Feedback is a powerful instructional tool for motivating learning. But effective feedback, requires that instructors have accurate information about their students' current knowledge status and their learning progress. In modern educational measurement, two major theoretical perspectives on student ability and proficiency can be distinguished.…

The purpose of this study is to determine what good coaching during design-based learning (DBL) entails by integrating theoretical and practical perspectives on good coaching. For this purpose, a grounded theory approach was used. For the practical perspective, themes on good coaching were derived from a qualitative study on coaching by observing…

Since the pandemic, the United States has faced tremendous teacher shortages (Riser-Kositsky, 2021) and national organizations have called for measures to address barriers related to teacher hiring and retention (NEA, 2022a., b; White House, 2022). Many states -- including California -- require pre-service teachers to pass state performance…

Formal leadership development programs enhance what students learn in the classroom by giving them powerful tools for personal and professional success. They are also a differentiator for many institutions. They help schools attract more high-ability students, distinguish themselves from peer institutions, and increase the value of a student's…

Formative assessments serve to engage students in active sense-making, making them critical tools for both teachers and students. Though formative assessments may be an informal mode of assessing, they are one of the most important, especially when teaching science. As a subject, teaching science does not have the same kind of beginning-middle-end…

Practitioners face many challenges when working with students who are experiencing difficulty with comprehension. The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and comprehension is often measured in schools as a product of reading. Product assessments, such as answering questions or retelling a text, take place after reading, which makes it…

In some institutions of higher learning, one of the approaches to successful governance is through student assessment of teachers, dubbed Student Assessment of Faculty or Student Evaluation of Teaching and extensively used in the United States of America (USA). In schools and colleges, the usual largest bloc and primary stakeholders are the…

This article analyses an assessment initiative known as the Basic Competency Assessment (BCA) in Hong Kong using Bernstein's performance and competence models of pedagogic practice. On the one hand, BCA is aligned with a competence model through its official projection as a low-stakes, student-focussed and formative assessment. However, an…

This paper reports the findings of a research using marks of students in learning activities of an online module to build a predictive model of performance for the final assessment of the module. The objectives were (1) to compare the performances of students of two cohorts in terms of continuous learning assessment marks and final learning…

Instructional coaching is becoming common in early childhood programs to provide individualized, job-embedded professional development. Yet relatively few studies have tried to "unpack" the coaching process and delineate the specific features of coaching that contribute to teacher change. In this article, we describe an evidence-based…

This study responds to calls to further investigate ways to make feedback more effective for students in the context of higher education. More specifically it scrutinizes the feedback practice, adapted to the exceptional reality of a partly on Campus, partly online semester-long Product-Service System (PSS) design project for first Master students…

In this article, we describe the results of a formative evaluation of a coaching model designed to support recipients of funding through the Children, Youth, and Families at Risk (CYFAR) initiative. Results indicate that CYFAR coaches draw from a variety of types of coaching and that CYFAR principle investigators (PIs) are generally satisfied with…

This article describes the theory, key components, and empirical support for the Classroom Strategies Coaching (CSC) Model, a data-driven coaching approach that systematically integrates data from multiple observations to identify teacher practice needs and goals, design practice plans, and evaluate progress towards goals. The primary aim of the…

In a modern computing curriculum, large-project courses are essential to give students hands-on experience of working in a realistic software engineering project. Assessing such projects is, however, extremely challenging. There are various aspects and trade-offs of assessments that can affect course quality. Individual assessments may fairly…

A key challenge in formative evaluation is to gather appropriate evidence to inform the continuous improvement of initiatives. In the absence of outcome data, the programme evaluator often must rely on the perceptions of beneficiaries and staff in generating insight into what is making a difference. The article describes the approach adopted in an…