Bandit problems provide an interesting and widely-used setting for the study of sequential decision-making. In their most basic form, bandit problems require people to choose repeatedly between a small number of alternatives, each of which has an unknown rate of providing reward. We investigate restless bandit problems, where the distributions of…

The Lithuanian Informatics Olympiad is a problem solving contest for high school students. The work of each contestant is evaluated in terms of several criteria, where each criterion is measured according to its own scale (but the same scale for each contestant). Several jury members are involved in the evaluation. This paper analyses the problem…

In this article, the author talks about building resilience--that ability to push through hardship to success, to rebound from failure, and to "keep on keepin' on" when things seem impossible. The author assert that lots of gifted and talented kids need help building their resilience. In today's world, when striving for mediocrity can…

Cognitive readiness (CR) and performance for operational time-critical environments are continuing points of focus for military and academic communities. In response to this need, we designed an open source interactive CR assessment application as a highly adaptive and efficient open source testing administration and analysis tool. It is capable…

Curriculum integration is defined as students choosing topics to study based on their questions. Several middle schools throughout the United States offer students the opportunity to develop the curriculum during the year based on their questions about themselves and about the world. The author provides the rationale, the developmental reasons…

The goal of this study was to develop an instrument for assessing grade 10 and 11 student's levels of scientific literacy in the areas of problem solving and decision making. In concentrating on determining the scientific literacy of gymnasium level students, it was taken as a first; previous international studies like PISA have focused on ninth…

The purpose of this paper is to describe how vignettes can be used during an institution's interview process for an education dean. Education deans are confronted with personnel, programmatic, student, and organisational dilemmas on a daily basis. The fundamental responsibilities of the position require education deans to have a strong sense of…

Sex education is almost as sensitive a topic in public schooling as is the imposition of high-stakes testing. Both typically claim to be value-free contributions to the development of the student's cognitive, psychological and sometimes even moral maturity. Ironically each seems to short-change students in all three areas of development. The focus…

This paper reports findings from a survey of Korean special and general education teachers (n = 328) regarding the extent to which they value and deliver instruction to promote the self-determination of students with disabilities in their classrooms. The findings include (a) descriptive statistics summarizing the outcomes of questionnaire items,…

Accreditation agencies have outlined professional skills that should be possessed by engineering graduates. The question this paper addresses is "What professional skills do our recent graduates actually use and value as being important?" Young engineering professionals, as well as professionals in many different professions, were asked…

This study examined 68 parents' views of the self-determination skills and capacities of their young adult children with autism spectrum disorders and intellectual disability (ages 19-21 years). Results indicated parents placed a high value on the importance of all seven component skills (i.e., choice-making skills, decision-making skills,…

The study aimed to determine the comparative effectiveness of context-based and traditional teaching approaches in enhancing student achievement in genetics, problem-solving, science inquiry and decision-making skills, and attitude towards the study of life sciences. A mixed method but essentially quantitative research approach involving a…

Evidence-based practice and data-driven decision making (DDDM) are two approaches to accountability that have been promoted in the school literature. In spite of the push to promote these approaches in schools, barriers to their widespread, appropriate, and effective use have limited their impact on practice and student outcomes. This article…

This invited commentary includes observations about the article "Building Local Capacity for Training and Coaching Data-Based Problem Solving with Positive Behavior Interventions and Support Teams," published in the July 2011 issue of the "Journal of Applied School Psychology." In this article Newton and colleagues present an interesting field…

Striving for sustainability requires a paradigm shift in conceptualization, thinking, research and education, particularly concerning the science-technology-environment-society (STES) interfaces. Consequently, "STES literacy" requires the development of students' question asking, critical, evaluative system thinking, decision making and problem…