The PISA for Development brief series is a set of concise monthly education policy-oriented notes published by the OECD which are designed to describe a specific PISA for Development topic. In this brief, the role of PISA-D to assesses students' skills and knowledge in three cognitive domains--reading, mathematics and science--and collection of…

The article considers the peculiarities of training foreign students subject "Descriptive geometry and Engineering Graphics" in a modern engineering university of Russia. The relevance of the problem conditioned by the fact that virtually there are no special studies of teaching Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics in Russian…

Beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) partnered with the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) and Marshall University to conduct a five-year study of the quality of the West Virginia Universal Pre-K (WV Pre-K) program. The study was designed to examine the effectiveness of the…

While MOOCS have emerged as a new form of open online education around the world, research is stilling lagging behind to come up with a sound theoretical basis that can cover the impact of socio-economic background variables, ICT competences, prior experiences and lifelong learning profile, variance in intentions, environmental influences, outcome…

Child sex abuse cases have been the target of considerable psycho-legal research. The present paper offers an analysis of psychological constructs for jury selection in child sex abuse cases from the defense perspective. The authors specifically delineate general and case-specific jury selection variables. General variables include…

The study from which this article derives investigated some dominant assumptions of parent support policies and programmes, and suggests new possibilities for the conceptualization of the relations between parents and such policies, inspired by the possibilities of dialogical spaces and "relational citizenship". Parent support programmes…

This article describes an in-class activity that helps undergraduate students to understand the effects of their socio-economic position on the formulation, pursuit, and achievement of goals. Social stratification and inequality have an initial impact on the formulation of goals. Through this exercise students will perceive the effects of having a…

Schools are central, public institutions. On any given day, about 20 percent of the Canadian population spends at least part of its day in a school building. By age 18, students will typically have spent about 15 percent of their lives in schools. Administrators and teachers in contemporary schools face significant challenges. Globalization…

South Africa has a Gini co-efficient of 62, one of the world's highest (Finmark: Project FinScope 2004 and 2005, FinMark Trust, Johannesburg). Hence, measures of wealth are ubiquitous social indicators in South Africa. However, a growing emphasis in government towards measurable service delivery targets and remedial action to redress the…

In four Morrison Institute reports between 1997 and 2004, Phoenix area residents said their quality of life (QOL) was generally good. Some of the same questions were asked of the statewide Arizona Indicators Panel and are reported in this newsletter. In general, results mirror the positive levels of quality of life reported in the "Greater…

Explores whether Palestinian high school students in Jordan, compared with U.S. high school students in California, would aspire to higher academic goals and a narrower range of high-status occupations. Considers whether male students perceive greater family support and the relation between aspiration levels and socioeconomic status variables.…

Cocaine, the highly addictive substance, is being used by alarming numbers of undergraduates, and many are selling it on their campuses to support their own habits. A questionnaire for students who might be in trouble with cocaine and don't know it is provided. (MLW)

This paper discusses language planning measures in Guernsey, Channel Islands. The indigenous language is spoken fluently by only 2% of the population, and is at level 7 on Fishman's 8-point scale of endangerment. It has no official status and low social prestige, and language planning has little official support or funding. Political autonomy has…

A practicum was conducted to design, implement, and evaluate an instrument measuring the relative strengths of task-and nontask-related motivation of child care employees. Designed for child care center employees and supervisors, the instrument consisted of a self-administered demographic checklist and 100 forced-choice pictorial items…

The developmental work or phase 1 of a study which will collect information on the operational and financial conditions of the arts and cultural organizations which make application to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for grant support is described. As part of the Economic Data Series, the report will provide the Endowment with…