In the United States, higher education institutions assess the impact of program- level educational experiences through the process of program-level student learning outcomes assessment. The final step of the assessment cycle is to use assessment interpretations to make changes to educational programming. Nevertheless, few programs can demonstrate…

Higher education is under enormous pressure to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Information technology can help achieve these goals, but only if it is properly harnessed. This article argues that one key to harnessing information technology is business model innovation that results in more "open" and "unbundled" operations in learning and…

There is little discussion in the Design-Based Research (DBR) literature on how to design an intervention that has the potential to be highly effective. The act of designing is usually viewed as engineering something from theory or research on best practices. This paper challenges that universal belief and presents successful design as an…

How can schools be better designed to enable equitable academic outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse children from communities lacking in economic, political and social power? Putting forward a robust "science of performance" model of school change based on a specified process of research and development in local contexts, this book:…

The major concept of epistemology--or epistemologies--is discussed, as well as related terms such as "paradigm" and "science". Also covered are two broad paradigms, the clinical and the cultural, that seem to drive theorizing, research, and practice regarding individuals who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. The two paradigms emanate from different…

A policy analysis of Florida's 10-factor Performance-Based Funding system for state universities. The focus of the article is on the system of performance metrics developed by the state Board of Governors and their impact on institutions and their missions. The paper also discusses problems and issues with the metrics, their ongoing evolution, and…

RTI has the potential to meet the challenges of increasing diversity in student populations and the need for increasingly complex systems of instructional design. Three fundamental shifts in understanding systems and systems change must ground RTI policy and implementation work. First, RTI must be seen as an activity system nested within a larger…

As part of the Teacher Education Research and Development Programme (TEP), a project focusing on "Stimulation of practice-based teacher education research", was undertaken by Dr. Roger Deacon and Dr. Ben Parker, in conjunction with the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD). As part of the project, a set of research guidelines…

The changing role of research in curriculum development since the late 1950's is reviewed. Factors are discussed that have affected the prevailing attitudes toward research and its value, including its role in fields other than education and the mixed success with which various research and development models have met in education. Particular…

The Evaluation and Development Blow Your Mind Conference was one activity initiated under the design grant for the Colorado Center for Training in Educational Evaluation and Development (at the University of Colorado). Prior to the conference, 3 consultants (a psychology professor from the University of Washington, a representative of the…

Educational research and development (R&D) has often been characterized as a neat, linear sequence of discrete steps, moving from research through development to evaluation and dissemination. Although the inadequacies of such linear models of educational research and development have been pointed out previously, these models have been so much…

This memorandum, part of a series, critically examines the fixed-effects analysis of variance procedure used in an intensive classroom study. The procedure, used by Gentile, Roden and Lein (Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, 1972, 5) for intensive studies of single subjects, is found inappropriate because the basic assumptions of an analysis…

In December 2000, the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) began working with low-performing districts and schools as part of a 5-year research and development effort to create and refine a systemic model for improving student achievement in reading or mathematics. SEDL hypothesized that as districts and schools increase their…

In contrast to evolutionary or natural change and homeostatic or adjustive change, a planned program of change designed to move education in a new direction, and accordingly called "neomobilistic change," provides for the realistic achievement of educational improvement. The two primary criteria of this model are relevance and impact. Reasons why…

Activities in this quarter centered around the opening of an experimental school in Clayton County, the incorporation of some National Advisory Panel recommendations (as outlined in EA 002 781), the preparation for a USOE site team visit (EA 002 811), and the preparation of the Program Plan and Budget Request. The center's position is based on the…