This article is an introduction to a European Educational Research Journal special issue on accountability policies and instruments in Europe. Two hypotheses grounded in the new institutionalist theory are presented to conceptualise and analyse the variety of national trajectories and forms of accountability in four European education systems…

Digitally enhanced learning and teaching is widely used across the European Higher Education Area, with general acceptance growing over the years and institutions widely acknowledging the benefits it brings to the student experience. The strategic focus being placed on digitally enhanced learning and teaching has increased, undoubtedly accelerated…

Recently, the testing effect has received a great deal of attention from researchers and educators who are intrigued by its potential to enhance student learning in the classroom. However, effective incorporation of testing (as a learning tool) merits a close examination of the conditions under which testing can enhance student learning in an…

Standardizing aspects of assessments has long been recognized as a tactic to help make evaluations of examinees fair. It reduces variation in irrelevant aspects of testing procedures that could advantage some examinees and disadvantage others. However, recent attention to making assessment accessible to a more diverse population of students…

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in exploring how choices of methods and timing of instruction affect the rate and persistence of learning. The authors review three lines of experimentation--all conducted using educationally relevant materials and time intervals--that call into question important aspects of common instructional…

This study examines trends in American students' growth trajectories in reading and math achievement over the past three decades. Drawing upon multiple sources of national assessment data, cohort analyses provide new evidence on the stability and change of national academic growth curves. The emerging trends imply a tripartite pattern where…

The authors write about evaluation, testing, and research and their relation to policy, planning, and program in the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) in Louisville, Kentucky. The authors focus on evaluation and testing for accountability and on managing the unit for this purpose. In detail they show the many evaluation demands from both…

Concludes that on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children learning of the paired-associates and written speech discriminated between good and poor coders. (RB)

Study was conducted on the hypothesis that a positively formulated instruction leads to a more positive answer than a neutral instruction and that this in turn leads to a more positive answer than a negative instruction. (Editor)

A new method of constructing tests is presented in this article for the purpose of developing a test from student perception of the course. The Test on Understanding Science (TOUS) and the Science Process Inventory (SPI) were used as sources of items. A random sub-sample of 921 students, taking both the pretest and posttest of TOUS and SPI during…

Report discusses the construction of criterion- referenced tests and comments on future work with criterion-referenced tests. (Editor)

This monograph explores many of the issues related to teacher assessment. In Section I, the criteria for teacher assessment and evaluation are discussed. An analysis is given of the issues involved in teacher assessment in the second section. Among the issues considered are the validity of research findings on teacher effectiveness, measurement…

Studied the effectiveness of using voluntary or mandatory quiz sections and specific quiz section leaders in teaching of large chemistry courses. Concluded that both exam and quiz should be retained in the course, but the value of mandatory quiz section attendance is doubtful. (CC)

This study consisted of two sections of Finite Mathematics at Alvin Community College, one with 26 students and another with 21 students. The teaching strategy for both sections was basically the same with a variety of teaching aids being used in both. The comparison group was evaluated by the traditional written examination, weekly homework…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is encouraging the interpretation of its data to make them more useful for local educators, and is facilitating the adaptation of NAEP procedures to State and local assessment programs. The Department of Utilization/Applications was formed in October 1971 to facilitate the use of technology developed…