More than merely policy, neoliberalism shapes how teachers relate to their students and classrooms. This article seeks to make visible how neoliberalism functions to form and deform teacher's subjectivities (and in turn their pedagogical practices) through an analysis of the experiences of two teachers within an accountability-constrained…

The Official ACT® Self-Paced Course, Powered by Kaplan® is a test preparation solution in partnership between Kaplan and ACT. In April of 2022, the authors surveyed users of the self-paced course who took the ACT test between August 2020 and February 2022 to better understand: (1) ways the solution helped them when they took the ACT; (2) what…

Note taking is a seemingly simple study strategy, yet as a source of learner-generated content its perceived effectiveness varies across subjects and from student to student, as not all students are able to create high-quality notes without guidance. While often advocated by the instructors, the use of notes as exam aids (whether used in…

The use of digital environments for both learning and assessment is becoming prevalent. This often leads to incongruent situations, in which the study medium (eg, printed textbook) is different from the testing medium (eg, online multiple-choice exams). Despite some evidence that incongruent study-test situations are associated with inferior…

The requirement to ready pupils for high-stakes summative testing continues to undermine and baulk teachers as they try to act in line with their pedagogical principles. For some -- perhaps many -- practitioners this experience is increasingly insupportable and gives rise to profound inner conflict. Test readying promotes in pupils a necessary…

The global COVID-19 pandemic is testing the responsiveness of school systems. Extensive discourse about disruptions to the standardized examinations students take in their final year of secondary school is symbolic of their high-stakes status worldwide. The interruptions provide an opportune moment to question the efficacy of exams as a…

Language without Borders was initiated by the Brazilian Federal Government and has undergone a series of modifications until its discontinuation as a government-sponsored program, when it was taken up by the academic community as a free enterprise. Currently, it is linked to Andifes (National Association of Directors of Federal Institutions of…

The authors offer guidance on recognizing and resisting test-centric instruction in reading comprehension. They posit that five practices indicate a test-centric view of comprehension: when the tested content is privileged, when the test becomes the text, when annotation requirements replace strategic thinking, when test items frame how students…

A growing body of research shows that private tutoring is a globally pervasive phenomenon. A common way in which tutoring provisions are defined is with the use of the metaphor "shadow education", signifying that tutoring centres "shadow" formal schools. Despite the popularity of this metaphor in the field, how…

Humanizing pedagogies present a promising framework for contesting dehumanizing practices all too common in U.S. urban schools. To co-construct such pedagogies, however, teachers and students must negotiate between the humanizing and dehumanizing discourses that circulate within their school context. Drawing from data collected from a qualitative…

'School league tables' summarising the performance of secondary schools in England have been published annually since 1992. Although now a firmly established feature of the educational landscape, they have attracted criticism from those who point to their unintended negative consequences. These include 'teaching to the test', entering pupils for…

It is no secret that many adult learners who enter GED® preparatory programs across the country experienced hardship and difficulty in K-12 schools. Often, many of these same students had to battle with learning disabilities such as ADD/ADHD, making school and learning an even more challenging task. Learning and concentration difficulties are…

Educator preparation programs across the United States are increasingly adopting performance-based assessments, including edTPA, as a mechanism to measure candidates' development of the knowledge and skills necessary to enter the classroom upon program completion. Within this context, this investigation examined associations between elementary…

As schools move into a new era of technology, assessment is evolving as well. With the introduction of high-stakes tests based on the Common Core State Standards, annual assessments are increasingly delivered via computer-based systems. This method of delivery could have a significant effect on students with learning disabilities. This column…

This paper adds an organizational dimension to the body of literature on international student mobility. Existing studies examine push/pull factors and student motivations, neglecting that students' motivations and demands are not necessarily spontaneous, but can be shaped by external forces. Drawing on interview, archival and observation data…