The widespread application of personal computers to educational and psychological testing has substantially increased the number of test administration methodologies available to testing programs. Many of these mediums are referred to by their acronyms, such as CAT, CBT, CCT, and LOFT. The similarities between the acronyms and the methods…

Background/Context: In the past 35 years, the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program has spread to 483 schools across the United States, with an ever-growing share of these schools located in the inner city. These American school sites comprise vastly different contexts than those in which the IB program began-the international schools of…

Variety may be the spice of life, but in terms of data sources, variety is more than a spice--it is one of the basic food groups. Alternative data sources, such as student interviews and walk-throughs, are essential for a well-balanced diet. Data from test scores alone, whether from norm-referenced or criterion-referenced tests, state, district,…

University league tables in their present form have been around for two decades. One of their objectives has been to help would-be university students (and their parents) make an informed choice of university and course. In the United Kingdom, historically, they have taken the form of a numerical hierarchy topped (predictably) by Oxford and…

2008 marks the fifth year of publication for the Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation (JMDE). The growth of JMDE, whether measured in terms of readership or in the evolution of ideas, reflects the increasing importance of evaluation, not as a separate process, but more as the development of an evaluative state of mind. Just in terms of…

The Spanish university is well into its nth reform process, this time for the purpose of improving its legibility for members of the European Union under the extended Bologna Process. The reform involves a structural change in plans of study, as well as a cultural change to the Europeanist discourse, which mixes mercantilist values and defence of…

Charter Theatre is a small professional theatre in Washington, DC. Its mission is to develop and produce new plays. Like other organizations, Charter Theatre wants to be accountable. Its members saw early the need for evaluation--a repeatable process to assure the quality of their work, and have infused their development process with evaluation.…

Egon Brunswik (1903-1955) first made an interesting distinction between perception and explicit reasoning, arguing that perception included quick estimates of an object's size, nearly always resulting in good approximations in uncertain environments, whereas explicit reasoning, while better at achieving exact estimates, could often fail by wide…

Adults have little difficulty perceiving objects as complete despite occlusion, but newborn infants perceive moving partly occluded objects solely in terms of visible surfaces. The developmental mechanisms leading to perceptual completion have never been adequately explained. Here, the authors examine the potential contributions of oculomotor…

The increasing prevalence of mental illness among parents always represents a stressor affecting the biopsychosocial development of a child. However, due to varying inherent resilience factors, not all children are affected to the same extent. The presence of evidence-based resilience factors is able to minimise or prevent the adverse effects…

A contemporary view of motor development considers environmental influences as critical factors in optimal growth and behavior, with the home being the primary agent. The intent of this communication is to introduce the "Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development Self-Report" ("AHEMD-SR") to early childhood practitioners. The…

Three important features to examine for measures used to systematically monitor progress over time are (a) technical features of static scores, (b) technical features of slope, and (c) instructional utility. The purpose of this study was to investigate the technical features of slope of four early numeracy curriculum-based measures administered to…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine acceleration (AC) and deceleration (DC) distances that would accommodate young and older adults walking at their preferred and fast speeds. A secondary purpose was to determine the minimal walkway length needed to record six steady state (SS) steps (three full gait cycles) for younger and older…

Many assume that studying history will mean memorizing a mass of mind-dulling minutiae. Furthermore, they mistake history as relatively clear cut, as suggested by the maxim: "It either happened or it didn't." From their point of view, historians who move beyond simple chronicling seem to be throwing around mere "opinions." Unfortunately, the…

Training effectiveness is a function of trainee characteristics, training design and contextual factors. Social exchanges in the work environment have received less attention compared with other training effectiveness predictors. We focus on the extent to which leaders (through their relationships and exchanges with followers) influence skill…