In this article Antti Moilanen assesses criticisms of Wolfgang Klafki's model of exemplary teaching made by Meinert Meyer and Hilbert Meyer and by Chi-Hua Chu. "Exemplary teaching" is a style of discovery-based teaching in which students study concrete examples of general principles in such a way that they acquire transferable knowledge…

Categorical growth models describe examinee growth in terms of performance-level category transitions, which implies that some percentage of examinees will be misclassified. This paper introduces a new procedure for estimating the classification accuracy of categorical growth models, based on Rudner's classification accuracy index for item…

Most social scientists agree that case studies are useful for "theory building," but ethnographic methods papers often look to survey research for case selection strategies. This is due to a common but untenable distinction between theoretical and empirical generalization, which obscures how theoretically inclined ethnographers make…

The Campbellian validity typology has been used as a foundation for outcome evaluation and for developing evidence-based interventions for decades. As such, randomized control trials were preferred for outcome evaluation. However, some evaluators disagree with the validity typology's argument that randomized controlled trials as the best design…

This article reframes the debate on the validation of non-formal and informal learning by connecting it to the sociology of education and curriculum studies literatures. Building on these literatures, the article differentiates between four types of validation: (a) covert and implicit, (b) covert but embedded, (c) overt and functional and (d)…

The need to develop consistent theoretical frameworks for the teaching and learning of discrete mathematics, specifically of graph theory, has attracted the attention of the researchers in mathematics education. Responding to this demand, the scope of the Van Hiele model has been extended to the field of graphs through a proposal of four levels of…

McGrath presents a prototyping proposal to better classify character education programs. He proposes 7 key elements that can facilitate identifying more and less typical programs. This proposal appears to be a very good start for improving the organization of the character education field and facilitating research. This commentary highlights 4…

This paper argues that the dominant framework for conceptualizing validation evidence and analysis--the "five sources" framework from the 1999 "Standards"--is seriously limited. Its limitation raises a significant barrier to understanding the nature of comprehensive validation, and this presents a significant threat to…

Quasi-experiments are common in studies that estimate the effect of instructional interventions on student performance outcomes. In this type of research, the nature of the experimental design, the choice in assessment, the selection of comparison groups, and the statistical methods used to analyze the comparison data dictate the validity of…

In 2014, ACT developed a method to identify high school students who had an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-related fields. By using ACT data elements, this method provided two different types of STEM interest: Expressed and measured. Based on these STEM interest types, students can be assigned to one of four…

When education works, it creates productive, innovative citizens eager to contribute to a well-functioning democracy. In contrast, educational failure has lifelong consequences, with some individuals experiencing decades of preventable hardship. Dawn Flanagan and Joel Schneider write in this response that, like Kranzler, Floyd, Benson, Zabowski,…

To identify factors associated with valid Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses from electronic sources in large healthcare systems. We examined 1,272 charts from ASD diagnosed youth <18 years old. Expert reviewers classified diagnoses as confirmed, probable, possible, ruled out, or not enough information. A total of 845 were classified with…

In the focus article of this issue, von Davier, Naemi, and Roberts essentially coupled: (1) a short methodological review of structural similarities of latent variable models with discrete and continuous latent variables; and (2) 2 short empirical case studies that show how these models can be applied to real, rather than simulated, large-scale…

This article describes the ICAP framework that defines cognitive engagement activities on the basis of students' overt behaviors and proposes that engagement behaviors can be categorized and differentiated into one of four modes: "Interactive," "Constructive," "Active," and "Passive." The ICAP hypothesis…

Sadistic personality disorder (SPD) has been underresearched and often misunderstood in forensic settings. Furthermore, personality disorders in general are the subject of much controversy in terms of their classification (i.e., whether they should be categorical or dimensional). The Sadistic Attitudes and Behaviors Scale (SABS; Davies & Hand,…