Never before in the history of the teaching profession has there been such a need for comprehensive evaluation of all teacher preparation programs, most especially professional development schools (PDSs). This need is driven not only by the pressures of the age of accountability, but also by the need for the PDS movement to act ethically and…

This article is a case study of how the provost and senior executive leadership of one large university system capitalized on a long-standing advisory group as a tool to support communication and collaboration across a broad constituency. These advisory efforts help guide both future directions and investment. It is the story of how this group has…

The dynamism of Environmental Management in the 21st century has predicted the need for students to emerge from tertiary programmes with a set of skills that are functional and more widely applicable in the contemporary workplace. To foster the development of such tools and skill sets, there has been an increasing trend amongst teaching…

Cram schooling is believed by students and their parents to have positive effects on learning achievement in Taiwan. Using two waves of panel data gathered by the Taiwan Education Panel Study (TEPS) in 2001 and 2003 and the method of propensity score matching (PSM), the present research found that the average treatment effect for participants of…

The Go Wild with Fruits and Veggies! curriculum incorporates wild animal characters to motivate 3rd-5th grade children to increase fruit and vegetable intake and physical activity. Positive findings from a rural setting regarding a self-reported increase in intake of vegetables (n = 1,285) were verified by more intensive evaluation of vegetable…

Virtual reality (VR) technology enables evaluation and practice of specific skills in a motivating, user-friendly and safe way. The implementation of virtual game environments within clinical settings has increased substantially in recent years. However, the psychometric properties and feasibility of many applications have not been fully…

Background: The philosophical underpinnings of evaluation guidelines set forth by a funding agency can sometimes seem inconsistent with that of the intervention. Purpose: Our purpose is to introduce questions pertaining to the contrast between the instructional program's underlying philosophical beliefs and assumptions and those underlying our…

Cloze testing is a widely-used procedure to test learners' reading comprehension in learning a language, but little is known if it can really improve learners' reading comprehension skills. This paper attempts to seek answers to this question by comparing the cloze test scores of two groups of students (Experimental versus Control) undertaking…

Anxiety disorders in youth are common and, if left untreated, can lead to a variety of negative sequelae. Randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is an efficacious treatment for anxiety disorders in youth with preliminary evidence showing that CBT can be successfully transported into schools. The…

As a peer-assisted learning process, minilectures on physiology were conducted by students. During this process, students lecture to their colleagues in the presence of faculty staff members. These lectures were evaluated by faculty staff and students simultaneously. The aim of this study was to compare feedback from faculty members and students…

In the context of intensifying accountability for academic work internationally, there are increasing pressures on individual supervisors, departments and universities to evaluate the quality of doctoral supervision. Existing evaluation tools are focused at departmental rather than individual level and are mostly quantitative. Evaluation for…

Perhaps the greatest value of response to intervention (RTI) as a decision framework is that it brings attention to variables (e.g., mastery of prerequisite skills, frequency of instructional corrective feedback, reinforcement schedules for correct responding) that if changed might make a meaningful difference for students (e.g., child rate of…

Good evaluation requires that evaluation efforts themselves be evaluated. Many things can and often do go wrong in evaluation work. Accordingly, it is necessary to check evaluations for problems such as bias, technical error, administrative difficulties, and misuse. Such checks are needed both to improve ongoing evaluation activities and to assess…

Children with autism spectrum disorder show deficits in social skills such as initiating conversation, responding in social situations, social problem-solving, and others. These deficits are targeted through the use of social skills interventions, some of which use a technology-based approach as a resource-efficient alternative to common forms of…

Environmental field days offer a distinct opportunity to connect students with science and the environment. The literature on field days, informed by research on field trips, provides a framework for best practices. If there are best practices, however, then presence or lack of the practice should have a discernible impact on the outcomes of the…