This study evaluated the impact of social work field instructor training on student perceptions of the field experience. Students with seminar-trained field instructors (n=30) were more satisfied with faculty field liaison than students with other instructors, and trained instructors demonstrated expected supervisory behavior more often for most…

Twenty-nine elementary special education teachers each monitored 2 students with mild disabilities using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for 16 weeks. Students whose teachers implemented CBM more accurately made significantly greater math gains than students whose teachers either implemented CBM less accurately or who did not use CBM. Adequacy…

This commentary on "The Effects of Family-Centered Service Coordination: A Social Validity Study" (Romer), discusses the challenges of implementing family-centered service coordination and variables such as caseload size, models of service coordination, and models of staff development that might have an impact on these challenges. (CR)

A study investigated the efficacy of specific interventions (mentoring, parental involvement, and multicultural curricula) on academic achievement of 273 elementary students from low-socioeconomic environments. The interventions had no statistically significant effect on student achievement in any grade. However, by the end of the program,…

Introduction: The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) recognized that certification and recertification must be based on an assessment of performance in practice as well as an examination of medical knowledge. Physician self-assessment of practice performance is proposed as one method that certification boards may use to evaluate competence…

The widespread use of student evaluations to rate faculty has raised the question of whether high student evaluations can be gained simply through the process of faculty giving higher grades to students, or whether learning of students is a critical factor in such evaluations. Four different models were tested which represented different…

Program evaluation is an important component of successful distance education programs. In this article, a distance master's Instructional Design and Technology Program is evaluated for overall quality. Interviews and a Web-based survey were the major instruments employed. Data was collected from three groups associated with the program:…

Previous research has indicated that the transfer climate of work organisations is an important factor in determining the degree to which knowledge, skills and abilities gained in training transfer to the workplace. In particular, workplace social support from supervisors and coworkers is consistently cited as an important factor that can…

The conceptualization and empirical assessment of service quality in juvenile justice remains limited. There are few reports on programmatic attempts to assess satisfaction in juvenile justice programs or attempts to include what constitutes quality of service from multiple customer perspectives. This article describes a potential model, the Gap…

In order to evaluate the effects of an integrated curriculum on the learning of popular music, the Sting Curriculum was designed for senior secondary students of mixed ability. This nine-week program was presented to a sample of students aged between 16 and 18 years in urban Sydney (Australia). This article draws on some of the results from this…

The article reports on research conducted in Zimbabwe's 11 universities between 2001 and 2003. The research was aimed at finding how vice chancellors and internal marketers perceived the marketing concept and its organization within the universities including the extent to which prospective university customers considered the arrangements for…

In 2000, the state of Nebraska passed legislation requiring the assessment of student performance on content standards, but its requirements were very different from those of any other state. Nebraska created what has come to be known as STARS (School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System). Under STARS, each of Nebraska's nearly 500…

There are many funding schemes in existence for small projects in educational development, but fewer equivalent research schemes. Data from an evaluation of two schemes at one institution are used as the catalyst for considering such schemes in wider contextual and theoretical perspectives. The evaluation analysed success rate data, project…

Practicing physicians generally are not engaged in either the methods of performance improvement for health care or the measurement and reporting of clinical outcomes. The principal reasons are lack of compensation for such work, the perception that the work of performance improvement adds no value and is a waste of time, the lack of knowledge and…

Webster Middle School, situated in a large Midwestern city, serves primarily an African-American, lower-to middle-class population. As with many other schools in similar geographic and demographic situations, the academic performance of its students was very poor, the physical facilities were in decay, and enrollments were dropping, with only 250…