This article examines whether an analysis of student answers to a standards-based, summative examination can be used to improve a teacher's instruction. The author, who is a chemistry teacher at Saratoga Springs High School, analyzed both the multiple-choice and the constructed response questions of the June 2003 New York State chemistry exam…

In this paper we discuss the complexities of interview transcription. While often seen as a behind-the-scenes task, we suggest that transcription is a powerful act of representation. Transcription is practiced in multiple ways, often using naturalism, in which every utterance is captured in as much detail as possible, and/or denaturalism, in which…

The purpose of this study was to examine the special education referral and decision-making process for English language learners (ELLs), with a focus on Child Study Team (CST) meetings and placement conferences/multidisciplinary team meetings. We wished to learn how school personnel determined if ELLs who were struggling had disabilities, to what…

Practitioners teaching new Internet users often report that adult learners are disappointed by their first experiences of the World Wide Web. This article focuses on problematic experiences of developing new web-based literacy practices, particularly for adult learners, and how they can be addressed without attributing difficulties to learners'…

This study explores a teaching method for improving business students' skills in e-commerce page evaluation and making Web design majors aware of business content issues through cooperative learning. Two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design were assigned tasks that required cooperation to…

Choosing the most appropriate method to handle missing data during analyses is one of the most challenging decisions confronting researchers. Often, missing values are just ignored rather than replaced with a reliable imputation method. Six methods of data imputation were used to replace missing data from two data sets of varying sizes; this…

The role of assessment is central to the current work in the field of self-regulation research, to the conceptualizations derived from empirical work, and to the operationalisation of its concepts in individual and classroom implementations. The various instantiations of the concept of self-regulation, all presuppose a detailed accounting of many…

This article addresses the important issue of initial teacher preparation in relation to classroom management. It is based on a study of Post Graduate Certificate of Education (Secondary) students in one university department. The study sought to ascertain the ongoing concerns of trainees during the course of their year's training, and to identify…

Recent studies indicate that students in the United States are not achieving sufficient mathematics skills to meet the demands required of them within and outside of school. Among the keys to preventing mathematics difficulties are to identify and intervene with those students who may be most at risk for later failure, monitoring their progress as…

Assessment in engineering disciplines is typically oriented to demonstrating competence in specific tasks. Even where assessments are intended to have a formative component, little priority may be given to feedback. Engineering departments are often criticized, by their students and by external quality reviewers, for paying insufficient attention…

Classroom-based formative assessment by teachers has received a good deal of renewed scholarly and policy interest. The overall aim of this article is to foreground some of the key constitutive issues in this approach to teacher assessment and to suggest possible ways of conceptualizing key epistemological and empirical questions. This discussion…

This article summarizes a formative evaluation of a two-year project to provide professional development in technology for urban early childhood teachers. The researcher collected and analyzed data from interviews of 18 teachers. Using the constant comparative method the researcher identified common barriers that inhibited the effective…

Pupil observation and educator?pupil discourse have recognised relevance within early years practitioners' repertoires, with long traditions of practice in England and elsewhere. Observation is now enshrined within the Foundation Stage Curriculum for 3?5 year-olds (England) (soon to become part of the Early Years Foundation Stage for Birth?5) and…

Concept mapping is a powerful learning technique that can be enhanced by computer technology. Software tools are already available for the preparation of concept maps but as yet, few systems provide feedback on their content. The claim made by this article is that by enlisting the student as an assessment partner, computer-based feedback becomes…

This is the final paper in a four-part series by two pre-service teacher educators. The authors define self-study of teacher education practices and outline their research methodology. They then draw on excerpts from their written reflections to examine how self-study of teacher education practices can enhance the reflective dimension of action…