This article presents a study of school subject competitions, which are defined as special events where students in primary or upper secondary school have the opportunity to compete against peers in school subjects. The article analyse and discuss characteristics of this educational form across a variety of prominent competitions with a view to…

When designing attractive teacher career structures, policymakers have to take a series of complex decisions. These decisions are related not only to the number of steps within the career ladder and their associated responsibilities, but also to how these positions are articulated with the salary scale and to opportunities for professional…

Multilevel experiments have been widely used in education and social sciences to evaluate causal effects of interventions. Two key considerations in designing experimental studies are statistical power and the minimal use of resources. Optimal design framework simultaneously addresses both considerations. This dissertation extends previous optimal…

Internship has been considered as a crucial program in preparing pre-service teachers to implement the scientific-practical activities knowledge they have gained. This study aimed at describing the implementation as well as the function of internship program based on pre-service teachers' of Farhangian University-Shahid Beheshti branch of Tehran…

In peer observation of teaching, an experienced colleague in the educational environment of a faculty member observes the educational performance of that faculty member and provides appropriate feedback. The use of peer review as an alternative source of evidence of teaching effectiveness is increasing. However, no research has been done in the…

This paper describes one 4-week long online language learning module which utilizes the animated documentary film "My Favorite War" (Burkovska-Jakobsen, 2020) and analyzes four students' final essays. The learning module was created considering ethnographic views of cultural inferences (Spradley, 2016), the framework of social space…

This case study explored the evaluation criteria applied by six supervisors of a private language institute (three men and three women) through individual in-depth interviews in an English-as-a-foreign-language context. The researchers also collected data from supervisors' observation checklists and written feedback. A thematic analysis resulted…

While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students' written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach…

College and university admission testing requirements often serve as a barrier to many students seeking advanced degrees. Many graduate school admission boards/committees use the minimum testing requirement as a predictor variable to explain a student's chance for success in a program. Before the 2020 Fall semester, many graduate schools required…

Colleges and universities have become increasingly concerned that requiring standardized test scores for admission is an impediment to campus diversity, and these objections have grown with the recent focus on societal inequities. In addition, the pandemic led to the cancellation of test administrations, which, in turn, caused many institutions to…

Quality assurance in higher education has become a global activity. In the European Higher Education Area, cross-border quality assurance has been heavily encouraged by the European Commission. Behind this, lies the belief that encouraging competition among quality assurance bodies and introducing a liberal 'market' logic into the sector would…

Self Directed learning, oral presentation and peer group assessment are some of the phrases gaining momentum in the domain of teaching and learning. The merits and challenges in using them had attracted the attention of many educational researches. This study hopes to contribute by investigating one element which plays an important role in oral…

Objectives: Adolescents endeavor to meet their social needs, to be accepted and to develop close friendship relationships. However, quality and close relationships may not always be possible. Identity development may be affected if adolescents cannot be included in social groups and cannot establish quality friendship relationships. This can be…

Peer review in the classroom can enhance numerous employability skills such as critical appraisal, writing skills, reflection practices and collaborative experiences. This study takes place over two years and discusses the implementation of a repeating blind peer review cycle across a single semester for final year chemistry students enrolled on a…

In many countries, students are selected into higher education institutions based on their achievement at high school, measured by scores given by their teachers and obtained on final national exams. This paper compares these two measures in terms of their ability to predict students' success in higher education. Accounting for sample selection…