This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Organizing for Learning Improvement: What It Takes (Andrea M. Pope and Keston H. Fulcher); (2) Editor's Notes: The Leadership Imperatives for Assessment Excellence -- Imperative #2, Attracting and Retaining Talent to Support Assessment Excellence (Stephen P. Hundley);…

Given the contextual conditions in each country, the United States, Korea, and China all have their own unique history of special education, which leads to different special education and service systems for students with special needs. The purpose of this paper is to compare the development and current status of special education in all three…

In recent years, while there has been a considerable amount of research examining teacher wellbeing, the focus has largely been on negative states, such as burnout and stress. There are also only a limited number of studies examining the effect of positive teacher wellbeing on teaching practices and student learning. At the same time, there has…

The purpose of this article is to make policy recommendations based on the authors' experiences with, and research about, reflective, differentiated, and teacher-generated music teacher professional development (PD). By doing so, we argue for a bottom-up process that capitalizes on our music teacher and music teacher educator expertise along with…

This paper compares the systems of support in inclusive education in Canadian and Icelandic schools. The rationale for comparing these two support systems is grounded in the idea that they were developed in two countries with a long tradition of inclusive school development. They shifted the responsibility and the necessity of support for all…

This study aimed to determine the perceptions of primary school teacher candidates about the Turkish education system, school, teacher, and student concepts by means of metaphors. The study group consisted of 82 primary school teacher candidates enrolled in the senior class of a university in the Black Sea Region in Turkey in 2018. The study data…

This review essay brings Megan E. Tompkins-Stange's 2016 book "Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence" into conversation with contemporary scholarship on philanthropic engagement in education policy. Rino Wiseman Adhikary writes in this review "Policy Patrons" presents an in-depth…

Purpose: To map and discuss core narratives and challenges crossing the field of DE in Portugal, from a postcolonial stance. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on a qualitative approach, comprising two studies: interviews with experts and online analysis of development NGOs active in the field of DE. Findings: DE is discussed as a…

The establishment and promotion of professional development centers at higher education institutions (HEIs) play a significant role in building and supporting faculty teaching and research capacity. Although not all universities and colleges assign teaching the same significance that they give to research, there are many best practices of…

This theoretical review examines how democratic education is conceptualized within educational scholarship. Three hundred and seventy-seven articles published in English language peer-reviewed journals between 2006 and 2017 are discursively analyzed. Democratic education functions as a privileged nodal point of different political discourses. Two…

Drawing upon ethnographic and case study research conducted across two educational settings in the United States, this article examines emergent spaces and practices of education that result from, or are affected by, the presence of minoritized diasporic communities. In light of ongoing currents of xenophobia in the United States and practices of…

This essay utilizes autoethnography to explore myriad cultural and institutional practices that impacted the author's education while she was growing up in Jamaica, West Indies. Informed by and through the use of some postcolonial theory, the information in this text is presented in the form of the creative nonfiction essay and chronicles the ways…

Background: Despite increased access to higher education in recent decades, first-generation (first-gen) university students continue to face challenges with persistence and completion. Recommended responses by universities include exposing these students to "high-impact" educational practices. Purpose: This article examines the…

Recent research in technology-enhanced learning environments has indicated the need to redefine the role of teachers as designers. This supports successful learners better able to adapt to twenty-first century education, in particular STEM education. However, such a repositioning of teaching as a design science challenges teachers to…

Background: From 2020, the Law faculty has decided to discontinue the five-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) stream within the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree for a variety of reasons, including students' perceptions of stigma, the poor throughput rate of this stream and the identified need to extend academic support to more students in the…