There is an urgent need for global citizens to develop sustainable development competencies (SDCs) if our world is to survive threats to its development and sustainability. These competencies can be developed through education for sustainable development (ESD). However, implementing ESD is challenged by teachers' and students' prioritisation of…

Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers' internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a…

In this article, the authors share a unique and unfolding story about a program in Virginia that allows districts to opt into a series of Inquiry Design Model (IDM) performance assessments in place of the state-developed multiple-choice test. In the Rockingham County School District, this initiative was piloted in ninth-grade World Geography…

Language teaching activism is a political movement for educational transformation where the role of teachers and languages, as a medium of instruction and literacy, are fundamental for equity and social justice. This paper analyzes the reflections from elementary school teachers from Austin (Texas, U.S.) and Oaxaca (Mexico) during a collaborative…

In 2009 New York State began an initiative to improve teaching and learning through the implementation of new teacher certification exams. The Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST) replaced the much-maligned Liberal Arts and Sciences Exam (LAST) that had been in a legal battle with minority test takers since 1996. Billed as a "basic test of…

The complexities of adapting traditional educational courses to a virtual setting highlighted numerous inequalities within the current United States' K12 school system. Students in low socioeconomic communities have suffered a more significant academic slide in core competencies due to poor lesson integration, online learning fatigue, poor…

Despite its importance as a core counselling competency, less attention is given to career counselling than to other counselling specialties and it is often dismissed as a non-essential category in the counselling field. Because students' perceptions of career counselling are affected by peer and faculty attitudes it is important to examine the…

Teacher-assigned grades provide important information that is used by universities and colleges to make admission decisions and by employers to make hiring decisions. Besides grades, the results of standardized achievement tests are frequently used for student selection and allocation. However, correlations between the two achievement measures are…

The Question-Answer-Relationship (QAR) strategy has been suggested to improve EFL students' reading comprehension. Nonetheless, disappointing outcomes when using the QAR instruction were noted. The current study seeks to: (1) add the Review (R) component to the instruction; and (2) assess the effectiveness of the developed…

The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study was to explore and understand the impact of standardized testing on educational practice in an urban, Title I school community, and to determine solutions to improve the utility of standardized testing in supporting student learning and achievement. The specific areas of focus are diagnosing…

Panahi and Mohebbi review James Dean Brown's 50-years of research in language testing, curriculum development and research statistics with reference to an impressionistic framework for analysis containing two components with their subcomponents: Annotations (i.e., briefing and implications) and main concepts and themes (i.e., testing and teaching…

The aim of this study was to explore how the Coding as Another Language using ScratchJr (CAL-ScratchJr) curriculum, developed by Boston College's DevTech Research Group utilizing the ScratchJr app, impacted second grade students' computational thinking, coding skills, and reading comprehension. To accomplish this, the research team randomly…

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated…

There has been much debate by and among federal and state education agencies, state legislatures, courts, and educators regarding the identification of school district expenditures that best facilitate effective and efficient schools. The issue of equitable funding is far from being resolved (Education Week, 2017). Contradictory studies associated…

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the use of student self-assessment of non-cognitive skills is accurate and reliable by comparing them to the assessment of student development provided by their teachers of these same skills. For this study non-cognitive skills refer to skills including communication, collaboration, creative…