The purpose of this research study was to evaluate the impact of the district's use of the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System on 3rd grade students' reading achievement as measured by the SC READY ELA test. Educators are increasingly using assessment data in determining students' knowledge and progress. Brady, 2011 stated that…

This study evaluated three types of bias--total, measurement, and selection bias (SB)--in three sequential mixed-mode designs of the Dutch Crime Victimization Survey: telephone, mail, and web, where nonrespondents were followed up face-to-face (F2F). In the absence of true scores, all biases were estimated as mode effects against two different…

Significant emphasis is currently placed on STEM education as a vehicle to encourage American youth to enter science, technology, engineering, and math-related professions. Gifted students are a natural resource of future innovators for these fields; however gifted programs are largely overlooked for program support. Since 1973, the Virginia…

This study examines key school reform policies and outcomes of the USA and Korea over the past three decades from comparative perspectives. Since the two nations' unique educational problems brought divergent educational reform paths--standardization versus differentiation, high-stakes testing versus individualized assessment, and centralization…

The quality of Education in Chile is a controversial topic that has been in the public debate in the last several years. To ensure quality in graduate programs, accreditation is compulsory. The current article presents a model to improve the process of self-regulation. The main objective was to design a Model of Quality Assurance for Postgraduate…

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the rapid growth in the MOOCs offering brought about a new educational landscape, posing new challenges to teaching and learning, mainly due to massive participation, ubiquity and free enrollment. These courses embody a confluence of technological and pedagogical mediations yet to be fully…

This sequential exploratory mixed methods study addressed the problem of low academic achievement in mathematics, specifically for African American middle school students who historically score below proficient levels on standardized mathematics assessments. The purpose was to investigate the effectiveness of the Project-Based Learning (PBL)…

The concepts of sustainability and sustainability competence are controversial, complex, difficult to define and measure, and have varied meanings for different people and practices. Given the complex nature of sustainability, there is limited availability of paradigmatic frameworks to guide educators in assessing sustainability competencies. This…

Technology is recognised as playing a part in the changing landscape in higher education; altering delivery modes and providing flexible opportunities for learning. Research into the use of wikis has shown that they provide many opportunities for student learning and the development of twenty-first century skills, however, there has been limited…

In the name of curriculum breadth and raising standards, recent government policy in England has removed a large number of non-academic qualifications from the list of those that secondary schools can count in league tables, discouraging their use. Most of these were vocational qualifications, but they also include skills-led qualifications. This…

The paper reports on a study undertaken in Nairobi, Kenya with school leaders. We examined their perceptions of the adequacy of their preparation experiences and what aspects remained problematic. This paper only reports on the survey findings which included rating-type and open-ended responses. Principals conceptualized their…

Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

This study investigated the effects of a guided collaboration approach during professional learning community meetings (PLC's) on the perceptions of general and special educators as well as the effect on student performance as measured by benchmark evaluation. A mixed methodology approach was used to collect data through surveys, weekly…

An extensive body of research has demonstrated that the use in a K-12 classroom of technology, such as the Internet, computers, and software programs, enhances the learning of mathematics (Cheung & Slavin, 2013; Cohen & Hollebrands, 2011). In particular, growing empirical evidence supports that certain types of technology, such as…

Science education in China is Subject Matter Knowledge (SMK) oriented in that SMK understanding is the major benchmark to assess students' achievement in science learning. Such an orientation causes students to overemphasize the memorization of SMK and neglect other indispensable components of science, such as scientific attitudes and research…