In the field of medicine, research and practice are joined in teaching hospitals. In these institutions, researchers work alongside doctors to incorporate recent advances in medical research into practice and track results. There is a growing movement in the field of education to create analogous institutions in education called research schools.…

While research suggests that formative assessment can be a powerful tool to support teaching and learning, efforts to jump on the formative assessment bandwagon have been more widespread than those to assure the technical quality of the assessments. This report covers initial analyses of data bearing on the quality of formative assessments in…

The rise of the research center has changed the landscape of U.S. research enter-prise. It has also created a number of evaluation challenges, particularly when considering strategically focused, multifaceted cooperative research centers (CRCs). The author argues that although recent CRC evaluation efforts have gone a long way toward meeting the…

Our project to embed formative student assessments in the Foundational Approaches in Science Teaching curriculum required a close collaboration between curriculum developers at the Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG) and assessment developers at the Stanford Educational Assessment Laboratory (SEAL). This was a new endeavor for each…

A review of evaluation of product and program development in laboratory and research and development centers. (Editor)

This position paper has been produced in order to inform some of the current debates on National Curriculum Assessment in England. The Education and Skills Committee of the House of Commons has announced an inquiry into Testing and Assessment. In part this will examine testing and assessment in primary and secondary education as a key issue.…

This document provides an introduction to the New Teacher Initiative (NTI), a special effort of the National Writing Project, aimed at learning how Writing Project sites can best support the large numbers of new teachers now populating U.S. schools. The specific purpose of the initiative is to help the National Writing Project (NWP) learn how to…

The Research and Planning Division at Ontario Educational Communications Authority undertakes formative, summative, background, and policy research to provide better educational services to audiences via electronic and associated media. Research activities are carried out by three groups. Planning and Development formulates long term plans,…

Projects of the New England Instructional Television Research Center (NITREC) are summarized in a collection of papers. Objectives, rationale, and program of NETREC are defined, along with methods of formative evaluation during production. Seven videotest research projects cover methods of evaluating communicative effectiveness of primary-grade…

An educational development team, working at the Center for the Study of Evaluation to produce the Elementary School Formative Evaluation Kit, saw that its mission was not simply to show that a product meets pre-determined performance specifications but was also to ensure that a product can be readily adapted by the user to the "noisy"…

Although the ultimate goal of teacher education is to provide an adequate supply of highly qualified teachers for the nation's schools, many factors hinder its success. In special education, too few people enter the field, and a policy context that promotes easy entry via unconventional preparation threatens to dilute teacher quality. In this…

"EFF HOT (Highlights on Teaching Topics) Topics" is a publication of the EFF (Equipped for the Future) Center for Training and Technical Assistance. Each issue concentrates on a specific topic, highlighting examples of actual practice and offering strategies and tools for using EFF in the classroom. In this issue, "HOT Topics" focuses on the…

This paper reports on several generic evaluation methods used by the evaluation office of the Curriculum Research and Development Group of the University of Hawaii (EO-CRDG). Scrivens's (generic) checklist approach was taken one step further by developing generic data collection instruments to be used with any evaluation method: (1) a formative…

An evaluative and developmental review of the Appalachian Adult Basic Education Demonstration Center in the fiscal year 1969-70 finds the center well-launched on a highly promising course, but greatly in need of 5-10 years of stable financial support. With a headquarters at Morehead, Kentucky, and with 13 demonstration or research field stations,…