Instructional coaching is a reality in many schools today, yet administrators often lack experience or background on how to utilize this professional development model effectively. Instructional coaching can help administrators balance the managerial and instructional leadership responsibilities required of their role. As districts adopt the…

This essay is a personal reflection on the implementation of "Creating Critical Viewers," a national media literacy program sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), an industry association, in 1995. The television industry's decision to develop a media literacy curriculum in the 1990s was a powerful…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

Presents a model for the effective transfer of skills from training programs to worksite implementation for instructional designers and corporate trainers involved in performance improvement. Strategies for use in pre-training, during training, and in posttraining are described that will ensure transfer of training. (Contains 21 references.) (LRW)

Addressing issues facing vocational education on the topic of performance testing, this handbook consists of a collection of seventeen commissioned papers and reactions to the papers. Two papers are presented on each of the following types of issues that must be considered before a performance test can be constructed: philosophical, technical,…

Contract grading is explained by way of four types of contracts: teacher made/teacher assigned; teacher made/student assigned; student made/teacher assigned; and student made. Also discusses the responsibilities of teacher and student, implementation of a contractual grading program, and program evaluation. (CT)

Lists 10 conditions essential to a school's readiness to explore alternative assessment methods, including desire for better assessment information, insufficiency of current assessment method, staff and parent openness to innovation, conceptual clarity, assessment "literacy," clarity about desired student outcomes, unsuitability of present…

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

Discusses the historical development of "hard" and "soft" systems thinking traditions and examines how these traditions have been understood and applied in the field of instructional development. Proposes the need for a synthesis of the two traditions in planning, implementing, and evaluating instructional programs. (AEF)

Discusses the use of teletraining to solve performance problems and discusses the role of the change agent in using teletraining successfully. Highlights include identifying performance problems; characteristics of teletraining; the teletraining adoption process (TAP); teletraining implementation process (TIP); and case studies at AT&T…

Outcome-based education (OBE) means clearly focusing and organizing everything in an educational system around what is essential for all students to be able to do successfully at the end of their learning experiences. This book examines the issues critical to understanding and implementing OBE. Chapter 1 addresses a range of issues related to the…

This supplemental issue deals with local and state evaluation issues and methods. It includes articles on Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) follow-up, responsiveness to client needs, performance standards, training JTPA professionals in evaluation, and Private Industry Councils' selection of program deliverers. (JOW)

In this commentary, we examine the articles in this special issue in terms of a continuum of research to practice strategies currently used in school psychology. On one end of the continuum is the "publish and hope" approach, and at the other end is the "change the organization to fit the innovation" approach. We present the concept of innovation…

Discusses ways to reward and promote excellent teachers based on a survey of higher education promotion practices in the United Kingdom. Highlights include the need for promotion criteria; the need for standards; balancing different areas of achievement, including teaching, research, and administration; student feedback questionnaires;…

A competency-based systems approach to job training is presented that ensures that trainees are taught the knowledge and skills essential for successful job performance. The procedural model for this instructional system is comprised of five phases: analyze, design, develop, implement, and control. Each phase is described in detail. (CT)