When students have a strong sense of belonging in their school community, they are more likely to thrive academically. In a study of 55,000 secondary school students across the United States, Challenge Success found further evidence of the bilateral relationship between students' experiences of academic engagement and their sense of belonging,…

Making accurate judgements and interpretations about student growth and progress in mathematics can be problematic when using open-ended assessments. This study reports on the development of a class-based assessment instrument and marking key designed to assess Year 2 students' mathematics competence to reflect their learning of mathematics…

The analysis of exemplars of different quality is a potentially powerful tool in enabling students to understand assessment expectations and appreciate academic standards. Through a systematic review methodology, this paper synthesises exemplar-based research designs, exemplar implementation and the educational effects of exemplars. The review of…

In this article, I present the results of a national study of response to student writing and argue for an approach to response I call "Responding for Transfer" (RFT). My corpus includes peer and teacher responses to 1,054 rough and final drafts of student writing from across the curriculum as well as 128 student self-reflection essays…

Academic feedback has a direct impact on students' effort decisions and academic performance. However, the grades that are reported to students are often based on institutional or instructor preferences, with entities adopting a discrete or fine grading scale. In this study, we utilize a field experiment to assess how a Letter (LGS) or Numerical…

Special education students spend most of their academic school days removed from the general education classroom, thus losing instruction from content specialists. This study was designed to help the researcher understand how general education teachers' self-efficacy influences their preparedness, whether general education teachers feel adequately…

Alternative approaches to assessment in education (many of which are linked to inclusive and antiracist pedagogies) are gaining in popularity across the board, from PK--12 to higher education (Esquivel, 2021; St. Amour, 2020). One such antiracist assessment strategy is using labor-based grading contracts (LBGCs), popularized by Inoue (2019; see…

Action research was undertaken to better understand teachers' perceptions of grading at a single P-12 school district in a midwestern state. The motivation for measuring teachers' perceptions of grading came from the school district's local data, which suggested a possible disconnect between students' grades and what students know, understand, and…

In this paper, six interviews with course coordinators from two mathematics departments are analysed to better understand the relationship between course coordination and local data in the Precalculus to Calculus 2 sequence with respect to online grading platforms. We highlight several potential coordinator decisions and present illustrative…

This integrative review examined correlates, mechanisms, and consequences of teacher bias experienced in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade in primary and secondary schools in the United States. Education Resource and Information Center, Sociological Abstracts, and Applied Social Science Index & Abstracts were searched to identify…

The intent of this research project was to address a perceived lack of capacity to address controversial topics or differences of perspective with civil discourse when engaged in learning in an online graduate course. Using carefully designed discussion prompts, students were asked to post, respond and reflect on their own research projects and…

The purpose of the research was to find out how the procedures for measuring students' cognitive skills could be incorporated into the university course Language Teaching Methodology. The study was organised within a framework of Anderson's theory of cognitive skills development and Glaser's taxonomy of dimensions for assessing achievement. We…

Was the approach proposed for calculating exam grades in summer 2020 fair? Were the grades eventually awarded (after policy changes) fair? What is a fair arrangement for 2021? These questions have been at the heart of debate in the UK in the light of COVID-19. After schools were closed in the spring of 2020 and the decision was made not to proceed…

While the benefits of peer review on feedback literacy are widely recognised, peer marking tends to be associated with summative assessment, and often dismissed as a legacy from outdated approaches where assessment was used for measuring learning rather than as a means of achieving it. This paper repositions peer marking as a means of developing…

Chemistry faculty instructors (FIs) and graduate student instructors (GSIs) regularly engage in the evaluation and grading of student responses in formal formative and summative assessments. In this study, we identified dimensions of variation in these instructors' approaches to the evaluation and grading of students' answers. Using qualitative…