Enhancing the quality of education has been placed high in the national policy agenda in Azerbaijan in recent years. Education policy makers are interested in developing quality curriculum for secondary education, implementing teacher development programs and creating a better learning environment. This study outlines one of the most significant…

The development of spelling skill is an intricate process for children with or at risk of Specific Learning Disabilities and requires targeted interventions. This problem exacerbates in the Greek orthographic system owning to its high complexity. The current study presents a novel spelling intervention program for Greek 3rd graders at risk of…

For a number of years now, South Africa, like many other countries, has been debating a major paradigm shift in education, a shift from learning and teaching, which focused primarily on content to learning and teaching focused on outcomes. One of the most dramatic trends in education over the past decade has been the shift towards the use of…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of the lecture and discussion teaching methods and digital game-based learning on student achievement in agriculture and mathematics regarding a unit on swine diseases in animal science courses offered through secondary agricultural education programs in Oklahoma. Three research questions…

Although much is known about how students perform on standardized tests, little research exists concerning how students think and process while taking such tests. This mixed methods action research study was designed to investigate if a constructivist approach to test preparation could yield improved results for 37 English language arts freshmen…

This article explores the reasoning employed by high school students to answer a set of multiple-choice history questions. The questions come from New York State's Global History and Geography Regents exam. The Regents exams, together with a particularly well-regarded and ambitious set of content standards, are the cornerstone of the state's…

A teacher explains the procedures she uses to prepare her fifth and sixth graders for taking multiple-choice standardized tests. (SJL)

Contends that measurement-driven instruction (MDI) has numerous interrelated and pernicious effects on curriculum, instruction, and learning. Shows that MDI fragments, narrows, deflects, and trivializes the learning experience and furthers the teacher-dominated classroom. Successful response to a set of questions does not equal understanding.…

Counters Gerald Bracey's rejection of measurement-driven instruction (MDI), especially the latter's "cursed trinity": fragmentation, deflection, and trivialization. Points to eminently successful modes of MDI and urges educators to emulate them. (MLH)

Offers the final word on the measurement-driven instruction (MDI) debate in this "Kappan" issue. Claims that Popham's article is internally inconsistent and provides no examples of well-constructed, instructionally illuminative tests. Also lacking are teacher testimonials and evidence that MDI programs are cost-effective or oriented…

Suggests ways to construct multiple choice questions which test both factual knowledge and critical thinking. Three models explain how to relate facts, fact sets, and reasons to hypotheses and concepts. (Author/DB)

This handbook provides guidelines for teaching test-taking skills to students of all grade levels to help the students raise their standardized test scores. Topics covered include: understanding instructions and following directions, efficient use of time, intelligent guessing, and application of special strategies for multiple-choice and…

This exploratory case study investigates relationships between use of an inquiry-based instructional style and student scores on standardized multiple-choice tests. The study takes the form of a case study of physical science classes taught by one of the authors over a span of four school years. The first 2 years were taught using traditional…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…

Despite the many limitations of standardized tests, schools use them to determine if children are ready for school, to group students for instruction, to diagnose learning disabilities and other handicaps, and to guide and control the curriculum and teaching methods. No test is good enough to serve as the sole or primary basis for important…