The purpose of this study is to examine different formats of comment data to predict student performance. Having students write comment data after every lesson can reflect students' learning attitudes, tendencies and learning activities involved with the lesson. In this research, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Probabilistic Latent Semantic…

Over the course of history many leaders have made their mark on society. These leaders have led uprisings, movements, and organizations that have left legacy's in today's society. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Adolph Hitler, and Jack Welch have displayed behaviors and leadership competencies which motivated their followers. These…

The current dissertation was effected to contribute to the existing literature on teacher evaluation. More specifically, the study utilized principals' perceptions to identify what principals, who often evaluate teachers, believe are the most frequent causes of teacher ineffectiveness. For this dissertation, the researcher extended a study by…

In an increasingly fast-changing, complex and diverse world, social and emotional skills are becoming ever more important. In this paper we present an overview of literature on social and emotional skills, describing the nature and structure of these skills, their development, malleability and factors that influence them, their cross-cultural…

In Croatian classrooms it is possible to observe teaching scenarios that follow the features of constructivist and traditional teaching theories and many variants and combinations of teaching didactics that are student centered and those that are teacher centered. Teachers struggle to find their way in the selection and design of a media…

The Foundation Programme of the Centre for Science Access at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa provides access to tertiary science studies to educationally disadvantaged students who do not meet formal faculty entrance requirements. The low number of students proceeding from the programme into mainstream is of concern, particularly…

We explored the usefulness of first and second grade reading measures and responsiveness criteria collected within a response-to-intervention (RtI) framework for predicting reading disability (RD) in third grade. We used existing data from 387 linguistically diverse students who had participated in a longitudinal RtI study. Model-based predictors…

We describe methods for assessing all possible criteria (i.e., dependent variables) and subsets of criteria for regression models with a fixed set of predictors, x (where x is an n x 1 vector of independent variables). Our methods build upon the geometry of regression coefficients (hereafter called regression weights) in n-dimensional space. For a…

We explored the usefulness of 1st and 2nd grade reading measures and responsiveness criteria collected within a Response-to-Intervention (RtI) framework for predicting Reading Disability (RD) in 3rd grade. We used existing data from 387 linguistically diverse students who had participated in a longitudinal RtI study. Model-based predictors of RD…

Although definitions of validity have evolved considerably since L. J. Cronbach and P. E. Meehl's classic (1955) review, contemporary validity research continues to emphasize correlational analyses assessing predictor-criterion relationships, with most outcome criteria being self-reports. The present article describes an alternative way of…

University entrance criteria can be a contentious topic, particularly in respect of equity. In this paper we discuss studies which demonstrate that revisions of entrance criteria which are designed with no explicit reference to equity issues can have a surprisingly positive impact on the fractions of disadvantaged subgroups admitted. We…

Public school teachers in the United States are famously difficult to dismiss. The reason is simple: after three years on the job, most receive tenure--after a brief and subjective evaluation process in which few receive negative ratings. In recent years, some school districts have experimented with changes in tenure rules. They seek the power to…

Despite questions about validity and reliability, the use of value-added estimation methods has moved beyond academic research into state accountability systems for teachers, schools, and teacher preparation programs (TPPs). Prior studies of value-added measurement for TPPs test the validity of researcher-designed models and find that measuring…

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a consortia of states that is developing a next-generation assessment system in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers. To accomplish this goal the consortia must determine whether individual students are college and career-ready,…

This article outlines shortcomings of currently used university admissions tests and discusses ways in which they could potentially be improved, summarizing two projects designed to enhance college and university admissions. The projects were inspired by the augmented theory of successful intelligence, according to which successful intelligence…