The presently viewed role and utility of measures of instructional sensitivity are summarized. A case is made that the rationale for the assessment of instructional sensitivity can be applied to all achievement tests and should not be restricted to criterion-referenced mastery tests. (Author/BW)

America's public schools are making harmful, irreversible decisions based on test results that--in an increasing number of cases--can't be trusted, Arizona State University's Education Policy Research Laboratory has found. The pressure of high-stakes tests is forcing school districts and state Departments of Education to take inappropriate and at…

The purpose of this report is to address and review school violence and the implications it has on educators and school systems in today's society. It will lead a discussion on the current state faced by North American educators and school systems and the possible solutions that could be implemented to reduce school violence. This report is…

Cognitive and situative theories have both proved very useful in furthering our understandings of mathematics learning. An important current area of investigation is to synthesize these perspectives in order to provide more robust theories of learning and to bring theory and practice into better relations with each other. This paper contributes to…

This article is a summary of the findings of a research project that included ten older rural adults from a county in south Georgia. The research focused on self-directed learning. The researcher conducted two interviews with each participant over a two day period. The findings focused around four research questions: what is the nature of…

To more accurately reflect student attributes and enrollment patterns of today's freshmen, and to account for the impact of a new state-funded scholarship, this study expands the set of variables typically found in retention studies by putting greater focus on first-year academic performance, concurrent enrollment, financial aid support, and…

This paper presents a researcher's view of the foundations on which to research rural schooling. Three sections each discuss a different parameter of rural education research into science and mathematics education. These sections advise a conservative approach to research methodology, a liberal approach to content, and a radical approach to…

This white paper was prepared for Staying the Course: High Standards and Improved Graduation Rates, a joint project of Achieve, Inc. and Jobs for the Future. Its goal is to provide policymakers with an overview of research about the dropout problem and the best strategies for building an early warning data system that can signal which students and…

The role of social setting in adult IT literacy has not been a topic of research in much of the current literature. The purpose of this proposed study is to compare and contrast the extent to which social setting influence adult IT literacy. Participants will receive IT literacy training at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR)…

This publication outlines a theoretical framework to guide research, policy, and action plans to combat youth violence. Research findings suggest that analyzing violence in connection with human development will provide a greater understanding of the problem. Such an analysis should trace pathways to violence in order to infuse prevention…

This paper explores high school teachers' professional collegial relationships, exploring teachers' perceptions of collegiality and contextual features that affect collegial relationships. The study involved 36 volunteer teachers from two urban midwestern high schools who completed a semi-structured interview. The interview focused on teachers'…

While consistently related to positive teacher behaviors and student outcomes, teacher efficacy as a construct is currently the subject of debate. The present study examined a new model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998) that proposes to more clearly define important variables and integrate two theoretical…

There has been a growing relationship between the profession of counseling and computers over the last four decades. The focus in the 1950s and 1960s was on producing programs that could emulate a human therapist and computer-aided instruction. In the 1970s and 1980s computing technology was utilized primarily for counseling intervention and…

This booklet, which is intended as a support to the delivery of professional development of Australian literacy educators on critical literacy, presents a seven-step systematic model of all contexts through which a text may be constructed and studied. The first two sections discuss the model's use as a comprehensive framework for future teaching,…

This paper explores the deep-reform efforts of 9 secondary schools over a 3-year period. The reforms occurred in an Ontario, Canada, school district that empowered their secondary schools to develop site-specific organizational structures that deviated from the traditional subject, departmental structure. The sample for the study included all…