This chapter describes the historical and contemporary theoretical underpinnings of learning communities and argues that there is a need for more complex models in conceptualizing and assessing their effectiveness.

The Success By 6® (SB6) initiative is designed to support early care and education centers in improving and sustaining quality in Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). This SB6 evaluation report examines implementation and outcomes. The findings have implications for SB6 continous quality improvement process…

The Success By 6® (SB6) initiative is designed to support early care and education centers in improving and sustaining quality in Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). The SB6 evaluation report examines implementation and outcomes. The findings have implications for SB6 continous quality improvement process…

The practice of homeschooling still receives contrasting responses on its relevancy and effectiveness. The current study is aimed to map the trends in the selected eleven studies from various educational journals. The analysis focuses on mapping the trends on: a) research settings, b) target sample, c) method or instrument used, d) common focus or…

Teacher training programs are increasingly being held under the microscope. Perhaps the most notable of recent calls to reform was the 2009 declaration by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan that "by almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of…

This article examines definitions, rationales, and calculations associated with higher education performance measures: persistence, retention rate, attrition rate, drop-out rate, and graduation rate. Strengths and limitations of these measures are scrutinized relative to online master's programs. Outcomes of a sample of students (N = 96) enrolled…

This review examines recent studies that have addressed outcomes of intergenerational service-learning courses in gerontology. The history of service-learning pedagogy in higher education and its place in today's colleges is also reviewed. Particular attention is given to evaluations of stakeholders: students, older adult participants, agencies…

Today, nearly forty years after writing centers first began to proliferate, it is worthwhile to reflect on the themes that emerge from empirical material surrounding writing center assessments, for reflecting on these themes may help administrators to refine current assessment practices and scholars to redirect their research. The goal of this…

The purpose of this methodological study is to explore how well a process called "concept mapping" (Trochim, 1989) can articulate the theory which underlies a social program. Articulation of a program's theory is a key step in completing a sound theory based evaluation (Weiss, 1997a). In this study, concept mapping is used to…

This study sought to ascertain the specific assessment strategies used by middle- and high-school choral directors in Georgia to evaluate sight-singing. Data was further gathered to determine which assessment practices choral directors considered to be the most effective. Although there had been previous studies that attempted to determine the…

The infusion of online education has brought about significant changes within the traditional, brick-and-mortar schoolhouse. With an increasing number of students enrolling in online courses, administrators must identify more quality online educators to meet the needs of the students in their care. Hence, the focus of this study is to answer the…

School-based mentoring programs that promote academic success and prosocial behaviors among youths are of interest to school social workers. Because these programs are relatively new, little has been reported on the effectiveness of the services or the benefits to participants. The authors examined outcome evaluations of eight school-based…

Treatment integrity (also referred to as "treatment fidelity," "intervention integrity," and "procedural reliability") is an important methodological concerning both research and practice because treatment integrity data are essential to making valid conclusions regarding treatment outcomes. Despite its relationship to validity, treatment…

Since the first child care Quality Rating System (QRS) was implemented in Oklahoma 11 years ago (in 1998), 16 additional statewide systems have been launched and numerous states are piloting or developing a QRS (Zaslow, Tout, & Martinez-Beck, forthcoming). As QRS stakeholders across the nation look ahead to the next decade, it is important to take…

This special series focused on treatment integrity in the child mental health and education field is timely. The articles do a laudable job of reviewing (a) the current status of treatment integrity research and measurement, (b) existing conceptual models of treatment integrity, and (c) the limitations of prior research. Overall, this thoughtful…