Although history teachers have long been frustrated by the limitations of the National Curriculum Attainment Target and by demands to use it for purposes for which it was never intended, its official abolition has come as quite a shock. As Michael Fordham makes clear, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to rethink the way in which we assess…

Educators know the reality and the inadequacies of current evaluation systems--there are gaps between what is defined as good teaching, how faculty members are assessed, and how they are rewarded (or not) for their work in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Student evaluations are ineffective tools to assess teachers. Educators must be…

The presence and use of new technologies in early childhood settings are rapidly increasing. One technology tool used in early childhood settings is monthly DVD classroom newsletters, yet there is a lack of assessments to support pre-kindergarten teachers' uses of such DVD newsletter technology--in general and in specific. The present study…

While recent national and international assessments have shown mathematical progress being made by US students, little to no gains are evident in the areas of geometry and measurement. These reports also suggest that practicing teachers have traditionally had few opportunities to engage in content learning around topics in geometry and…

To better comprehend the needs of your clientele and colleagues, it is essential to use survey website applications. Doing so will help you become more efficient in obtaining constructive, timely feedback in order to adjust programming, therefore optimizing the impacts of Extension activities. Citing the most influential survey experts both in and…

This article reports on an assessment of North Carolina State University's Extension, Engagement, and Economic Development Seed Grant Program (2004-2009). The research questions addressed the extent to which the grants (1) stimulated faculty interest in the engagement and outreach mission of the university; (2) served as incentives for faculty…

Assessment is one of the most essential parts of any instructive learning process which aims to evaluate a learner's knowledge about learning concepts. In this work, a new method for learner assessment based on learner annotations is presented. The proposed method exploits the M-BLEU algorithm to find the most similar reference annotations…

The concept of "gradually adaptive frameworks" is introduced as a model with the potential to describe the evolution of belief evaluative systems through the consideration of reasonable arguments and evidence. This concept is demonstrated through an analysis of specific points of disagreement between David Elliott's praxial…

Given the importance of early intervention services for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), early diagnosis of children is critical. At present, several ASD screeners exist for young children, with the "Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers" ("M-CHAT") being one of the most widely researched. While the "M-CHAT" has good sensitivity…

The aim of this paper is to propose multidimensional measures of deprivation and wellbeing in contemporary Switzerland, in order to overcome the limitations of standard approaches. More precisely, we have developed self organising maps (SOM) using data drawn from the 2009 Swiss Household Panel wave, in order to identify highly homogeneous clusters…

The present research approached a problem which has a twofold aspect: the concept of angle and the techniques needed to represent how pupils construct that concept in their cognitive structure during their years in school. In order to access the knowledge of the concept of angle, we used the pathfinder associative networks. This technique provided…

An important step in the CACREP review process is the campus site visit. The visit involves a team, usually from comparable institutions, coming to a campus for a review of the counselor training program(s). The role of the team is to be the CACREP Board's representative on campus to verify the self-study. In this article, the author reviews…

Central coherence refers to an in-built propensity to form meaningful links over a wide range of stimuli and to generalize over as wide a range of contexts as possible. In children with autism this ability is diminished, and the impact of central coherence deficits in children with autism have previously been observed using static measures of…

Evaluating teacher effectiveness is not new in the United States. Stakeholders both in and outside education, ranging from the federal government to local school districts, have been exploring ways to increase teacher quality and quantify teacher effectiveness for years. The current trend, however, has increasingly included value-added data…

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is now a generic modeling framework for many multivariate techniques applied in the social and behavioral sciences. Many statistical models can be considered either as special cases of SEM or as part of the latent variable modeling framework. One popular extension is the use of SEM to conduct linear mixed-effects…