This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a structural-cum-communicative approach to the teaching of vocabulary to students possessing a low level of English proficiency. A total of 52 foundation degree students taking a 13-week preparatory reading and writing course participated in the present study. Both the control and the…

'School league tables' summarising the performance of secondary schools in England have been published annually since 1992. Although now a firmly established feature of the educational landscape, they have attracted criticism from those who point to their unintended negative consequences. These include 'teaching to the test', entering pupils for…

This research aims at deconstructing and questioning certainties about assessment as an educational institution on its most fundamental levels. To achieve that, I am utilizing theoretical frameworks inspired by concepts on the existence of cultural and social capital, by artifact mediated cognition, and by a recently proposed discipline on…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…

This dissertation is devoted to the history of the Albanian system of education in general, its mathematics education program in particular, and, specifically, the Albanian high school mathematics assessment. Historical in terms of its research methodology, and mathematical-pedagogical in terms of the objects of the study, this research explores…

The United States and the United Kingdom have used standardized high-stakes testing as a measurement of students' cognitive level to determine success in the 21st century. Standardized tests have given teachers guidance to help them determine what to teach students and how to teach to the test. With such increased emphasis on high-stakes…

In South Africa many school-leavers are underprepared for higher education, especially in academic literacies, including numeracy. It is important for higher education to identify the students most vulnerable to failure in coping with the numeracy demands of the curriculum, so that resources available for interventions can be most fairly used. To…

Self-regulated learning (SRL) -- autonomously planning, self-monitoring and self-reflecting on learning -- is a strong predictor of academic success. Mastery of the strategies needed to become a self-regulated learner does not develop automatically in all students; thus, the classroom environment, including pedagogy and modes of assessment, plays…

This study reports 2 years of findings from a randomized controlled trial designed to replicate and demonstrate the efficacy of an existing, successful professional development program, the Pathway Project, that uses a cognitive strategies approach to text-based analytical writing. Building on an earlier randomized field trial in a large, urban,…

This study examined the relationship between human patient simulation (HPS), critical thinking skills, and knowledge acquisition after HPS was integrated across the curriculum of an associate degree nursing program to determine if differences existed in critical thinking and knowledge of students based on the fidelity of HPS used and amount of…

Background: Successfully selecting students for undergraduate courses and for teaching is notoriously difficult. Traditionally, in England, A level grades and interviews have been used in conjunction with a variety of other approaches. Purpose: This paper examines the predictive validity of students' A level grades and of scores from a structured…

The Guidelines for Good Practice of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) stress the importance of collaboration between all parties involved in the process of developing instruments, activities and programmes for testing and assessment. Collaboration is considered to be as important as validity and reliability,…

In this study, 72 secondary English teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District were randomly assigned to participate in the Pathway Project, a cognitive strategies approach to teaching interpretive reading and analytical writing, or to a control condition involving typical district training focusing on teaching content from the textbook.…

Although much is known about how students perform on standardized tests, little research exists concerning how students think and process while taking such tests. This mixed methods action research study was designed to investigate if a constructivist approach to test preparation could yield improved results for 37 English language arts freshmen…