On the long and arduous journey toward effective educational assessment, business schools have progressed in their ability to clearly state measurable learning goals and use direct measures of student learning. However, many schools are wrestling with the last stages of the journey--measuring present learning outcomes, implementing…

Criticizes Gene Glass' recommendations on the use of creative geniuses'' to mediate'' basic knowledge from allied sciences and to create curriculum materials. (CC)

This paper identifies the general shifts in curriculum research from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Information is drawn from periodic reviews or summaries of the research literature. A comparatively larger number and variety of individual studies have been reported, but places to publish state-of-the-art curriculum reviews have become more…

Suggests reassessment of research methods, strategies, and aims relevant to curricular/instructional decision making in the social studies. Limitations include the lack of clear-cut implications of findings for practice and the lack of cumulative findings relevant to the real life of the school. (Author/KC)

In 2002, the RAND Corporation launched a project to understand how educators are responding to the new accountability requirements in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania--three states that represent a range of approaches, regions, and student populations. The researchers aimed to identify the factors that enhance the implementation of SBA…

Two aspects of knowledge use in schools are analyzed in this report. The first considers the "reception" of knowledge that results from professional social inquiry (PSI), and the second explores some factors that affect the internal school dissemination of such knowledge. Data were collected from 207 secondary school teachers in 45…

Five research studies on teacher planning are reviewed to discover how basic descriptive research can inform the practice. Seven findings are discussed: (1) Planning is important to teachers and generally invisible to everyone else; (2) Planning differs in practice from traditional prescriptions for planning; (3) Planning during the first weeks of…

At a critical point in one university's history, a value-added student assessment model was developed. Data generated by it have been used to improve student learning and development throughout the curriculum and to help clarify the institution's mission. (Author/MSE)

A rationale and methodology for the use of student perceptions in educational decision making, and specifically in the area of curriculum, are presented. Four sections of the paper present ways in which student perceptions may be used: to describe and compare school environments, to compare perceptions of student subgroups within the same…

Diagnosing an institution's areas of weakness - and prescribing reforms - are the first steps to the recovery of higher education. (Editor)