Higher education continues to face evolving challenges related to educating students and engaging in research. These challenges include changing funding models, increasing demands for service and accountability for student outcomes, and increasing scrutiny from stakeholders. One way to address these challenges is by studying the role of leaders…

This paper describes a collaborative design for the Finnish Teacher Education Development Programme in a decentralized education system where teachers, schools, municipalities and universities have high autonomy. The development programme was designed by 70 experts from the universities and stakeholders. The research outcomes related to teacher…

Secondary schools have adopted various strategies in an effort to improve performance. Collaboration and benchmarking are two such strategies. However, schools still continue to post poor grades in national examinations, an indicator that most of the students fail to meet the university cut off mark and thus fail to join university. This raises…

Specifications grading is a version of mastery grading distinguished by giving students clear specifications that their work must meet, and grading most things pass/fail based on those specifications. Mastery grading systems can get quite elaborate, with hierarchies of objectives and various systems for rewriting and retesting. In this article I…

This book explores European governance and policy coordination within lifelong learning markets. Using an instruments approach, the editors and contributors examine the ways in which governance mechanisms employed by the European Union influence policy to regulate lifelong learning, and intervene in lifelong learning markets, at both European and…

The problem this study addressed is based on research that has shown that students reading below grade level at the end of third-grade are at higher risk of not graduating high school on time with their peers or not graduating high school at all. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether third-grade reading proficiency is an indicator…

Teachers stand at the face of educational change, and it is therefore important to understand the identity work that they do if reform is to be successful. This paper explores how two Vietnamese university language teachers renegotiated their professional identity in the context of dramatic changes to language provision in the tertiary-sector in…

This study analyzed the relationship between benchmark scores from the newly published Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Math (i.e., Acadience™) math probes and student performance on math and reading sections of a state-mandated high-stakes test. Participants were 420 students enrolled in third, fourth, and fifth grades in a rural…

The modelling approach to teaching and learning mathematics emphasizes the usefulness of mathematics in the real-world. The aim of the current study is to examine whether engagement in modelling activities provides learners an opportunity to expand their knowledge of a specific concept -- the "average" concept. Our data include…

This paper compares the learning gain over one year of schooling among 15-year-old students in Austria and Scotland (United Kingdom). Common metrics for reading, mathematics and science learning, as established by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), are used. In order to overcome the limitations of a cross-sectional,…

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD) is a fundamental representation in stellar physics. It contains information about key properties of stars and allows inferences about stellar evolution. The use of the HRD is an important disciplinary activity in astrophysics. For example, it is particularly important to have a graphical understanding of the…

In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common…

In 2012, as the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools (NSBECS) were published, the Michigan Non-Public School Accrediting Association (MNSAA) embarked on a mission to update its school accreditation process in an effort to refresh the process and to better align with current educational…

Higher education in emerging economies has taken advantage of several technology affordances for student assessment in the digital era. However, the use of educational technology remains an area of concern in this context because of unequal technology terrain. This issue is more difficult in distance education, where students live in and work in…

The aim of this research was to assess teacher educators' knowledge, perceptions and understanding of the "Strengthening Teacher Education in Pakistan" (STEP) project which was designed to develop professional standards for teachers in Pakistan. Using a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, data were collected from…