In recent years, as pressures for accountability have increased in higher education, some members of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) community may worry that the inquiry-based, improvement-focused practices they advocate could be put at risk by easy-to-administer, one-size-fits-all forms of assessment, quality assurance, and…

Recent and current changes in higher education have been both top-down and bottom-up, i.e. regulation and control measures from authorities on one hand and increasing numbers of international students on the other. This has led to a dilemma between unification and diversification. There is a marked pressure towards more testing, more streamlining…

Very little Canadian research has examined the academic achievement of private school students. Data from The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 were used to examine the achievement of private school students. The study found that private school students outperformed their public school peers. In addition, the students'…

As teacher educators search for ways to prepare future educators for the challenges of assessment implementation, we suggest that authentic practice by preservice teachers in an informal learning environment promotes assessment implementation. The analysis of 28 volunteer assessment students' reflections revealed that practicing assessment…

Concern about rigor is not new, but its importance has been raised with the advent of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, the CCSS are only the beginning on a journey to increasing rigor in school. Equally important is the instructional rigor that supports the standards. Instructional rigor focuses on the how--what actually happens in…

Schools are facing many changes in the ways that teaching, learning, and assessment take place. Most states are moving from individual state standards to the new Common Core State Standards, which will be fewer, higher, and more rigorous than most current state standards. As the next generation of assessments used for accountability are rolled…

"Capstone" is a metaphor used to describe a final achievement that builds upon previous works and encapsulates them. Capstone projects are included in engineering curricula to integrate multi-disciplinary subjects and teach professional skills that are difficult to impart in a traditional lectured course. Since these projects serve to…

"Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of Adult Learners" offers performance indicators, vignettes, and evaluation tools for instructors. These clearly organized components will help instructors identify the qualities and practices to pursue in their teaching. The standards in this book address planning, instructing, and assessing as the basis…

Teachers are important for the success of students in schools. Research indicates that teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student achievement. Traditional teacher education programs prepare the majority of new teachers for service in the K-12 school system. While there is empirical support that teacher education can…

The call to ensure that every student, including students with disabilities, graduates from high school well prepared for college and careers is acknowledged by policymakers, professionals and business leaders. This policy brief was developed to provide guidance to state education policy leaders to support the goal of ensuring that students with…

Increased attention on teacher accountability via student achievement gains has brought proposed policy changes which recommend teachers receive performance pay as recognition for effective teaching. In response to growing consensus that teachers' contributions to student learning should be a part of the teacher evaluation process, education…

This study is one of five thematic dissertations investigating the leadership practices of principals leading successful schools serving ELA learners. Schools selected for participation in this study had (a) an open enrollment policy, (b) at least 40% of total enrollment consists of ELL students, (c) has earned a School Performance Framework (SPF)…

High-stakes standardized testing has become ubiquitous in US education. In this article, the authors argue that not only is such testing bad for education, but it also contradicts curriculum and instruction aligned with professional standards promoted by NCTE and innovative educators. Additionally, contradictory to the concept of "no child…

Results from new state tests in Kentucky--the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards--show that the share of students scoring "proficient" or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given. Kentucky in 2010 was the…

This action research study gathered data from journals and semi-structured interviews to explore four preservice teachers' perceptions of reading instruction and preparation practices. In the setting of a field-based reading methods course, Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (ELM) provided a theoretical lens to view participants'…