The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)'s mission is to break the link between family income and educational achievement. This is achieved through summarising the best available evidence in plain language, generating new evidence of 'what works' to improve teaching and learning, and supporting teachers and school leaders to use research evidence…

This book explores the Capability Approach (CA) as an alternative critical lens through which to regard early childhood education (ECE) curricula. The CA framework is a counter narrative to the narrow instrumentalism that reduces education to a mere process of academic skills acquisition for a future workplace. Primarily the book draws on the…

Commentaries regarding appropriate methods for researching professional development have been a frequent topic in recent issues of "Educational Researcher" as well as other venues. In this article, the authors extend this discussion by observing that randomized trials of specific professional development programs have not enhanced our…

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science Digital Library/Distributed Learning (NSDL) program turned 10 years old in 2010. This report presents results of a preliminary program evaluation carried out by RAND and is organized around three principal goals: (1) Provide an initial evaluation of NSDL based on existing information…

The authors report an empirical pilot study of current models of elementary science instruction that utilize science specialists, and make a call for the participation of schools and districts that use a specialist model to assist in collecting the descriptive data needed to create the foundation for future research on the use and impact of…

Background: Adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities need dietary monitoring but are not likely to be able to provide accurate dietary intake data via traditional methods. Pilot study efforts to meet their support needs with a novel and practical approach to dietary intake data collection are described in this brief report. Materials…

This report summarizes efforts to develop and pilot test a protocol for collecting information about parent involvement policies, practices, and programs being implemented at the middle and high school levels. The protocol can be used to expand documentation of strategies selected, adapted, and sustained in future years. The study reviewed the…

The Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) represents a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort combining the expertise of mental health treatment providers, psychological researchers, industry, and information sciences and technology. This report outlines a preliminary effort to describe the range of information on college student mental…

The purpose of this study was to discern the current skill level of novice teachers in identifying the function of problem behaviors and illustrate the continued need for developing data collection skills with this population. Eighty-eight teachers with experience ranging from 1-5 years completed a series of open and forced-choice questions that…

This paper focuses primarily on the methodological considerations of a study investigating the interactions of pairs of disabled and non-disabled children working together on computer-based tasks, in mainstream primary schools in Cyprus. Twenty dyads of pupils (each pair comprising a disabled child and a non-disabled peer), were observed and…

Academics are reported to be working longer hours and have less time for research because of increasing administrative and teaching demands. The traditional pattern of the academic enterprise appears to have changed. To explore whether this is indeed the case, the Experience Sampling Method [ESM], a research technique devised by Mihaly…

Data on private school finance are not available to inform educational policy discussions about private education. Because of interest in private school finances, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) contracted with the Pelavin Research Center of the American Institutes for Research to explore the feasibility of collecting data…

The Private Institution Pretest Finance Survey (Pretest Survey) of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) was sent to a sample of 1,000 private colleges and universities for the fiscal year 1996. As of May 1997, the Bureau of the Census, administering the survey, had received and completed edit checks for about 50% of the…

The ECFMG[R] Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA[R]) was developed to evaluate whether graduates of international medical schools (IMGs) are ready to enter graduate training programs in the United States. The patient note (PN) exercise is specifically used to assess a candidate's ability to summarize and synthesize the data collected in a simulated…

Six papers discuss the Louisiana School Effectiveness and Assistance Pilot (SEAP) program, an ongoing 3-year research project associated with a legislatively mandated school and district accountability program. In three phases, the project joins school indicators, school effectiveness, and school improvement initiatives. The following papers are…