To support teachers in implementing ambitious reform efforts, professional developers and teacher educators need to know more about teachers' thinking about argumentation. Specifically, there is a need to understand more about teachers' views and evaluations of "students'" mathematical arguments as they play out "in practice."…

Fluency is an important aspect of mathematics learning and plays a major role in developing proficiency as students are required to use skills and apply knowledge. This paper draws upon findings from a large project that aimed to explore primary students' mathematical fluency. Data from 160 primary students (K-6) from a NSW Departmental school…

Work sampling is a technique that has been employed in industry and fields such as healthcare for some time. It is a powerful technique, and an alternative to conventional stop watch time studies, used by industrial engineers to focus upon random work sampling observations. This study applies work sampling to the duties performed by an individual…

Researchers engaged in a collaborative, yearlong study with a seventh-grade language arts teacher who integrated activities to enhance students' understanding of mindsets with content instruction. Lessons emphasized four aspects of mindsets: belief that learning abilities can grow with the investment of effort, willingness to address challenging…

One of the challenges facing teacher educators is providing our pre-service teachers (PSTs) with authentic experiences that cross the boundaries between Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and the classroom. An additional challenge facing the mathematics teacher educator, is addressing and deepening PSTs' mathematical content knowledge (MCK), which…

This summary document highlights findings from CNA's study, "Manufacturing a Way to Career Readiness: How Industry Measures Student Readiness" (ED612988). In the study, CNA Education examined how central Kentucky employers in a high-wage, high-growth industry--advanced manufacturing--determine the readiness and additional training needs…

More clarity on career readiness and how to measure it would help educators prepare students for adult life and inform industry professionals who hire young adults. This report is a step in providing that information by exploring how a high-wage, high-growth industry--advanced manufacturing--determines the readiness and additional training needs…

In order to be effective educators in the 21st century, it is essential for teacher candidates to develop a deep understanding of the culture and contextual factors surrounding their students' lives, and the ability to apply this understanding to classroom instruction. This action research study discusses how the implementation of teaching…

Discussion of exemplars of student work is a productive means of explaining tacit knowledge and guiding students into the requirements of academic writing. Through two cycles of action research in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong, this study examines how exemplars can be used to enhance student understanding of quality and to promote…

Prior scholarship suggests that many boys are disengaged from school-based literacy because they do not see its value or significance in their lives. In response, this study investigates the role of popular culture and new literacies in motivating adolescent boys within secondary English. Drawing on sociocultural approaches to literacy research,…

A number of applied psychologists have suggested that trainability test Black-White ethnic group differences are low or relatively low (e.g., Siegel & Bergman, 1975), though data are scarce. Likewise, there are relatively few estimates of criterion-related validity for trainability tests predicting job performance (cf. Robertson & Downs,…

When multiple raters score a writing sample, on occasion they will award discrepant scores. To report a single score to the examinee, some method of resolving those differences must be applied to the ratings before an operational score can be reported. Several forms of resolving score discrepancies have been described in the literature. Initial…

As accountability in education has become an increasingly prominent topic, teacher preparation programs are being asked to provide credible evidence that their teacher candidates can impact student learning. Teacher Work Samples, first developed 30 years ago, have emerged as an effective method of quantifying the complex set of tasks that comprise…

Background: Facing growing accountability pressures, Teacher Work Samples (TWSs) as a model of performance-based assessment is of growing significance in teacher education. Developed at Western Oregon University and widely adopted and adapted, proponents claim that the model is "real," "natural," "meaningful," and "helpful" (G. R. Girod, 2002).…

The current wave of new teacher evaluation systems around the country offers an opportunity to broaden the conversation surrounding teacher effectiveness and its relationship to school coherence, to look at how schools and school systems might take a more integrated and intentional approach to attracting, training, and managing high-quality…