Service-Learning has become a popular pedagogical strategy; yet, little attention has been given to the construction of a syllabus that includes a service-learning component. The purpose of this paper is to help instructors identify essential components of high-quality service-learning, to learn ways to incorporate these components into…

In British Columbia, there are three principles of learning guide practice in the development of Integrated Resource Packages (IRPs), which contain the provincially prescribed learning outcomes for grades and subjects. These are: (1) Learning requires the active participation of the student; (2) Students learn in a variety of ways and at different…

This dissertation chronicles my search to engage high school English students in inquiry as part of a formal research process. The perspective of critical literacy theory is used to describe the four phases of the problem posing process in shaping student research and action. Grounded in Freire's approach and consistent with Dewey and others who…

At last, a guide that focuses on the real crux of teacher supervision: how learners are learning. Using the six-part Teaching Schema for Master Learners introduced in the ASCD best-seller "Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time", Jane E. Pollock and Sharon M. Ford show you how to help teachers make the right adjustments in the areas that…

This study investigates the responses to prior knowledge errors that Calculus I instructors make when assessing students. Prior knowledge is operationalized as any skill or understanding that a student needs to successfully navigate through a Calculus I course. A two part qualitative study consisting of student exams and instructor interviews was…

In this study, we present an approach to questionnaire design within educational research based on Guttman's mapping sentences and Many-Facet Rasch Measurement Theory. We designed a 54-item questionnaire using Guttman's mapping sentences to examine the grading practices of teachers. Each item in the questionnaire represented a unique student…

It is particularly important that GCSE and A-level marking is valid and reliable as it affects the life chances of many young people in England. Current developments in marking technology are coinciding with potential changes in procedures to ensure valid and reliable marking. In this research the effectiveness of procedures to facilitate the…

This article describes and evaluates several peer evaluation tools used to assess student behavior in small groups. The two most common methods of peer assessment found in the literature are rating scales and single score methods. Three peer evaluation instruments, two using a rating scale and one using a single score method, are tested in several…

In a time of growth in secondary education online programs, there have been few studies directed at understanding secondary online programs and the students they serve. That is particularly true for large, inner-city public school districts with a diverse student body. This is a mixed methods case study which identified that students' primary…

Syllabus use in higher education instruction is ubiquitous, yet what actually constitutes a syllabus remains unclear. The authors assessed the contents of 1000 syllabi, sampled from the Internet, based on 26 criteria determined from a literature review of recommended syllabus components. Syllabi contents were assessed according to four categories:…

This eighth in a series of surveys of the basic communication course, begun in 1968, has as its purpose to gather longitudinal and descriptive data on the nature of the course. The latest study differs from past studies in that some of the results are presented comparatively for two-year and four-year colleges and universities. Samples for both…

Historically, teacher-assigned grades have been seen as unreliable subjective measures of academic knowledge, since grades and standardized tests have traditionally correlated at about the 0.5 to 0.6 level, and thus explain about 25-35% of each other. However, emerging literature indicates that grades may be a multidimensional assessment of both…

Background: Studies on heteronormativity in PE either appear to have explored the experiences of and conditions for non-heterosexual students, or adopt a retrospective point of view. Further, the relation between heteronormativity and movement and how movement activities embody social norms and values related to gender and sexuality has not been…

In an attempt to isolate new trends and options in grading, 150 four-year colleges and universities were surveyed. Of these, 102 offered pass/fail or a similar grading option, 30 had no grading option, 6 indicated that a system was under serious consideration and 12 failed to respond. The two major reasons for haveing a pass/fail system were: (1)…