The article "Research by design: Design-based research and the higher degree research student" (Kennedy-Clark, 2013) appeared in the "Journal of Learning Design" Volume 6, Issue 2 in 2013. Two years on, Shannon Kennedy-Clark reflects upon her original article. Upon being asked to revisit this article the author reflected upon…

From star systems to social systems, CONASTA 64 connects teachers to researchers and scientists working on the cutting edge of modern science. We asked two CONASTA 64 Keynote speakers, Steven Tingay and Ian Walker to share their passion for their work and their dedication for giving back to the science community.

In this commentary, we offer a set of visual tools that can assist education researchers, especially those in the field of mathematics, in developing cohesiveness from a mixed methods perspective, commencing at a study's research questions and literature review, through its data collection and analysis, and finally to its results. This expounds…

As pressure builds to assess students, teachers, and schools, educational practitioners and policy makers are increasingly looking toward student perception surveys as a promising means to collect high-quality, useful data. For instance, the widely cited Measures of Effective Teaching study lists student perception surveys as one of the three key…

In "Updating the Duplex Design for Test-Based Accountability in the Twenty-First Century," Bejar and Graf (2010) propose extensions to the duplex design for large-scale assessment presented in Bock and Mislevy (1988). Examining the range of people who use assessment results--from students, teachers, administrators, curriculum designers,…

The REL Mid-Atlantic Webinar discussed the elements in a positive school climate and shared different methods for assessing school data, including the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory. The Q&A presented in this document address the questions participants had for Dr. Cohen following the webinar. The webinar recording and PowerPoint…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

The commentaries on my article contain a number of points with which I disagree but also several with which I agree. For example, I continue to believe that the existence of many cases in which between-person variability does not increase with age indicates that greater variance with increased age is not inevitable among healthy individuals up to…

In this article, the author explores what Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) is about. He contends that the predilection for testing is a catastrophe as far as the teaching and learning of mathematics is concerned; it is an outcome of the drive for collecting so-called "data" on pupils. What those people, who should know better, either choose to…

Principles of scientific data accumulation and evidence-based practices are vehicles of professional enhancement. In this article, the author argues that a scientific knowledge base exists descriptive of the relationship between teachers' activities and student learning. This database appears barely recognised however, for reasons including (a)…

Compares qualitative and quantitative data, identifies common qualitative methods, describes a step-by-step process for gathering and analyzing qualitative data, and discusses two applications of the process to Extension. (Author)

The current literature is replete with instances of imprecise and conflicting usage of "qualitative" and "quantitative" evaluation. This paper presents a framework for making distinctions among several related concepts to eliminate this potential source of confusion. In the process, the terms "qualitative" and…

Argues for common understandings of the language and definitions used for recording information about libraries, and presents a method by which impressions of library behavior can be organized. (FM)

Discusses the need to reconceptualize early childhood education assessment in terms of the sociocultural theories that inform teaching and learning. Examines sociocultural approaches to assessment, considering assessment tools and the type of data they would gather. (JPB)

The first half of this paper concentrates on the need for the institution of evaluation methods which stress the systematic use of both quantitative techniques and qualitative, direct observation methods. In this way, a more comprehensive picture of the events under consideration may be presented, and changes in student learning and behavior may…