Data from a statewide survey were used to examine the relationship between the professional backgrounds of early intervention service coordinators and their reported knowledge of and interaction with community resources relevant to early intervention services. Early intervention service coordinators with human service backgrounds were more likely…

Thirty kindergarten children from two classrooms participated in a 3-week curricular unit on dinosaurs designed to teach taxonomic relations and distinguishing features aligned with 15 dinosaur species. Both domain-specific learning and strategic performance on a Twenty Questions game were assessed twice throughout the curriculum, as well as…

Increasingly the different ways in which learning can be conceptualised alongside debates within the field of human resource development (HRD) regarding its nature and purpose, potentially lead to confusion regarding how learning is to be assessed in the workplace. This article identifies some of the complexities associated with assessing learning…

This paper assesses university students' acquisition of simple and complex knowledge, in exploring whether the knowledge gap hypothesis (KGH) with its origins in community-based research into people's informal learning from mass media, provides insights into students' acquisition and retention of information. The KGH posits that attempts to…

In 1998, the University of Charleston implemented an academic transformation, moving to an outcomes-based learning environment in which the university awards academic credit based on competences mastered rather than courses completed. That fall, for the first time, students no longer took introductory courses in composition, speech, and computing.…

Faculty at The University of Akron Wayne College, the two-year regional branch campus of the University of Akron, developed and implemented a plan to assess student learning in 1997. The plan was based on an embedded outcomes model, linking course-level student learning outcomes to program outcomes for each of six technical associate degree…

Higher education is influenced significantly by regional and disciplinary accrediting organizations. Regional accrediting organizations accredit entire institutions, while disciplinary accreditors approve programs within those institutions. All accrediting organizations require institutions and programs to examine their educational effectiveness…

Performance assessment is an important task in all levels of education, both as input for identifying remedial needs of individual students and for improving general quality of education. Although explicit assessment measures can be obtained through objective standardized testing, it is much more difficult to capture fuzzier, or tacit, performance…

The power of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) lies in the rights of students with disabilities to a free, appropriate public education. For individuals exercising their rights under this legislation, the reality is that services are sometimes hampered and limited even with legislated rights. In spite of evidence that in…

The candle burning experiment is usually conducted in lower secondary classes to prove the (about) 20% oxygen in air. The aim of this paper is to show that teachers misinterpret the results of the experiment to satisfy the objectives of teaching this experiment. However, when the results of this experiment are interpreted correctly, the objectives…

Gender schema theory proposes that children's acquisition of gender labels and gender stereotypes informs gender-congruent behaviour. Most previous studies have been cross-sectional and do not address the temporal relationship between knowledge and behaviour. We report the results of a longitudinal study of gender knowledge and sex-typed behaviour…

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a needs-based, nutrition education leaflet on nutritional knowledge. Design: Comparison of nutritional knowledge levels before and after exposure to a nutrition education leaflet. Setting: A regional colorectal out-patient clinic in Edinburgh. Method: A nutrition education leaflet, based on an earlier…

The study examined (a) the extent to which teachers and preservice teachers understand the concept of energy and adhere to particular preconceptions associated with it; and (b) their ability to predict pupils' knowledge and understanding of the same concept. Teachers and preservice teachers completed a test by indicating for each item what their…

President George W. Bush's approach to education policy has earned him cautious plaudits from otherwise hostile critics, who see much to admire in the implementation of standards for education. However useful such standards for testing students' technical skills like arithmetic and reading, they create problems for less-standardized processes like…

Objective: Nicotine dependence is the most prevalent substance abuse disorder among adult psychiatric patients and a leading cause of death and disability. The authors examined the extent to which psychiatry residents are prepared to treat nicotine dependence in clinical practice. Methods: Residents from five psychiatry residency programs in…