Background: Over the past 20 years, much has been written about the merits and limitations of matching methods, particularly propensity score matching (see, e.g., Stuart, 2010 for a review of matching approaches), and the myriad ways matching can be implemented to identify a comparison group that is similar to the treatment group on observable…

As the education reform movement increasingly focuses on teachers and teaching, educators, policy-makers, and researchers need valid and reliable measures that can be used to evaluate individual teachers, provide guidance for improving teaching performance, and support research in ways that advance instruction and classroom dialog and practice. A…

Evaluations of vocational education and training (VET) programs play a key role in informing training policy in Australia and elsewhere. Increasingly, such evaluations use observational data from surveys or administrative collections to assess the effectiveness of VET programs and interventions. The difficulty associated with using observational…

In 2006, more than 6 million individuals were victimized by violent crimes. Although violence is below levels of the early 1990s, it remains high. The extent of violence and its impact highlight a critical need to develop and implement effective programs to reduce violence and victimization. Communities have initiated a wide range of such…

Reports on observations of the guidance and counseling services offered in nine schools in the San Francisco Unified School District, California. Provides a history of the development of these programs, discusses the role of the counselor, sets forth the expected tasks of the counselor while comparing these with the actual work being performed,…

Since objective data on the effectiveness of self-help groups are not available, participants' views of a program's value are instructive. A study was undertaken to contrast participants' (N=232) evaluations of their self-help meetings with independent observers' (N=11) evaluations and to describe the components of their respective views in terms…

Applications of the qualitative approach in the evaluation of special education and second language programs are addressed in this paper. Qualitative data are recommended for providing detailed descriptions of specific program elements, and can be obtained through interviews, observations, case studies, and ethnographic studies. Six evaluation…

This article presents a case study in which researcher-practitioner collaboration took place to promote effective use of technology in an urban elementary school mathematics classroom. Data were primarily gathered through classroom observations and interviews. The aim of this study was twofold. First, to increase our understanding of the effects…

In this case study, we are able to take a close look at a situation not often encountered in the literature on ICTs in emerging economies: a private company from an emerging economy provided much-needed funding for a US NASA higher learning consortium through a contract for training and research and development in 3D visualization. This study…

Available resources and indicators of high quality inclusive practices are presented in this compilation. Assembling many different resources in one place allows for easy comparison of potential indicators of quality. Excerpts and adaptations of the resources are intended to provide some familiarity with the content of each resource and encourage…

Quality measures were originally developed for research aimed at describing the settings that children spend time in and identifying the characteristics of these environments that contribute to children's development. They were also developed to guide improvements in practice. Increasingly, however, measures of quality are being used for further…

A system designed to assist training managers or evaluators in increasing the effectiveness of military training programs has been developed, tested, and refined. The Training Program Evaluation (TPE) system offers advantages over traditional approaches of assessing program effectiveness. TPE involves the direct observation of training and testing…

This report assesses the effectiveness of the Napa County (California) Instructional Skills Staff Development Program, focusing on its impact on student achievement and student engaged rate in classrooms. The program, providing training for teachers and principals in administrative and instructional skills, is examined for outcomes in two schools,…

Self-reports and observations of the naturally occurring behavior of adolescents were made to investigate friendship patterns. The study was conducted during a week-long summer camp for children of university alumni attending classes. A total of 20 female and 10 male youths, ranging in age from 12 to 18 years, participated. Self-report data…

This conference proceedings document serves to establish the state of the art, highlight important methodological and conceptual issues, and identify priorities for future research in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. The document includes the papers from two opening presentations, issue papers and reactant papers, a…