With ongoing concerns about environments that push teachers toward increasingly structured assessments, thus reducing opportunities to observe young learners' mathematical capabilities, the publication of this special issue on formative assessment is especially significant and timely. The articles illustrate how we cannot rely solely on…

This article describes how providing effective and timely feedback gives new life to student assessment. Such feedback enables students to become better problem solvers and assessors of their own work. Providing effective and informative feedback is a large part of the assessment process: a means not an end that exists to improve learning and…

Using a heuristic system design is the most cost effective means for confronting unstructured policy problems that require action in cases in which there is a limited empirical data base or a diversity of opinion concerning preferred ends and feasible means. This paper discusses heuristic principles that can serve as guides to problem solving and…

This paper discusses the author's personal experiences in developing and implementing a problem-based college mathematics course for liberal arts majors. This project was initiated in response to the realization that most students are dependent on "patterning" learning algorithms and have no expectation that self-initiated thinking is a…