Addresses issues of students' understandings of representative values of data--how representative values should be introduced, and what role student understanding of representative values plays in their ability to analyze sets of data. Highlights the importance of teacher support of student development of conceptual understandings of multiple…

Discusses the importance of the process of making decisions based on data referred to as data-driven decision making, or D3M. Presents guidelines for teachers to consider when implementing a data-driven decision making process. (ASK)

Presents an interview with Mary McKnabb, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) Senior Program Associate, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum on the data-driven decision making process, measuring student success within this process, and the critical role of continuous feedback in assessing student performance. (ASK)

Considerations presented in this article apply to the use of scores from the Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT) in the context of a 29-year-old female high school teacher's circumstances. Information presented here is intended for use by the woman's career counselor. (MKA)

This paper presents Dialectical Inquiry (DI) as a structured qualitative research method for studying participant models of organizational processes. The method is applied to rich secondary anecdotal data on technology transfer, gathered by subject-matter experts in a large firm. DI assumes that the imposition of a dialectical structure will…

In recent years a number of reports have raised alarm over the deteriorating state of U.S. science and technology (S&T) competitiveness. But a recent report by the RAND Corporation, "U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology," argues that the U.S. continues to lead the world. RAND's report has been interpreted to suggest that the "clarion…

The context for this paper relates to the policy and practice implications of efforts to achieve social justice for Scotland's 12,000 children and young people in the care of local government authorities. The paper is located within a growing evidence base of the educational experience of young people in care and leaving care. The data on…

Using National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics data, a predictive model indicated that states could be classified as "No Score Gain" or "Score Gain" states based on median household income and the percentage of students participating in free and reduced-price lunch. Implications associated with the findings suggested that these two…

How is the usefulness of research assessed as university research becomes more and more commodified? The question is addressed through an analysis of how the results of a particular research project were received in a large private company that had provided the main funding for a research project on gender and top management, a project based on…

Teacher perceptions about students' academic abilities are important for several reasons (e.g., instructional decision making, special education entitlement decisions). Not surprisingly, researchers have investigated the accuracy of teachers' decisions. Although some data reveal that teachers are relatively good judges of academic performance,…

With many thousands of home-educated children across the UK, the subject of support for the home-education community is widely debated. A report conducted by the NFER for the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation is based on detailed interviews with 20 home educators and presents findings on support needs. This Research Briefing illustrates some key findings…

In these times of high-stakes accountability, all professional educators must learn how to gather, analyze, and use data to improve teaching and learning, becoming efficient generators and consumers of data. The intended audiences for this book are school and district administrators and teacher leaders who recognize the need to use data to…

R. D. Howell, E. Breivik, and J. B. Wilcox (2007) have argued that causal (formative) indicators are inherently subject to interpretational confounding. That is, they have argued that using causal (formative) indicators leads the empirical meaning of a latent variable to be other than that assigned to it by a researcher. Their critique of causal…

The goal of this article was to outline issues critical to evaluating the literature on incremental benefit of multiple effective treatments used together, vs. a single effective treatment, for childhood ADHD. These issues include: (1) sequencing and dosage of treatments being combined and compared; (2) difficulty drawing valid conclusions about…

This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children's educational achievement. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we analyze the mathematical performance of 7,403 pupils from 35 different origin countries in 13…