ESL instructors generally use ready-made reading materials in commercially published coursebooks. However, it would be more effective for learners if ESL instructors are involved in developing reading materials for them. This is because they are closer, more sensitive and responsive to the needs of their learners and they are also aware of the…

In "Beyond Test Scores: Leading Indicators for Education," Foley and colleagues (2008) define leading indicators as those that "provide early signals of progress toward academic achievement" (p. 1) and stress that educators "need leading indicators to help them see the direction their efforts are going in and to take…

Studies of cognitive processes in SL writing have paid attention to the strategies that writers use to tackle problems in composing. In text-generation, finding lexical items in the L2 to express their meanings is one of the most crucial problems writers have to face, for reasons related to the availability and accessibility of relevant linguistic…

Concept mapping is discussed as a means to promote meaningful learning and in particular progress in reading comprehension skills. Its increasing implementation necessitates the acquisition of adequate knowledge about frequent errors in order to make available an effective introduction to the new learning method. To analyse causes of errors, 283…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity of the Self-Efficacy/Social Support for Activity for persons with Intellectual Disability (SE/SS-AID) scales developed by Peterson, Peterson, Lowe, & Nothwehr (2009). A total of 146 participants with intellectual disabilities completed 6 self-efficacy (SE) items and 18 social…

This article investigates teachers' attitudes toward English Language Learners (ELLs) at three middle schools in Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania. These schools have been critically impacted by the presence of ELLs, whether due to large numbers, or to smaller, concentrated populations in schools that traditionally have not served ELLs. This…

This article provides an overview of the development and validation of the Student Tool for Technology Literacy (ST[superscript 2]L). Developing valid and reliable objective performance measures for monitoring technology literacy is important to all organizations charged with equipping students with the technology skills needed to successfully…

Web-based distance education is an innovative modality of instruction in Colombia. It is characterized by the separation of the teacher and learners, the use of technological tools and the students' autonomy development. This paper reports the findings of a case study that explores students' perceptions about an English reading comprehension…

This dissertation tests a grammatical structure, differential object marking (DOM), which is particularly difficult for L2 learners to acquire. DOM is a phenomenon in which some direct objects are morphologically marked to distinguish them from subjects (Comrie, 1979). In Spanish, animate and specific direct objects are marked with the preposition…

This issue brief is part of a larger study of California continuation high schools begun in 2007. While the first phase of the study examined various alternative education options throughout the state, this second phase focused on 23 higher performing continuation high schools in California selected based on multiple student outcome measures. This…

The educational landscape of higher education is shifting to include more online education courses. This shift has produced successes and struggles for instructors and undergraduates. The purpose of this study was to explore child development instructors' and undergraduates' perspectives and experiences in online education through the…

Given the current crisis in urban education and the frequent calls for urban school reform, a number of colleges and universities have established teacher education programs designed specifically to prepare teachers for work in urban schools. These urban-focused teacher preparation programs seek to provide pre-service teachers with the knowledge,…

Good jobs in the nation's twenty-first-century economy require advanced literacy skills such as categorizing, evaluating, and drawing conclusions from written texts. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards by nearly all the states, combined with tough literacy assessments that are now in the offing, will soon reveal that literacy skills of…

Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. They inform citizens about the nature of students' comprehension of the…

Operational testing programs employing item response theory (IRT) applications benefit from of the property of item parameter invariance whereby item parameter estimates obtained from one sample can be applied to other samples (when the underlying assumptions are satisfied). In theory, this feature allows for applications such as computer-adaptive…