Think alouds are valuable tools for academicians, test developers, and practitioners as they provide a unique window into a respondent's thinking during an assessment. The purpose of this special issue is to highlight novel ways to use think alouds as a means to gather evidence about respondents' thinking. An intended outcome from this special…

This paper contends that powerful techniques to manipulate data, enabled by technological and economic developments, can be easily co-opted to serve the restrictive frameworks of hyper-controlling, managerial accountability that characterise current cultures of summative assessment in education. In response to these challenges, research is…

Capturing the data that help define faculty, administrative, and student needs is but one of the many critical functions of IT professionals. Any number of means can be employed to gather the data, including physical equipment inventory, software metrics, community forums, and surveys. However, the survey, particularly the web-based survey,…

A disconnect exists between principal leadership expectations and the actual practice of supervision and evaluation of principals. Increased principal responsibilities and rigorous standards require that a new approach to principal evaluation be considered. The authors provide a framework for a multi-dimensional approach to principal supervision…

Higher education experts tout learning outcomes assessment as a vehicle for program improvement. To this end the authors share a rubric designed explicitly to evaluate the quality of assessment and how it leads to program improvement. The rubric contains six general assessment areas, which are further broken down into 14 elements. Embedded within…

Evaluative instruments designed to assess a university's or college's institutionalization of service-learning practices have been devised and widely utilized. These instruments often come with assumptions about aligning data with decision making. To date, attempts to document community engagement practices within a department or an entire…

As states and communities invest in initiatives to improve the quality of early care and education, the measurement of quality is becoming more widespread and the importance of measuring quality well is gaining increasing attention. Within the broad context of interest in improving quality, this report seeks to differentiate among a number of…

Action research places a powerful tool for school improvement in the hands of teachers. By highlighting the outcomes that are possible and presenting clear steps in the research process, this book is one to encourage anyone who is seeking to implement evidence-based school improvement. Eileen Piggot-Irvine uses her Problem Resolving Action…

In the context of health sciences education, and education in general, the knowledge or ability of one or several subjects in a specific area is frequently compared using different forms of a test, or by means of different instruments aimed at measuring this knowledge or ability. In such cases, test scores must be equated so that they can be…

Qualitative research has increased in popularity among social scientists. While substantial attention has been given to various methods of qualitative analysis, there is a need to focus on strategies for collecting diverse forms of qualitative data. In this article, the authors discuss four sources of qualitative data: participant observation,…

Describes the a-e-I-o-u program evaluation approach, a framework for organizing key evaluation questions that allows for many models of evaluation and/or methods of data collection. Evaluations by users of the approach have indicated that it provides a practical way to organize evaluation questions and collect appropriate data. (GCP)

The Project on State-Level Child Outcomes is designed to assist states and other groups to improve the measurement of child outcomes in state welfare evaluations and in other state data systems. This report summarizes a meeting of the 12 states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont,…

This evaluation plan, which is updated annually, provides a synthesis of the various evaluation activities of Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL). During 1999, the fourth year of the Laboratory's contract period with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, special studies and integrated studies were designed to…

Reviews current approaches to evaluation of training both in theory and in practice. Highlights include complexities associated with evaluation practice; possible means of expediting the performance of evaluations; expanding the range and precision of data collection using automated systems; and recommendations for further research. (Author/LRW)

Recent calls for high standards and hard content for all students have brought a growing interest in Opportunity-To-Learn (OTL) measures. OTL indicators provide valuable information for anyone interested in knowing what instruction is like, whether it is equitably distributed, and whether it is improving over time. This paper describes an effort…