January 2014, Governor Jerry Brown announced in his budget proposal an unprecedented line-item designation for student equity in community colleges. His proposal of $100 million for student equity set the stage for the past year and a half of enhanced activities locally and statewide on student equity issues. Most prominently, the 112 community…

This research originated from the need for a speech and language therapy assessment in te reo Maori for a particular child who attended a Maori immersion unit. A Speech and Language Therapy te reo assessment had already been developed but it needed to be revised and normative data collected. Discussions and assessments were carried out in a…

The paper proposes a contingent, learner-centred usability evaluation method and a prototype tool of such systems. This is a new usability evaluation method for web-based learning systems using a set of empirically-supported usability factors and can be done effectively with limited resources. During the evaluation process, the method allows for…

This study sought to determine if differences exist in the quantitative and qualitative data collected with paper and online versions of a medical school clerkship evaluation form. Data from six-and-a-half years of clerkship evaluations were used, some collected before and some after the conversion from a paper to an online evaluation system. The…

Targeting Outcomes of Programs (TOP) is a seven-step hierarchical programming model in which the program development and performance sides are mirror images of each other. It served as a framework to identify a simple method for targeting photographic events in nonformal education programs, indicating why, when, and how photographs would be useful…

This article highlights the role of sustainability appraisal for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Traditional HEI appraisal systems lack a way to assess the integration of sustainability principles reflecting societal needs with the consequences of research, education and management of HEIs. Two appraisal systems are discussed. The Austrian…

"Participation"--defined as engagement in life situations, including leisure and recreational activities--is associated with the improvement of people with disabilities' quality of life. Several specific instruments assess leisure, but none of them has been adapted to the Spanish context. The goal of this study is to adapt and validate the Spanish…

The dearth of information on the pain experience of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) calls for a more comprehensive understanding of pain in this population. The Non-Communicating Adults Pain Checklist (NCAPC) is an 18-item behavioral scale that was recently found to be reliable, valid, sensitive and clinically…

New Jersey After 3 (NJ After 3) is a private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to expand and improve afterschool opportunities for New Jersey's youth. Using both public and private resources, it supports a network of youth-service providers that deliver afterschool services based on NJ After 3's program model. Under an agreement with NJ…

Assessment practices and requirements are very broad and vary widely among academic programs and from one institution to the other. Consequently, we noticed, in the recent years, increased volumes of research and interest geared into the assessment process and procedures in various disciplines in higher education. In this paper, we present and…

The practical need for multidimensional measures of fidelity of implementation (FOI) of reform-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instructional materials, combined with a theoretical need in the field for a shared conceptual framework that could support accumulating knowledge on specific enacted program elements across…

Default options exert an influence in areas as varied as retirement program design, organ donation policy, and consumer choice. Past research has offered potential reasons why no-action defaults matter: (a) effort, (b) implied endorsement, and (c) reference dependence. The first two of these explanations have been experimentally demonstrated, but…

This article examines the importance of context in evaluative inquiry. Following guidelines from real-world and utilization-focused evaluation frameworks, four projects are described to illustrate one foundation's pragmatic approach to evaluation that values collaboration, methodological appropriateness, and utilization. The authors contend that…

In this paper there is a critical overview of the role of analogies as tools for meaning making in science education, their advantages and disadvantages. Two empirical studies on the use of analogies in primary classrooms are discussed and analysed. In the first study, the "string circuit" analogy was used in the teaching of electric circuits with…

Just like all the high-stakes tests that determine students' futures nowadays, The Chorizo Test is a standardized test rooted in the culture of the test makers. It was originally created to be used with students in teacher training programs to sensitize them to the pitfalls inherent in standardized pencil-and-paper tests, such as linguistic bias…