Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by tutors who were providing remedial literacy support to New Zealand apprentices. Design/methodology/approach: As part of a wider, triangulated study of employers, tutors, apprentices, and industry training coordinators, the author undertook a qualitative analysis of ten…

Within foreign language classrooms, one intervention gaining recognition is LinguaFolio, a portfolio-based formative assessment designed to increase self-regulated learning. The question emerges whether such an intervention impacts student motivation, learning, and achievement. Researchers conducted a classroom-based, quasi-experimental,…

The form and function of a collaborative assessment known as a "Buddy Quiz" is presented. The assessment is conducted in three successive phases over a contiguous 45-60 min class period. A portion of each quiz is completed in collaboration with one or two peers and a portion is completed without collaboration. The quiz is primarily…

Student involvement in leadership activities is now common in English schools. It is generally assumed to have beneficial learning outcomes and there is some research which suggests that this is the case. However, there is still work to do to detail these learning outcomes--and to assess them. I present one case in which primary school students…

There have been calls in the literature for reforms to assessment to enhance student learning (Shepard, 2000). In many instances, this refers to the need to move from traditional assessment procedures that are characterized as content-heavy, summative, and norm-referenced approaches to more constructivist and student-centred approaches, often…

Teachers' feelings of uncertainty are an overlooked, though crucial, condition necessary for the promotion of educational change. This article investigates the feelings of uncertainty that preservice teachers have toward the conduct of science as inquiry and the extent to which methods courses can confront and embrace those uncertainties. Our work…

The requirement to provide timely formative tasks that are designed to facilitate student learning and autonomy has provoked a wider examination of the role of assessment in higher education and encouraged further investigation of the alignment of learning, teaching and assessment in curriculum design frameworks. Many current authors have proposed…

Proficiency in mathematics, including mathematical reasoning skills, requires students to communicate their mathematical thinking. Mathematical reasoning involves making sense of mathematical concepts in a logical way to form conclusions or judgments, and is often underdeveloped in students with learning disabilities. Technology-based environments…

This paper describes an approach for supporting inquiry learning from source materials, realised and tested through a tool-kit. The approach is optimised for tasks that require a student to make interpretations across sets of resources, where opinions and justifications may be hard to articulate. We adopt a dialogue-based approach to learning…

The concept and the activities of nurturing are vital to the teacher education classroom. It is essential that student teachers have the ability to understand their own students' connection to learning and thus to the need those students have for a particular and indispensable form of sustenance. Nurturing unites identity and subject matter…

This research aims to produce mathematics problems based on PISA level with valid and practical content of change and relationships and has potential effect for Junior High School students. A development research method developed by Akker, Gravemeijer, McKenney and Nieveen is used this research. This development research consists of three stages;…

This paper explores the many and diverse factors that have driven changes to the field-based component of a program of teacher education in a large Canadian university over the past 10 years. We look at key contexts of influence to any work in program change; that of internal and external bodies at the institutional level, the operational or…

Responding to the challenge of more rigorous and outcome-oriented program evaluation criteria of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), authors take a critical look at the intersection of two standards: Clinical Partnerships and Practice (Standard 2) and Program Impact (Standard 4). Illustrating one aspect of a secondary…

General outcome measurement, a specific type of formative evaluation, can be used to assess progress toward long-term academic goals. Curriculum-based measurement is a widely used type of general outcome measurement. When used to develop local norms, curriculum-based measurement data are helpful in making individual student and systems-level…

This paper reports on teachers' use of concept mapping as an alternative assessment strategy in advanced level biology classes and its effects on students' cognitive skills on selected biology concepts. Using a mixed methods approach, the study employed a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design involving 156 students and 8 teachers from…