In this article we present the findings of a research study which investigated the opportunities for creative reasoning (CR) made available to first year undergraduate students in assessments. We compared three first year calculus courses across two Irish universities using Lithner's framework. This framework sets apart imitative reasoning (IR)…

In this study, we examined 10 integral lessons to understand students' opportunities to learn cognitively challenging tasks and maintain cognitive demand during integral lessons. Our findings reveal issues with implemented tasks as well as the way these tasks were presented to students. We also examined mathematicians' reasons behind their…

Engaging students in meaningful applications of their knowledge is a key aspect of both addressing the standards and providing greater access. Not only do the standards emphasize the importance of meaningful engagement in real-world tasks, but evidence shows that engagement is strongly related to student performance on assessment tasks, especially…

This paper describes and analyses the assessment process in a Swedish year five classroom, involving pupils aged 11 to 12 years. The paper is based on classroom observations and interviews, which were analysed to explore the assessment process in daily classroom practice, and investigates how the assessment process was understood by pupils and the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of enterprise education on students' understanding of and attitudes to entrepreneurship and enterprise education in initial teacher education. Design/methodology/approach: This paper builds on current literature by introducing student teachers to the theory and practice of…

Governments in Australia claim that standards-based reforms to schooling will result in greater use of assessment for and as learning. This study analyses the assessment practices that evolved within the planned curricula for senior secondary schooling in the Northern Territory of Australia during standards-based reforms. Case-study methodology…

Standards for literacy in the twenty-first century raise the bar on the complexity of texts and the tasks for which they are used. The strengths and limitations of contemporary approaches to text complexity are discussed with respect to major points raised in the six articles in this special issue. In addition, four features of text that are of…

A robust finding in the literature is that spacing material leads to better retention than massing; however, the benefit of spacing for concept learning is less clear. When items are massed, it may help the learner to discover the relationship between instances, leading to better abstraction of the underlying concept. Two experiments addressed…

e-Portfolios have become increasingly popular among educators as learning tools. Some research even shows that e-portfolios can be utilised to facilitate the development of skills for self-directed learning. Such skills include self-assessment of performance, formulation of learning goals, and selection of future tasks. However, it is not yet…

Linear programming (LP) is taught in different departments across college campuses with engineering and management curricula. Modeling an LP problem is taught in every linear programming class. As faculty teaching in Engineering and Management departments, the depth to which teachers should expect students to master this particular type of…

This paper argues that all students, whatever their linguistic identities, can benefit from an explicit and structured introduction to academic writing. It argues that this tuition should no longer be seen as support, and therefore marginalised, but as a transformative process of acculturation that needs to be located in the mainstream of the…

Sometimes, program evaluations report no difference in outcomes between persons given a program and those not given the program. Is this because the program does not work, or because it was poorly implemented? Achieving high quality program implementation is critical to achieving anticipated outcomes, and researchers have made considerable…

This study examined whether the spelling abilities of adults with low literacy skills could be predicted by their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness. Sixty Adult Basic Education (ABE) students completed several literacy tasks. It was predicted that scores on phonological and orthographic tasks would explain variance in…

In this study, Information Technologies teachers' views and usage cases on performance based assesment methods (PBAMs) are examined. It is aimed to find out which of the PBAMs are used frequently or not used, preference reasons of these methods and opinions about the applicability of them. Study is designed with the phenomenological design which…

This paper investigates college students' English language learning through use of Dr. Eye Android handheld mobile Internet device (MID). Compared to related studies, students' English learning using MIDs has not been evaluated and fully understood in the field of higher education. Quantitatively, the researchers used TOEIC pretest and posttest to…