Composite indicators (CIs) have increasingly been accepted as a useful tool for benchmarking, performance comparisons, policy analysis and public communication in many different fields. Several recent studies show that as a data aggregation technique in CI construction the weighted product (WP) method has some desirable properties. However, a…

Teaching young students to think critically has always been important, however, as the United States transitions to a national set of learning standards which emphasizes higher-order thinking, it becomes essential. In this quasi-experimental study we evaluate the effects of exposure to the Journeys and Destinations (J&D) unit from the William…

This exploratory study sheds new light on students' perceptions of online feedback types for a complex writing task, summary writing from spoken input in a foreign language (L2), and investigates how these correlate with their actual learning to write. Students tend to favour clear-cut, instructivist rather than constructivist feedback, and guided…

Purpose of this study is to examine the effect of "Development of Efficient Studying Skills Curriculum" on academic achievements and studying skills of 7th grade primary school students. In this study, pre-test post-test from experiment models and semi-experimental model with control group were preferred. The reason for the preference is…

The main confirmatory research question guiding the design of the impact evaluation is: "What is the impact of Success for All (SFA) on elementary school students' reading achievement, compared to students in non-SFA schools?" An answer to this question will determine the assessment of whether SFA is successful at turning around low-performing…

The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) increased the federal presence in the test-based accountability movement with its goal of all children meeting standard by 2014. To measure progress toward this goal, each state created a series of intermediate goals. Schools or districts that attained the goal for a given year in 9 different subgroups made…

Among various study topics of advanced second language (L2) learners, mental lexicon shares a unique significance. This paper will introduce a comparative experiment between advanced Chinese English as a Second Language (CESL) learners and English as first language (EL1) speakers. The research question of the study is whether advanced CESL…

Cognitive models of social phobia (SP) and empirical evidence in adults suggest that affected individuals overestimate arousal symptoms such as heart rate (HR) during social stress and worry about their visibility in public. To date, little is known about these aspects in childhood social anxiety, an important precursor of the disorder. We…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyze international and national research and development (R&D) programs and roadmaps for the manufacturing sector, presenting how agile and lean manufacturing models are addressed in these programs. Design/methodology/approach: In this review, several manufacturing research and development programs and…

This study compared the accuracies of nine previously proposed statistical significance tests for selecting identity, linear, and equipercentile equating functions in an equivalent groups equating design. The strategies included likelihood ratio tests for the loglinear models of tests' frequency distributions, regression tests, Kolmogorov-Smirnov…

The central problem confronting education systems around the world is not that people lack models of excellence; it is their inability to routinely replicate those models. In other fields, they take for granted an endless cycle of innovation and productivity growth that continually makes products and services better, more affordable, or both. That…

The path of growth and development for many American colleges and universities is to add new programs, majors, minors, departments, institutes, and centers to their academic portfolios in order to meet new demands and pursue new knowledge. Their source of funding is primarily through raising tuition rates and increasing non-tuition financial…

The problem is that some secondary schools use the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program to service gifted students even though it was not developed as a gifted model. The purpose of the study is to determine if gifted identified students benefit more or less academically than students not identified as gifted as a result of their…

This dissertation explores the role first-year composition (FYC) courses play in the academic lives of working-class adult students in the University of Louisville, an institution that, during portions of its long history, has been a valuable educational resource for working adults in the Louisville area. A confluence of political and…

A video-analysis software tool has been employed in order to measure the steady-state values of the kinematics variables describing the longitudinal behaviour of a radio-controlled model aircraft during take-off, climbing and gliding. These experimental results have been compared with the theoretical steady-state configurations predicted by the…