Each year for the past 25 years, the Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock conducts a three-week summer enrichment program for gifted and talented students entitled Summer Laureate/University for Youth. The program was developed to provide a practicum experience for teachers seeking either licensure or a master's…

We proposed a higher order latent construct of parenting young children, parenting quality. This higher-order latent construct comprises five component constructs: demographic protection, psychological distress, psychosocial maturity, moral and cognitive reflectivity, and parenting attitudes and beliefs. We evaluated this model with data provided…

"Differentiating Instruction With Menus Grades 3-5" offers teachers everything they need to create a student-centered learning environment based on choice. Addressing the four main subject areas (language arts, math, science, and social studies) and the major concepts taught within these areas, these books provide a number of different types of…

Teaching mathematics in today's world requires practices and procedures integrated with performance tasks that actively involve students. In this second edition of Designing Rubrics for Mathematics, Eileen Depka clarifies the purpose of rubrics in math instruction and illustrates the relationship between assessment, rubrics, and the National…

The purpose of this study was to increase the comfort level of teachers toward inclusion of students with learning, behavioral, and physical disabilities in general-education classrooms for one high school. Participants included 3 focus groups of teachers with 2 groups consisting of 6 teachers and 1 group consisting of 7 teachers. One…

This paper introduces an evaluation tool prepared to examine the quality of visuals in course-books. The tool is based on Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (i.e. Generative Theory) and its principles regarding the correct use of illustrations within text. The reason to generate the tool, the development process along with the…

A rubric is a descriptive measurement for defining what a learner should know and can do. This document was created to define the knowledge and ability of every student in how they: construct meaning from information; create a quality product; learn independently; participate as a group member; and use information and information technologies…

A study focused on three graduate students (within a class of six) as they encountered the portfolio process for the first time as learners. Each was asked to complete a learning portfolio as a self-evaluation component for a 14-week graduate reading course. The students determined their goals based on self-assessment, documented their progress…

Five teams of teacher-researchers, 15 teachers in all, representing three Wyoming school districts and Casper College conducted classroom-based investigations and wrote about their inquiries. These teachers of prekindergarten through college collaborated to examine performance based assessment questions with an overall theme of improving science…

This handbook provides teachers and administrators with strategies to construct, adapt, and use rubrics. A rubric is defined as a tool for assessing instruction and performance according to predetermined expectations and criteria. The chapters in this text contain guidance on formulating, applying, and reviewing the pros and cons of this form of…

The handbook addresses the assessment of student performance and the establishment of criteria by which to measure student progress in six domains within science: (1) Concepts; (2) Processes; (3) Applications; (4) Attitude; (5) Nature of Science; and (6) Creativity. Each domain is defined, and a rationale is provided for assessing student learning…

The renewed attention to assessments that attempt to capture complex aspects of educational attainments of students is explored. The definition and impetus for attention of the measurement community to higher order thinking skills are examined. Through a detailed description, a model assessment development process is presented. The process relies…

Cooperative learning is in many ways a more effective learning method than individual and competitive learning. In this study, the effects of cooperative learning on the abilities of the preservice art teacher candidates to plan lessons were emphasized. For this purpose, 32 art teacher candidates were selected for the experimental group, and 32…

Problems of scale typically arise when comparing test score trends, gaps, and gap trends across different tests. To overcome some of these difficulties, we can express the difference between the observed test performance of two groups with graphs or statistics that are metric-free (i.e., invariant under positive monotonic transformations of the…

Many factors must be considered when a company decides to market its product in another country. It must research the targeted country to determine if there is a demand for the product, decide on product modifications needed to match the new market, and develop a plan to market and distribute the product in this new business environment. In this…