This study addresses educational reform in Ghana with reference to the junior secondary schooling. The empirical data on junior secondary teachers and pupils used here is taken from a larger case study of the junior secondary school innovation in Ghana. This offers some new perspectives on the realities of Ghanaian junior secondary schooling,…

Over the last decade the proportion of students in higher education obtaining aggregate marks over 60 per cent has steadily increased. Whilst standards of learning and teaching may have improved due to the existence of quality assurance agencies and the efforts of individual higher education institutions a significant factor remains that could…

Administrators at Findlay City Schools had been researching methods to improve student achievement. District administrators decided to work to form professional learning communities to focus on improved student learning. Findlay High School had recently added a freshman wing to help students transition to high school and allow teachers to focus on…

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority is the promotion of pupils' learning. The purpose of this current study was to explore the extent to which science teachers use assessment for learning when they teach biology in secondary classes. A year-long study with nine secondary science teachers in four schools in the…

Concerns about American competitiveness and innovation have led to increasing scrutiny of science, technical, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Leaders in the higher education, business, and legislative communities have all issued calls for expanded opportunities and training in STEM fields to improve the skills of the U.S. workforce.…

Stakeholders are interested in accountability in public education. College professors are doing innovative things in the classroom to help students learn mathematics and, when required, are documenting this learning. This article provides several hypothetical examples of how documented assessments of student learning at the classroom, course and…

This paper is a case study of the emergence of an evaluation culture in the public sector and particularly in education in Ireland over the past three decades. It suggests that the emergence of this culture was strongly influenced by external factors, particularly the European Union (EU), and to a lesser but significant degree, the Organisation…

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to report on an in-depth exploration of service quality in an Information Technology service department in a Higher Education Institute (HEI) and to evaluate the instrument used. Design/methodology/approach: The study surveys customers using the SERVQUAL instrument, which is one of the most widely used and…

In the 21st century concerns about workplace language and literacy skills, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, continue to drive education and testing policy in many OECD countries. Employers tend to adopt deficit assumptions about service workers' skills, conflating social identities and language and literacy, which can blind…

The Assessment is for Learning programme has been implemented by Learning and Teaching Scotland over recent years and there will be further developments throughout the Scottish curriculum up until and beyond 2007. This article re-examines the techniques of formative assessment that can progress pupil learning and appeals to teachers to review…

Education has become a central issue in West Papua. During the Suharto regime, the Indonesian government paid little attention to educational investment in the province which led to poor educational infrastructure and a shortage of teachers. As a result, the quality of human resources in the province is poor. Since 2001, the adoption of the…

Commencing each class session with a class quiz, which emphasizes the previous week's work and is supported by immediate feedback, encourages students to revise their notes ahead of the session, undertake more reading and keep pace with course progression. It reduces the necessity for any spoken review of the previous week's work, provides…

This article deals with the investigation of the psychometric quality and constructs validity of algebra word problems generated by means of a schema-based version of the automatic min-max approach. Based on review of the research literature in algebra word problem solving and automatic item generation this new approach is introduced as a…

In this paper, we analyse teachers' judgments of students' written texts. We document how teachers use evidence in ways that depend both on their knowledge of the students and on the assessment framework they need to use. We analyse teachers' judgments by contrasting the structures of assessments made using teachers' normal classroom judgment…

This paper is based on research on the role of UK qualifications suppliers in providing qualifications and accreditation in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in the context of rather different engagements with liberalisation, structural adjustment and globalisation. Sri Lanka's economic liberalisation and growth since the late 1970s has had a "de…