Accountability mandates such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have drawn attention to the practical use of student data for school improvement. Nevertheless, schools may struggle with these mandates because student data are often stored in forms that are difficult to access, manipulate, and interpret. Such access barriers additionally preclude the…

This article presents initial findings of a case study focusing on data use in five low-performing urban high schools undergoing comprehensive schoolwide reform. The case study investigates: (a) the ways in which disaggregated data can be used to examine progress and guide improvement in the process of restructuring urban, low-performing high…

This study focuses on the attitudes of a sample of Grade 9 mathematics teachers to the national mathematics Common Task Assessment (CTA) 2002 and to the official mathematics curriculum policy. The notion of pedagogic identity provided the theoretical lens to frame the study. These teachers' personal pedagogic identities are compared with official…

Missing data are a common practical problem for longitudinal designs. Time-series analysis is a longitudinal method that involves a large number of observations on a single unit. Four different missing-data methods (deletion, mean substitution, mean of adjacent observations, and maximum likelihood estimation) were evaluated. Computer-generated…

Much of the debate surrounding the use of contexts for pupils' writing focuses on the need for purpose, relevance and a sense of audience outwith the immediate classroom environment. This article seeks to explore whether there is any evidence to suggest that the use of enterprise in education may have a greater beneficial effect on the quality of…

Effect Sizes (ES) are an increasingly important index used to quantify the degree of practical significance of study results. This paper gives an introduction to the computation and interpretation of effect sizes from the perspective of the consumer of the research literature. The key points made are: (1) "ES" is a useful indicator of the…

In this paper, we examine the use of an ordinary differential equation in modelling the SARS outbreak in Singapore. The model provides an excellent example of using mathematics in a real life situation. The mathematical concepts involved are accessible to students with A level Mathematics backgrounds. Data for the SARS epidemic in Singapore are…

According to the aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), perfective morphology emerges before imperfective morphology, it is first used in telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments) and it later extends to atelic predicates (activities and states). The opposite development is hypothesized for imperfective…

A number of researchers have explored the attributions that care staff make about challenging behavior. The expectation, based on behavioral and cognitive models, is that these attributions may help predict why staff inadvertently reinforce challenging behavior. Two studies of staff attributions about challenging behavior are reported. In the…

Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA) may yield different solutions under permutations of the input order of the data. This instability is caused by ties, either in the initial proximity matrix or arising during agglomeration. The authors recommend to repeat the analysis on a large number of random permutations of the rows and columns…

The following laboratory exercise was designed to aid student understanding of the differences between subjective and objective measurements. Students assess the color and texture of different varieties of potato chip (crisps) by means of an intensity rating scale and a rank test and objectively with a colorimeter and texture analyzer. For data…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a research project that identified organisational critical success factors (CSFs) for e-learning implementation in higher education (HE). These CSFs can be used as a theoretical foundation upon which to base decision-making and strategic thinking about e-learning. Design/methodology/approach: The…

This article uses a case study of 2001 town and city data that we analyzed for "Boston Magazine". We use this case study to demonstrate the challenges of creating a valid ranking structure. The data consist of three composite indices for 147 individual townships in the Boston metropolitan area representing measures of public safety; the…

The use of Internet to aid research practice has become more popular in the recent years. In fact, some believe that Internet surveying and electronic data collection may revolutionize many disciplines by allowing for easier data collection, larger samples, and therefore more representative data. However, others are skeptical of its usability as…

Objective: Both the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychological Association have called upon psychodynamic practitioners to start demonstrating their outcomes. This effectiveness study attempted to begin to answer these calls. Method: The study was a secondary analysis of data from a multidisciplinary, psychodynamic mental…