Associate Professor Dr. M. Murat Erguvan has 28 years of teaching and administrative experience in various countries and positions such as programme coordinator, dean, vice rector for education, research and/or external affairs. He has been with the International Black Sea University (IBSU), in Tbilisi, Georgia, a country located at the…

Evaluation professionals need to be nimble and innovative in their approaches in order to be relevant and provide useful evidence to decision-makers, stakeholders, and society in the crowded public policy landscape. In this article, we offer serious games as a method that can be employed by evaluators to address three persisting challenges in…

The New Haven Local Section of the American Chemical Society held a virtual version of its annual Student Research Symposium prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. A combination of YouTube, Google Drive, Open Broadcaster Software, and Zoom was utilized to hold the symposium which included juried oral and poster presentations. While our aim was to…

Successive UK government policies have strengthened the phonics element of the National Curriculum for English in England. The policies have included inviting publishers to submit completed self-assessments of their systematic phonics programmes. The self-assessment criteria focus on what is deemed to be 'high-quality provision', as defined in the…

The implementation of the European Union's Erasmus Plus (E+) Program has resulted in the possibility of joint initiatives across-borders led by teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), who can bring classroom practice closer to education as a key area for employability and prepare students for work and communication in multicultural and…

In Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated effective or better under new teacher-evaluation systems recently put in place. In Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or better. Principals in Tennessee judged 98 percent of teachers to be "at expectations" or better last school year, while evaluators in Georgia gave good…

Translation is one of the items tested in many national English proficiency tests for non-English majors in China because translation competence is regarded as one of the productive language skills which could be used to assess learners' language proficiency. However, the feedback on translation exercises and self-tests are usually provided by…

The author argues that evaluators who are comfortable with the interpretation of competing values--an ability that can be fostered by exposure to the humanities--might be able to contribute significant advances toward finding a better balance of methodologies in an ever-more-ambiguous world. This argument is made by describing a…

Program and/or course evaluation is, in fact, one of the essential aspects of any curriculum. It is a kind of quality control in which various aspects of an instructional program are explored. Program evaluation is an attempt in which different elements of a given curriculum are scrutinized in depth. To this end, an evaluator makes every effort to…

Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools had a concern. A review in 2008 of teacher evaluations in the district found that more than 99% of the 12,000 teachers were rated satisfactory or outstanding, and nearly half of high school teachers received perfect scores. While Hillsborough is a high-performing district and has several high schools on…

This paper considers the ethics of educational technology in terms of whether or not selected media and methods are beneficial to the teacher and student, or whether other motives and criteria determine the selection. Communications media have proven themselves to be powerful and efficient tools, used like "dynamite" for getting the most…

In schools across America, teachers know who among their peers is doing the best work and who is not. Yet the nation's evaluation systems tend to foster the notion that all teachers perform the same way, with the same results for students. Indeed, in an attempt at equality--uniform treatment for everyone--current evaluation systems often end up…

Across the nation, states and districts are in the process of building better teacher evaluation systems that not only identify highly effective teachers but also systematically provide data and feedback that can be used to improve teacher practice. "A Practical Guide to Designing Comprehensive Teacher Evaluation Systems" is a tool…

This book is based on the author's 20-plus years of consulting with school districts and other educational organizations in designing, piloting, and training educators in the use of teacher-performance evaluation systems. Its primary purpose is to help both teachers and their evaluators collect more comprehensive and accurate assessment data for…

Teacher evaluations are often designed to serve two purposes: to measure teacher competence and to foster professional development and growth. A teacher evaluation system should give teachers useful feedback on classroom needs, the opportunity to learn new teaching techniques, and counsel from principals and other teachers on how to make changes…