Communities, Cameras, and Conservation (CCC) is the most exciting and valuable program the author has seen in her 30 years of teaching field science courses. In this citizen science project, students and community volunteers collect data on mountain lions ("Puma concolor") at four natural areas and public parks along the Front Range of Colorado.…

Maps are often understood as the primary tool in geography; however, recent research indicates that the number of students taking map interpretation courses has declined. As geography students are expected to master the uses of maps, this study investigates the materials available in introductory collegiate textbooks that promote the development…

Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) offers a flexible, collaborative approach to developing and implementing an assessment of learning outcomes that yields high-quality, nationally relevant data. MTEG is a service that involves ACER staff working closely with each country to develop an assessment program that meets the country's…

The violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm and related methods are the main tools used to study high-level cognition in preverbal infants. Infants' differential looking to conceptually implausible/impossible events has been used as an index of early cognitive competence in many areas, including object knowledge, physics, language, and number.…

Through the construction of arguments, students are invited to make sense of the concept of a species and its connection to both extinction and local biomes. Scientific argumentation is the process by which scientists engage in discourse aimed at developing common knowledge about the natural world (Driver et al. 1994). This article describes a 5E…

As diverse members of a college of education evaluation committee one of our charges is to support faculty as we document and improve our teaching. Our committee asked faculty to respond to three qualitative questions, documenting ways in which interdepartmental and cross-department conversations are used to promote reflective thinking about our…

This study investigated the longitudinal trends of e-learning research using text mining techniques. Six hundred and eighty-nine (689) refereed journal articles and proceedings were retrieved from the Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index database in the period from 2000 to 2008. All e-learning publications were grouped into two…

The purpose of the study was to determine the extent of use and experience that elementary school principals in Georgia have in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating student achievement results to evaluate teacher performance. The study included components related to principal behaviors and comfort level surrounding the teacher evaluation…

With the growing emphasis on the development of scientific inquiry skills, the display and interpretation of data are becoming increasingly important. Graph interpretation competence is, in fact, essential to understanding today's world and to be scientifically literate. However, graph interpretation is a complex and challenging activity. Graph…

Youth with disabilities are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system and tend to be repeat offenders. Current intervention strategies have produced differential effects between those with and without disabilities. Yet, little research has been done to examine the differences between these two populations regarding risks for and patterns of…

Background: Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience high rates of physical and mental health problems; yet their health care is often inadequate. Information about their characteristics and health services needs is critical for planning efficient and equitable services. A logical source of such information is…

Background/Context: Two key uses of international assessments of achievement have been (a) comparing country performances for identifying the countries with the best education systems and (2) generating insights about effective policy and practice strategies that are associated with higher learning outcomes. Do country rankings really reflect the…

Enrollment is rising across the nation's community colleges, but completion rates remain untenably low. Reformers are focusing on the importance of using comprehensive, high-quality data on student progress and completion to bring about change. A core tenet of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count has been to embed a culture of…

Education data are growing in quantity, quality, and value. When appropriately used to guide action, data can be a powerful tool for improving school operations, teaching, and learning. Education stakeholders who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to appropriately access, analyze, and interpret data will be able to use data to take…

The interpretation of single-case data requires systematic visual analysis across and within conditions. Graphs are a vital component for analyzing and communicating single-case design data and a necessary tool for applied researchers and practitioners. Several articles have been published with task analyses for graphing data with the new versions…