external (I/E) frame of reference entails high, positive association of mathematics and verbal achievements with matching academic self-concepts but negative or near-zero correlation with their nonmatching self-concepts. This study aimed to extend the traditional I/E model by contrasting the mathematics domain with two foreign language...

This study examines the predictive power of motivational and self-related beliefs on reading and mathematics achievement. A representative sample (N = 2049 12–14-year-olds) was drawn for a large-scale longitudinal programme, with data collected at two measurement points separated by a two-year interval. In the research, two hypothesised models on t...

This study aimed to assess students’ scientific reasoning skills using an online assessment method and explore the relationship between their reasoning skills and motivation to learn science. Research participants were 270 Grade 5 and 346 Grade 7 students in the Oshana region of Namibia. The online reasoning skills test consisted of 36 items with 1...

The aims of this paper are: to provide a comprehensive introduction to eDia, an online diagnostic assessment system; to show how the use of technology can contribute to solve certain crucial problems in education by supporting the personalization of learning; and to offer a general reference for further eDia-based studies. The primary function for...

A misconception is well-known as a barrier to students in learning science. Some topics in science learning are always giving misconception to novice students, and there have been various kinds of diagnostic assessment used by researchers to identify student misconceptions in science. This present study provides information about an overview of the...

Technology-based assessment offers unique opportunities to collect data on students’ cognitive development and to use that data to provide both students and teachers with feedback to improve learning. The aim of this study was to show how the psychological dimension of learning can be assessed in everyday educational practice through technology-bas...

The aims of this paper are: to show how the use of technology and the power of regular feedback can support personalized learning. The paper outlines a three-dimensional model of knowledge, which forms the theoretical foundation of the eDia system, it summarizes how results from research on learning and instruction, cognitive sciences and technolog...

A technológia fejlődése jelentős hatást gyakorol a tanulásra, az oktatásra, számos új lehetőséget kínál és várható, hogy a jövőben még jelentősebb változásokat hoz. Alkalmazása fontos kérdéseket vet fel az alapvetően tanár és diák személyes interakciójára épülő tanítási folyamatban. A pedagógusok számára az jelenti az egyik legnagyobb kihívást, mik...

The purpose of this study was to validate a new questionnaire for assessing students’ beliefs about nature of science. Existing instruments have limitations in terms of psychometric validity. A new questionnaire termed “beliefs about nature of science” (BANOS) was developed to address some of such limitations. The BANOS is based on dimensions of na...

Hungary has participated in international educational surveys from the very beginning in the 1970s, and so changes in educational achievement may be analysed over several decades. In this chapter, we first review changes in educational outcomes and compare them to results from other countries. In the second part, we explore data that indicate cruci...

Comparative examination of the development of inductive reasoning: Online assessments in Hungary and Finland This study presents the result of a comparative assessment of inductive reasoning among Finnish and Hungarian students. It investigates if the instruments developed in Hungary work in the same way in different age groups in Finland, in anot...

The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of a questionnaire adapted from Students’ Motivation Towards Science Learning questionnaire developed by Tuan and colleagues, to assess motivation to learn science among Namibian Grade 12 students (N = 755). The overall reliability of the scores on the 19-item questionnaire was...

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of exploration strategies students used in the first phase of problem solving. The sample for the study was drawn from 3rd- to 12th-grade students (aged 9–18) in Hungarian schools (n = 4,371). Problems designed in the MicroDYN approach with different levels of complexity were administered to the stu...

There is a growing demand for assessment instruments which can be used in higher education, which cover a broader area of competencies than the traditional tests for disciplinary knowledge and domain-specific skills, and which measure students' most important general cognitive capabilities. Around the age of the transition from secondary to tertiar...

The objectives of this study were to develop a computer-based assessment tool for inductive reasoning and to explore the predictive power of inductive reasoning on inquiry skills in science. The sample for the study was drawn from fourth grade (N=5017, age M=10.26, SD=.49) students. The online inductive reasoning test comprised 56 items with four s...

Solving non-routine problems is a key competence in a world full of changes, uncertainty and surprise where we strive to achieve so many ambitious goals. But the world is also full of solutions because of the extraordinary competences of humans who search for and find them. We must explore the world around us in a thoughtful way, acquire knowledge...

Online diagnostic measurement of musical abilities in a school environment is a new way to enhance pedagogic effectiveness. In our study we developed a technology-based musical perception test which examines basic musical hearing abilities among 1st to 11th graders in Hungarian schools (N = 2961). The instrument was composed of tasks measuring the...

Although the Hungarian education system is not effective in compensating for disadvantages, the issue of academic resilience has not been addressed in Hungary.The aim of the present study is (a) to investigateresilience in Hungary by examining the level of resilience, the school careersof resilient studentsandthe waysresilience changes over time, a...

A SAILS projekt második munkacsomagjának dokumentumai a természettudományi tudás különböző elemeinek értékeléséhez kapcsolódtak. Elsőként egy elméleti összefoglalás született arról, hogy mit és milyen eszközökkel lehet és szükséges értékelni a természettudományos nevelésben. A tartalmi keretek mint műfaj alapvetően erre a két kérdésre adott válaszo...

Az oktatás társadalmi-gazdasági fejlődésben játszott kiemelkedő szerepe ma már nem szorul bizonyításra. Egy tucatnyi olyan országot lehet említeni, amelyek alig néhány évtized alatt a világ élvonalába kerültek, és a gyors fejlődést elsősorban az oktatás modernizációján keresztül érték el. Ugyanakkor a magyar közoktatás teljesítményei stagnálnak vag...

Különböző kutatási programok és elemzések egybehangzó következtetése szerint az oktatás hatékonyságának meghatározó tényezője a tanár. Egyetlen oktatási reform sem lehet eredményes a tanárok aktív közreműködése nélkül. Minden oktatási innováció hatása attól függ, mennyire képesek és hajlandóak a tanárok élni az új lehetőségekkel. Miként más elemzés...

Közel két évtizedet fognak át azok a rendszeres, három-négyévenként elvégzett tudásszintmérő vizsgálatok, amelyek részletesen dokumentálják, hogy a magyar közoktatási rendszer teljesítménye nemzetközi összehasonlításban alacsony, és folyamatosan romlik. Ezek a tények ma már széles körben ismertek, mégis érdemes a fontosabb adatokat felidézni és úja...

A kombinatív képesség, kombinatív gondolkodás az emberi értelem egyik leg-érdekesebb funkciója, amely számos hétköznapi helyzetben, bonyolult prob-lémamegoldásban és tudományos tevékenységben egyaránt szerepet kap. A kombinatív gondolkodásra minden olyan helyzetben szükség van, amikor meghatározott elemekből kell a feltételeknek megfelelő különböző...

A zene tanulása átfogja az emberi civilizáció történetét, a zenetanítás tudományos igényű kutatása azonban egy évszázadnál rövidebb múltra, a zenei képességek tesztekkel végzett felmérése pedig még rövidebb időszakra tekinthet vissza. A zenei képességek hagyományos tesztekkel való felmérését számos korlátozó tényező nehezíti, részben ennek is tulaj...

This position paper highlights the relevance of domain-general problem solving skills for a comprehensive approach to contemporary education. We argue that education in the 21st century needs to be comprehensive in the sense that it should equip students with domain-general problem solving skills in addition to domain-specific factual knowledge and...

Modern scientific research would not be possible without sophisticated measurement instruments. In social sciences, measurement emerged only at the beginning of the 20th century, but then it became one of the engines of progress at a number of key areas, including educational research. Today, educational assessment is one of the most rapidly develo...

Combinatorial reasoning plays central role in, scientific reasoning, problem solving and creativity. In everyday school practice, diagnostic tests should be applied to provide detailed information about the structure of the skills and the effects of different content of the tasks or operations on students’ achievements. The administration of tradit...

Improving combinatorial reasoning through inquiry-based science learning

In the past few decades, Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) has become one of the most prominent alternatives to traditional science education. Its popularity generated a variety of implementations in terms of interpretation of inquiry, depth of changes compared to traditional teaching, areas of application, complexity of inquiries, and length...

For the present study, an online test and a questionnaire were developed to examine musical hearing abilities, their developmental trends, and relationships with other cognitive and social variables among 7- to 12-year-old students. In this paper, we outline the theoretical and historical background of testing musical ability, introduce the measure...

Csapó Benő (2014): A szegedi iskolai longitudinális program. In: Pál József és Vajda Zoltán (szerk.): Szegedi Egyetemi Tudástár 7. Bölcsészet-és társadalomtudományok. Szegedi Egyetemi Kiadó, Szeged. 117-166.

Magyarország a kezdetektől, az 1970-es évek óta részt vesz a fontosabb nem-zetközi tudásszint-vizsgálatokban, így a magyar iskolarendszer kimenetének alakulását nemzetközi kontextusban is több évtizedes perspektívában lehet értékelni. Ebben a fejezetben először áttekintjük a tanulók tudásának alakulá-sát a fontosabb felmérések tükrében, és megvizsg...

Throughout history, music making and singing have had a strong cultural role in every known civilization (Koelsch, 2012). However, although music learning and instruction have had great traditions evolving over the centuries, scientific research on musical ability began less than a century ago and musical testing has an even shorter history. Since...

Early reading and mathematics learning has been receiving growing attention as performances in the first grades strongly influence later achievements. This paper aims at exploring the relationships between the achievements of reading and mathematics measured in Grade 2 with achievements measured in later school years. The analyses of this study uti...

This paper focuses on three different types of reasoning: domain-specific problem solving, complex (general) problem solving, and inductive reasoning. The objective of the study is to examine the differences in the developmental levels of inductive reasoning, domain-specific problem solving, and complex problem solving between three age groups and...

Innovative assessments of cross-curricular competencies such as complex problem solving (CPS) have currently received considerable attention in large-scale educational studies. This study investigated the nature of CPS by applying a state-of-the-art approach to assess CPS in high school. We analyzed whether two processes derived from cognitive psyc...

This chapter reviews the contribution of new information-communication technologies to the advancement of educational assessment. Improvements can be described in terms of precision in detecting the actual values of the observed variables, efficiency in collecting and processing information, and speed and frequency of feedback given to the particip...

Our research has focused on developing an Online Diagnostic Assessment System (ODAS) for the first six grades of primary school. The main aims of the current phase of the ODAS project are (1) to establish a system for assessing the progress of students in several dimensions of cognitive development; (2) to explore the possibilities technology-based...

This chapter stems from the research of the past two decades on conceptualizing and assessing the quality of knowledge, especially knowledge as an outcome of science education. The findings that students performed well on some test types, whereas results were poor in other kinds of assessments, initiated a series of research projects. The results o...