Explores implementation and the change process in relation to "The Quiet Evolution: Changing the Face of Arts Education," which assesses the six regional institutes that receive multiyear funding from the Getty Education Institute for the Arts. Stresses that the report illustrates the importance of designing and documenting implementation…

Explores Brent Wilson's report "The Quiet Evolution: Changing the Face of Arts Education," focusing on Wilson's reformulation of discipline-based art education and the methodology of the evaluation. Examines the findings and refers to "The Quiet Evolution Executive Summary." (CMK)

Provides guidelines to make grades a better assessment of learning. Argues that, for any assessment task to be fair, its content, context, and performance expectations should (1) reflect knowledge appropriate to all students; (2) tap knowledge that all students have had time to acquire in the class; and (3) and be as free as possible of cultural,…

Illustrates the use of auto- and biographical materials as part of a research process concerned with problematic aspects of learning science. Draws on an extended study of graphing among university students and research scientists, and on the autobiography and interview data from one of the authors to point out some of the sources of difficulties…

Four-year curriculum-development project involving computing teachers from Scottish schools focused on methods of teaching and assessing computer-program skills at the secondary 3/4 level (14- to 16-year-olds) and the professional development of participants. Findings show that curriculum development can enhance teachers' professional development,…

This article presents an activity for early-in-the-year parents' night. The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time. The authors, as teachers, like to capture that excitement by engaging their 10th-grade biology students in an inquiry project demonstrating the nature of science and scientific inquiry. They developed the Next Step…

It's not hard to understand why college and university professors might worry about trends in faculty compensation. It may be more difficult, however, to see why those outside higher education should share this concern. But they should. In 2005-06, average faculty salaries increased by less than the inflation rate for the second consecutive year,…

This article is a reflective account of a researcher's journey whilst embarking on a study which was political in its intentions and participatory in its orientation. Learning from feminist writings, where researchers have shared stories and explored notions of insider/outside, academic/activist, the central argument of the article is the…

This article describes the possibilities offered by the online assessment system Etude to achieve the benefits of formative assessment. In order to find out the way this works in practice, we carried out an experiment with the use of Etude for formative assessment in the course on collaborative report writing. Results show that online formative…

Most junior syndicate teachers have concerns about the speech clarity of some of the children in their class. It is difficult for teachers to know whether to refer such students for speech assessments by their speech-language therapist. This article outlines a project which gathered New Zealand normative data for a test of articulation. A summary…

Transitioning from high school to employment or postsecondary education is a critical juncture in any person's life. For students with disabilities, the complexities associated with such pivotal decisions are compounded, increasing the need for transition preparation and ongoing support to develop self-determination, social, academic, and career…

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, girls earn higher grades than boys in all major subjects. Girls, however, do not out perform boys on achievement or IQ tests. To date, explanations for the underprediction of girls' GPAs by standardized tests have focused on gender differences favoring boys on such tests. The authors' investigation…

The relationships between maternal beliefs in control and responsiveness and adolescent academic achievement were examined by interviewing 59 Black mothers and female guardians of adolescents, ages 11 to 19, living in a northeastern small city or adjacent suburb and correlating their answers to year-end report cards of their adolescents.…

For many degree programmes, including those within the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development (SAPD) at the University of Reading, modularisation has resulted in increased flexibility of degree programmes and a wider choice of modules offered to students. An important consequence of this is that module co-ordinators and programme directors…

Recent studies have produced conflicting findings about whether test-based rewards and sanctions create incentives that improve student performance, or hurdles that increase dropout and pushout rates from schools. This article reports the findings from a study that examined the impact of England's accountability reforms and investigated whether…