This paper proposes the use of a key biological concept--broad classification--to teach the provisional and contested nature of science in school biology curricula. It also examines existing curriculum-related factors which might pose obstacles to implementing such a change. An investigation in South Africa highlights the problems regarding…

Current educational practices for classifying and serving students with mental health disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been associated with specific problems. These include the stigma of labeling, misalignment of school-based categories (e.g., E/BD, OHI) with clinical diagnoses, and concerns regarding the provision of…

There is growing evidence that current classification methods are not consistent with current empirical knowledge of childhood psychopathology and the optimal way to classify school-age children remains controversial. The current study investigated three classification methods (categorical, dimensional, person-oriented) for use in predicting…

A number of studies (see Ethier, 1999) have shown that neglect has a deleterious impact on children's development. However, the effect of neglect on a child's internal representations of their family still needs to be investigated. The aim of this study was to examine the attachment patterns observed in a subsample of neglected children as…

In this study of the placement of sentence negation in third language acquisition (L3), we argue that there is a qualitative difference between the acquisition of a true second language (L2) and the subsequent acquisition of an L3. Although there is considerable evidence for L2 influence on vocabulary acquisition in L3, not all researchers believe…

The paper describes a classification system for adaptive methods developed in the area of adaptive educational hypermedia based on four dimensions: What components of the educational system are adapted? To what features of the user and the current context does the system adapt? Why does the system adapt? How does the system get the necessary…

European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to…

A significant issue in correctional education is the lack of policy-relevant data comparable across states. This article describes an effort to address this issue: the Correctional Education Data Guidebook and website and the two research projects that led to their development. Analyzing results from two national surveys conducted by the U.S.…

We look at some of the theoretical and methodological issues underlying international university ranking systems and, in particular, their conceptual connection with the idea of excellence. We then turn to a critical examination of the two best-known international university ranking systems--the "Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)" World…

School-university partnerships are not uni-dimensional projects. Success in these partnerships can be found in loosely-coupled systems such as client-server partnerships and in more tightly-coupled systems such as collaborative development centers. Using a comparative case study approach, we explore two school-university partnership case studies…

The purpose of this Item Response Theory study was to investigate how the expected reduction in item information, due to the collapsing of response categories in performance assessment data, was affected by varying testing conditions: item difficulty, item discrimination, inter-rater reliability, and direction of collapsing. The investigation used…

HyperCard is a general-purpose program for the Macintosh computer that allows multiple ways of viewing and accessing a large body of information. Two ways in which HyperCard can be used as a research tool are illustrated. One way is to organize and analyze qualitative data from observations, interviews, surveys, and other documents. The other way…

This study describes the creation of measures of teachers' use of ability grouping in instruction using Rasch analysis. The dimensionality of the proposed construct was also investigated. Results of the Rasch analysis are compared to the results using composites to illustrate how the description of a construct can vary depending on the method used…

A Monte Carlo approach is proposed, using the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) programming language, for estimating reliability coefficients in generalizability theory studies. Test scores are generated by a probabilistic model that considers the probability for a person with a given ability score to answer an item with a given difficulty…

Tone-based classification rules for Igbo nouns need modification because: (1) class 1 nouns (monosyllables with high tones) do not, as claimed, operate differently from other terminal high-tone nouns; and (2) class 6 nouns (di-syllabic with downstep tones) can be accounted for within class 2 and class 3 nouns known as HH and LH nouns). The proper…