Operating a quality assurance system in tertiary education is the rule rather than the exception, because of the belief that it will improve quality. However, proving this is not easy. This study examines three ways of providing the evidence: the a "priori" method, the stepwise backtracking method, and the external evaluation method. The…

The assessment procedures within Response to Intervention (RTI) models have begun to supplant the use of traditional, discrepancy-based frameworks for identifying students with specific learning disabilities (SLD). Many RTI proponents applaud this shift because of perceived shortcomings in utilizing discrepancy as an indicator of SLD. However,…

This article examines the state of assessment in simulation and gaming over the past 40 years. While assessment has come slowly to many disciplines, members of the simulation and gaming community have been assessing the educational effectiveness of their experiential activities for years, in part because of skepticism from more traditional…

Hundreds of thousands of raters are recruited internationally to score examinations, but little research has been conducted on the selection criteria for these raters. Many countries insist upon teaching experience as a selection criterion and this has frequently become embedded in the cultural expectations surrounding the tests. Shortages in…

Modern factor analysis is the outgrowth of Spearman's original "2-factor" model of intelligence, according to which a mental test score is regarded as the sum of a general factor and a specific factor. As early as 1914, Godfrey Thomson realized that the data did not require this interpretation and he demonstrated this by proposing what became…

Donald W. Compton, the first director of evaluation services at the National Home Office (Atlanta) of the American Cancer Society, tells the story of building the unit in conditions of high demand and a limited budget. Along the way, evaluation was brought to regional divisions and to local offices in part as a response to United Way and to his…

Deaf students consistently score lower on standardized measures of reading comprehension than their hearing peers. Most of the studies that have been conducted to explain this phenomenon have focused on variables within the reader, and important differences have been found between deaf and hearing readers. More recently, in the face of…

This action research study was conducted for purposes of changing the formal evaluation for school administrators to one constructed around the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) 2008 standards, inclusive of multifaceted components aimed to increase the active participation of both the evaluator and the individual being…

This report examines the contribution of self-evaluation to internal review processes in Scotland's colleges. It identifies the range of methodologies used by colleges, what makes these effective and what needs to improve further. It explores in particular, the extent to which self-evaluation has a positive impact on learners' experiences. The…

Statewide exit examinations play an important role in discussions on school effectiveness. Referring to educational governance concepts, this paper presumes a relation between varying organizational structures of statewide examinations across states, and heterogeneous effects on school actors. It is assumed that their ability to affect work in…

Despite the common belief that information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to support certain fundamental changes in learning, few have examined ICT implementation conceptually within a wider context of educational change. Methodologically, we are by and large limited to building simple models that accommodate only a single…

Twenty teachers working in elementary and secondary schools were interviewed from 2 school districts in southern Ontario, Canada about their understanding and use of particular formative assessment strategies. Analysis of the interviews followed a constant comparison method and revealed a variety of emerging themes. Results suggested an imbalance…

The Academic, Personal and Professional Learning (APPL) model of support for student nurses was developed and implemented as a pilot project in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences of a university in response to a number of internal and external drivers. The common theme across these drivers was the enhancement of the social, academic…

When comparing data derived from tests or questionnaires in cross-national studies, researchers commonly assume measurement invariance in their underlying scaling models. However, different cultural contexts, languages, and curricula can have powerful effects on how students respond in different countries. This article illustrates how the…

Both professional certification and academic tests rely heavily on multiple-choice questions, despite the widespread belief that alternate, constructed-response questions are superior measures of a test taker's understanding of the underlying material. Empirically, the search for a link between these two assessment metrics has met with limited…