There has been increasing interest in assessing teachers' cross-curricular competencies as a result of reforms in teacher education in Switzerland. At Zurich University of Teacher Education, future students who do not have formal qualifications are required to pass several examinations and a test, which is known as an "assessment…

This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting, and more specifically investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting. It studies these questions in the context of the first five years of the Milwaukee voucher program. Much of the existing literature investigates…

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…

This study sought to better understand the early integration experiences of college students with disabilities by examining two research questions: (1) How well do the variables in Tinto's (1993) classic model of student attrition predict the early integration experiences of college students with disabilities? and (2) How do students with…

We develop a model of induced innovation that applies to medical research. Our model yields three empirical predictions. First, initial death rates and subsequent research effort should be positively correlated. Second, research effort should be associated with more rapid mortality declines. Third, as a byproduct of targeting the most common…

Recent research attributes the lack of merit pay in teaching to the resistance of teachers. This paper examines whether the structure of merit pay affects the types of teachers who support it. We develop a model of the relative utility teachers receive from merit pay versus the current fixed schedule of raises. We show that if teachers are risk…

In response to the shift from a system-centred care model to a person-centred support model, the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) has been developed as an instrument to assess the support needs of persons with intellectual disabilities. The instrument is used as a tool for constructing individual support plans, as well as a tool for resource…

In an effort to standardize academic risk assessment, the NCAA developed the graduation risk overview (GRO) model. Although this model was designed to assess graduation risk, its ability to predict grade-point average (GPA) remained unknown. Therefore, 134 individual risk assessments were made to determine GRO model effectiveness in the…

Student modeling is a fundamental concept applicable to a variety of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). However, there is not a lot of practical guidance on how to construct and train such models. This paper compares two approaches for student modeling, Knowledge Tracing (KT) and Performance Factors Analysis (PFA), by evaluating their predictive…

This study examined pre-service teachers' self-reported intention to use technology. One hundred fifty-seven participants completed a survey questionnaire measuring their responses to six constructs from a research model that integrated the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Structural equation modeling was…

This article describes the early outcomes of an ongoing project at the University of South Florida in Tampa that involves using a logistics regression formula derived from pre-matriculation characteristics to predict the risk of individual student attrition. In this piece, the authors will describe the results of the prediction formula and the…

A method for point and interval estimation of change in criterion validity of multiple-component measuring instruments as a result of revision is outlined. The procedure is developed within the framework of covariance structure modeling, which complements earlier methods for testing change in composite reliability due to addition or deletion of…

This study proposes a new method named the IIS-map-based method for analyzing interactions in face-to-face collaborative learning settings. This analysis method is conducted in three steps: firstly, drawing an initial IIS-map according to collaborative tasks; secondly, coding and segmenting information flows into information items of IIS; thirdly,…

This paper examines the impact of vouchers in general and voucher design in particular on public school performance. It argues that all voucher programs are not created equal. There are often fundamental differences in voucher designs that affect public school incentives differently and induce different responses from them. It analyzes two voucher…

Building on Shulruf, Hattie and Tumen (2008), this work examines the capacity of various National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA)-derived models to predict first-year performance in Biological Sciences at a New Zealand university. We compared three models: (1) the "best-80" indicator as used by several New Zealand…