In this article, Andrew Martin, deputy head teacher at Greenside School in Stevenage, provides an outline of the development of the P scales as an assessment tool for pupils working below Level 1 of the National Curriculum. He recounts the difficulties his school found in using P scales to track pupil progress from year to year and describes and…

This article presents the author's response to the article "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning--Done By Sociologists: Let's Make That the Sociology of Higher Education" by Chad Hanson. In this response to Hanson's call for a sociology of higher education (SHE), the author will focus upon two things. First, he will review an idea…

In the last 15 years, New Zealand has experienced a range of educational "reforms'' driven by a neo-liberal agenda which has insisted that the education system serve the goal of enhancing the nation's economic performance and its competitive edge through the inculcation in learners of the skills requisite to the pursuit of this goal. Fuelled…

Although differential item functioning (DIF) theory traditionally focuses on the behavior of individual items in two (or a few) specific groups, in educational measurement contexts, it is often plausible to regard the set of items as a random sample from a broader category. This article presents logistic mixed models that can be used to model…

Parents want validation of the quality of education their children are receiving, but education is complex, non-linear, and to a great extent unquantifiable. This article discusses two current trends that are said to be indicative of educational quality: standardized tests and school rankings. This author argues that while standardized tests may…

Motivation and effort patterns associated with achievement on classroom assessments in middle-school science and social studies were studied with a sample of 223 8th graders in different classroom assessment environments. Classroom assessment environments were characterized by student perceptions of the importance and value of assessment tasks,…

The primary goal of classroom assessment is the improvement of student learning rather than the evaluation of teaching through observation. Many formative assessment techniques, including the group instructional feedback technique (GIFT), electronic mail feedback, and small group instructional diagnosis, carry an implicit or explicit promise of…

Phonological awareness, an understanding that spoken language is comprised of individual sounds, is an important construct that has implications for educational assessment and intervention. Unfortunately, the relationship between phonological awareness and its many operationalizations is ambiguous, resulting in both theoretical and practical…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine factors which influence responses on open-ended evaluations of training courses. Design/methodology/approach: Course participants completed open-ended evaluation forms about their experience on a course. These consisted of 377 senior teachers attending a training programme dealing with child abuse.…

How can we help all children learn what they need to know to prepare for the future? In every country/region that is participating in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a study of the literacy skills of 15-year-old youth, there is a huge gap between the best and worst performing students. This shows the need for…

Along with the rest of the education sector universities have been encouraged to develop strategies for educational improvement. The strategies that have emerged have been heavily influenced by the policies and priorities of the government and government agencies, such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council, and…

Numerous researchers have speculated on and attempted to quantify the impact of policies designed to increase school choice and competition between schools, and they have reached widely differing conclusions. In this article, we provide an overview of the research that focuses on the potential achievement effects of greater private sector…

Faculty development research historically reported details on the types of programming available and the format of delivery. This research instead sought to uncover the underpinnings of the goals behind development efforts at community colleges. Findings indicate that teaching and learning issues remain central, with faculty interests serving as…

This article offers a German response to John Hull's recent article on "religious education in Germany and England" (in "BJRE", volume 27, issue 1). The author claims that recent developments have brought religious education in both countries much closer together than in the past and that the differences between the respective…

This essay builds on and extends scholarly discussion of the role and functions of Institutional Research (IR), especially with regard to the community college. As institutional "conscience," the primary value of IR is assisting in the identification of organizational weaknesses and challenges and helping to convert weaknesses into strengths and…