In 1998 Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published the article, "Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment" (Black & Wiliam, 1998b). They asserted that formative assessments were the strongest way of raising student achievement. There are a number of empirical studies that document positive impacts of formative…

Formative assessment is a classroom learning process that consists of clear goals and objectives, assessing students' knowledge, providing feedback and adjusting instruction based upon the data within a socially interactive process. Because of inconsistent implementation of the formative assessment process within classrooms, the efficacy of the…

Going green? For many, this phrase has a definitive ending, such as an "!" or a strong "." For the authors, the journey began with the questions: (1) What should students be "learning" about sustainability?; and (2) How do we know that they "are" learning? Their journey to understand the relationship between student learning and sustainability…

There has recently been significant emphasis placed on environmental education through, for example, the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Despite this, there is still considerable debate within the literature as to how the aims of environmental education can be achieved within schools. It seems likely that if there is a lack…

This article offers an explanation of standardized tests so that parents may understand the significance of their children's tests scores. Definitions of terms such as "percentile ranking," "norming group" and "criterion-referenced" are given. The author also questions the validity of high-stakes tests as a true…

A guide to acquiring information needed about postsecondary education outcomes is presented for campus and state-level officials. Attention is directed to: over 200 outcome measures or indicators; standard definitions of each outcome measure; data sources and procedures to acquire data for each outcome measure; and suggestions concerning the…

This volume of the 27th International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference includes the following research reports: (1) Improving Decimal Number Conception by Transfer from Fractions to Decimals (Irita Peled and Juhaina Awawdy Shahbari); (2) The Development of Student Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Mathematics during…