Characterizing students' knowledge and skill upon kindergarten entry has implications for early learning and K-12 outcomes and systems alignment. Large-scale entry assessments measure skillsets shown important for later success, so that meaningful comparisons and appropriate decisions can be made. Consequently, it is important to document the…

Preservice teachers in the field encounter materials with varying degrees of completeness and quality. Using a curriculum strategy framework that analyzes how preservice teachers read, evaluate, and adapt materials, this study compares the planning of six preservice teachers using curriculum materials of varying completeness. Preservice teachers…

Environmental science is a broad, interdisciplinary field integrating aspects of biology, chemistry, earth science, geology, and social sciences. Mastery of basic science concepts and reasoning are therefore necessary for students to understand the interactions of different components in an environmental system. How do teachers identify and assess…

Since April 2013, the Eleanor Chelimsky Forum has served as the centerpiece of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society's (EERS) annual conference. Eleanor Chelimsky (2012), a highly esteemed pioneer in the evaluation field, inspired the Forum in her 2012 plenary address (subsequently published in "American Journal of Evaluation"…

Mathematical working space (MWS) is a model that is used in research in mathematics education, particularly in the field of geometry. Some MWS elements are independent of the field while other elements must be adapted to the field in question. In this paper, we develop the MWS model for the field of analysis with an identification of paradigms. We…

In order to achieve the goal of observation, preparation of the adult, the observer, is necessary. This preparation, says Hilla Patell, requires us to "have an appreciation of the significance of the child's spontaneous activities and a more thorough understanding of the child's needs." She discusses the growth of both the desire to…

It is argued here that the general view, especially in the social sciences, of the specific status of evaluation is still deeply impregnated with completely absurd misrepresentations. A number of the worst are documented and refuted here, along with some suggestions as to their roots. It is stressed that the consequences of this tangled net of…

Background: Over the last 40 years advances in the field of rehabilitation counseling continue to play a major role in the professional identity, skills, and competencies of rehabilitation counselors. While advances have developed in several areas (e.g., multiculturalism, ethics) within the scope of rehabilitation counseling research and practice,…

There has been much hype in relation to the emergence of digital badging in education. This paper seeks to determine whether digital badges indeed live up to this hype through a systematic review of 23 empirical studies. A series of evaluative research questions have been formulated to guide the analysis of the research literature along with…

Since 2003, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has included students with special educational needs (SEN), identified as those with functional disabilities, those with cognitive/behavioural/emotional disabilities and those with limited test language proficiency. While the number of countries and included students has…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) refers to a set of competencies that form the basis of human interaction. So, SEL in schools is no fad. But what would happen if every school actively wanted to bring in SEL tomorrow? Using the articles in the special issue on SEL as a springboard, this article looks at the neurological basis of SEL, SEL best…

The ways in which youth cope with the following traumatic experiences have a critical impact on resilience and recovery, yet few measures adequately assess adolescent coping behaviors while exhibiting sound psychometric properties. The current study uses exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) to analyze data from the Kidcope, an…

In response to existing anecdotal evidence on faculty development in first-year experience program, this paper provides both a model and an adaptable heuristic for using assessment data to shape faculty development. The author argues that using a mixed method methods approach to assess FYE students' critical thinking provided unique data on…

Reflective practice is an essential component of experiential learning and is embedded within the curriculum at York Law School, where the undergraduate law programme is delivered using a problem-based learning model. Using qualitative data from a survey of the markers of one of the summative reflective tasks, and Bernstein's evaluative rules as a…

This study describes the development and initial psychometric evaluation of the Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) observation instrument. The study uses generalizability theory to compare two versions of a rubric, one with general descriptors of performance levels and one with item-specific descriptors of performance levels,…