The Australian Government provides basic operating grants to universities, which are used to teach domestic undergraduate students. It imposes a productivity offset on the grants to encourage improvements in university productivity. But it is not transparent and does not vary across universities. Thus, universities have little incentive to improve…

International large-scale student assessments (ILSAs) in education represent a valuable source of information for policy-makers, not only on student achievements, but also on their relationship with different contextual factors. The results are partly described in the official studies' reports; more can be derived from the publicly released data…

Poor academic performance from extensive social media usage appears to be due to students' inability to multitask between distractions and academic work. However, the degree to which visually distracted students can acquire lecture information presented aurally is unknown. This study examined the ability of students visually distracted by social…

In-course assessment, such as midterms, quizzes or presentations, is often an integral part of higher education courses. These so-called intermediate assessments influence students' final grades. The current review investigates which characteristics of intermediate assessment relate to these grades. In total, 88 articles were reviewed that…

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are an important point of assessment for faculty in curriculum development, tenure and promotion decisions, and merit raises. Faculty members utilise SETs to gain feedback on their classes and, hopefully, improve them. The question of the validity of student responses on SETs is a continuing debate in higher…

Drawing on data from a larger doctoral study, this paper specifically explores influences on the discourses of professionalism amongst a sample of highly engaged teachers within the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO). The study is rooted in the assumption that discourse takes shape within a highly politicized system of socialization…

Purpose: There is conflicting evidence regarding if and how a deficit in executive function may be associated with developmental language impairment (LI). Nonlinguistic stimuli are now frequently used when testing executive function to avoid a language confound. However, it is possible that increased stimulus processing demands for nonlinguistic…

This study uses bibliometric data to assess the performance of educational research in Australian universities. It provides an alternative perspective to the Australian government's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment. ERA results suggest that the performance of educational research is substantially less compared to other…

Whether instructional-communication feedback sent to struggling students and succeeding students following course exams would significantly increase their exam scores and significantly decrease their exam-skipping behavior relative to students in the control group was investigated. An experimenter-blind study utilizing feedback and the…

This paper introduces the new Massachusetts Performance Assessment for Leaders (PAL) and uses critical policy analysis to re-examine the validity evidence (using the 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing and a theory of multicultural validity) for the use and interpretation of the PAL in regards to emerging school leadership.…

After more than 20 years of exploring liberal arts education in Chinese universities, its curriculum development has been institutionalized. Efforts to build localized curricula that fit the realities at each institution have shifted from focusing on quantity and structure to emphasizing curriculum quality assurance based on teaching evaluation by…

The purpose of the study is to explore whether a multidimensional profiling approach can be useful in predicting a table tennis player's actual and future (one year later) performance. Data on anthropometrics, age from peak height velocity, motor-skills, psychological skills and training histories were gathered among Scottish elite youth male…

This mixed methods study investigates the juncture of dance science, somatics, and contemporary modern dance training, and how they intertwine with learning processes and skill execution through transfer theory. The effects of a novel somatics training program are analyzed through six case studies using data reduction and interpretation of…

In science education, representations are necessary inter alia for the understanding of relationships between structures and systems. However, several studies have identified difficulties of students when working with representations. In the present study, we investigated students' responses (regarding their preference, test performance, mental…

Courses: Communication Theory, Nonverbal Communication, Public Speaking. Objective: At the end of this activity, students should be able to define key components of expectancy violations theory and apply the theory to analyze violations that occurred in Clint Eastwood's speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention.