Introduction: The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviews rigorous research on educational interventions with a goal of identifying "what works" and making that information accessible to educators and policymakers. The WWC has historically prioritized internal validity over external validity in rating the quality of research. One critique…

Bacon and Stewart (2016) argued that assurance of learning efforts in most business schools is largely futile--a stance held by many faculty members, for a variety of reasons. They provided detailed evidence that most schools' data collection efforts for assessment, particularly in graduate or niche programs, suffers from insufficient statistical…

In their essay, "Why Assessment Will Never Work...," Bacon and Stewart (2016) recommend that instead of carrying out the expensive process of experimenting themselves, many business schools would get a bigger bang for their buck if they used "published pedagogical studies that use direct measures of learning with sufficient…

The question of how to assess the value of what professors do should engage all. Within this context, Donald R. Bacon and Kim A. Stewart's (2016) essay, "Why Assessment Will Never Work at Many Business Schools," is a laudable effort with important insights. In this rejoinder, Nesteruk, for the most part, is in substantial agreement with…

While scholars develop research with clear implications for policy and practice, this work has been largely ineffective in influencing thought beyond the academy. In this article, we explore challenges researchers face in designing public scholarship to influence policy. To illustrate, we profile one such effort, the "Opportunity to Learn…

On the long and arduous journey toward effective educational assessment, business schools have progressed in their ability to clearly state measurable learning goals and use direct measures of student learning. However, many schools are wrestling with the last stages of the journey--measuring present learning outcomes, implementing…

A range of studies has identified barriers to evidence-informed practice in schools, many of which recommend school-university links as a means for removing these barriers. In England, public policy also promotes school-university partnerships, which expects these to have benefits for both schools and universities. Secondary analysis of data from…

This chapter provides an example of how one university's institutional research office played an active role in using data from institutional studies to guide the university toward courses ripe for change, faculty toward successful teaching strategies, students toward successful learning behaviors, and the university toward assessing the impact of…

Teachers and school leaders have been pressed to use data over the last few decades, and that pressure is increasing. Yet while data use has become a popular term among educators and politicians, evidence demonstrates that teachers and school leaders still struggle with making sense of data in the service of improved learning outcomes. To do this…

Background: Within the realm of public education, there is a well-known "knowledge to practice gap" on current conceptions of classroom assessment. A collaborative research project undertaken by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) and a research team at Queen's University explored the roots of this gap from the…

This essay briefly describes some of the early AERA presidents who were empiricists, several of them directors of research, and how their work connects with some of the issues of design, measurement, analysis, and interpretation today. Beginning with the first president of AERA, a number of presidents through the late 1940s are highlighted, as…

For over four decades, the concept of teacher leadership has been debated nationally and internationally with a view of establishing its role in student learning and achievements in schools. Over this period, a sizeable amount of literature has been written with regards to teacher and school administration leadership. However, studies remain…

This article aims to reveal possibilities for teaching quality assessment when data from student survey are used. To achieve this aim, the conception of teaching in a higher education institution was reviewed and criteria of teaching quality were distinguished in the theoretical part. In the empirical part of the research, validity of teaching…

Most assessment arguments are about measurement. When is it better to use direct versus indirect measures of student learning? Is one standardized test of critical thinking better than another? Is applying rubrics to student work better than using standardized tests? How valid are self-reported measures of learning? Although these arguments are…

This is an analytical report that looks across four district case studies (published between 2007 and 2009 by the Small Schools Project) to reflect on what happens when a district commits to the goal of graduating each student ready for college, career, and citizenship. The report describes four challenge areas--differentiation and…