The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has identified four priority areas within its Strategic Plan that guide the work of the department in its role to support implementation of state education statute and be responsive to district, school, and student need: (1) Increase student engagement; (2) Accelerate student outcomes; (3) Strengthen the…

In serving as a training ground for future communication educators, the basic course is uniquely placed to explore issues of communication pedagogy. Communication pedagogy is a domain of study that informs communication teachers of the best practices in teaching communication competencies. As a basic course director in the Department of…

Introduction: Rating the quality of a body of evidence is an increasingly common component of research syntheses on intervention effectiveness. This study sought to identify and examine existing systems for rating the quality of a body of evidence on the effectiveness of health and social interventions. Methods: We used a multicomponent search…

The purpose of the current study is to determine whether single-case intervention studies targeting reading fluency, ranked by traditional outcome metrics (i.e., effect sizes derived from phase differences), were discrepant with rankings based on instructional efficiency, including growth per session and minutes of instruction. Converging with…

In the coming years, public programs will capture even more and richer data than they do now, including data from web-based tools used by participants in employment services, from tablet-based educational curricula, and from electronic health records for Medicaid beneficiaries. Program evaluators seeking to take full advantage of these data…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a taxonomy useful for classifying the training activity preference patterns adopted by executives and for describing how these patterns relate to important workplace measures. Although many organizations hold that well-trained and developed leaders are important for organizational…

The terms "outcome" and "impact" are ubiquitous in evaluation discourse. However, there are many competing definitions that lack clarity and consistency and sometimes represent fundamentally different meanings. This leads to profound confusion, undermines efforts to improve learning and accountability, and represents a…

Background: Conducting evaluation and research is one of the seven areas of responsibility for health education specialists. However, there is little evidence to suggest that professional preparation programs use the competencies as identified by the 2015 Health Education Specialist Practice Analysis (HESPA) as a basis for instruction. Aims: To…

Evaluations of environmental education (EE) programmes and resources are becoming increasingly visible and important. While benefits accrue through evaluation, many programmes and resources have yet to realise these. Issues such as a lack of clear objectives, reliance on traditional, summative approaches and inattention to context have prevented…

The quality assurance of online Higher Education online programmes is one of the great challenges faced by Spanish universities. Regular assessment of these programmes is essential in order to take actions to improve their quality. The said assessment should be complex and include all of the components of the programme, as well as its planning and…

This article shares principles for offering effective professional development for classroom teachers at historic sites and museums, identified through ongoing research at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF). Supported by an IMLS National Leadership Grant, the initial findings challenged the education staff to more fully embrace their roles as…

Theory of change (ToC) is currently "the" approach for the evaluation and planning of international development programs. This approach is considered especially suitable for complex interventions. We question this assumption and argue that ToC's focus on cause-effect logic and intended outcomes does not do justice to the recursive nature…

Countless research studies have shown that employing a variety of instructional methods results in greater student engagement, higher graduation rates, and better student achievement overall (Shernoff, et al., 2003). In order to incorporate a large variety of methods into the classroom, it is important to make use of external resources to help…

Suicide is the third most common cause of death for youth aged 14-19. School counselors need a school-wide prevention plan to address the mental and emotional needs of students experiencing suicidal ideation and behaviors. Although researchers have suggested that suicide prevention programming and suicide screening programs lower the rate of…

A small college in the Midwestern United States has a prior learning assessment (PLA) program that has never been evaluated from the perspective of the faculty and staff. The problem is that campus leaders have a limited understanding of faculty and staff knowledge and their role in the PLA program. The study was approached from an appreciative…