This study examines the procedures, criteria, and decision-making in doctoral admissions at China's leading research universities. A content analysis was performed on doctoral admissions texts (N = 312) from 264 faculties of C9 League universities, representing China's elite research-intensive universities. The results show that the admissions…

Postcolonial studies have long identified history curriculum as a site of empire building. High stakes exams like the Global History Regents Exam in New York (NYGHR) undoubtedly impact curriculum but have yet to be examined through a postcolonial lens. This study evaluates to what extent, if at all, the NYGHR perpetuates eurocentrism as defined by…

Sexual assault against women is a pervasive problem on college campuses in the United States (Canan, Jozkowski, & Crawford, 2018). Interventions to prevent sexual violence have been developed to target men. However, they generally lack a specific guiding theory and show mixed results (Caver, 2013). Factors such as adherence to traditional…

In the academic world, the skills of scientific writing and publishing allow for the sharing and dissemination of academic research. The research analysed the scientific publications of university teachers from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Technical University of Manabí (FCHS-UTM), Ecuador, in order to determine their…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1, David Eubanks advocates for a collaborative model of assessment as the field enters a fourth decade of low return on investment. In Part 2, Megan R. Good laments the opportunity cost of continuing the define-measure-improve assessment model…

Children ages 6-7 and 9-10 and emerging adults (n = 115) judged whether a character should approach a group of peers when they had a gender-neutral, gender-norm-consistent, or gender-norm-inconsistent activity. They also provided justifications and judgments about whether the character would be teased. Approaching peers with a…

This article uses discourse analysis techniques associated with Foucauldian archaeology to examine the two international charters developed by the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographical Education (IGU-CGE), the original one in 1992 and the revised version endorsed in 2016 at the Beijing conference. The examination considers…

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the environment and environmental issues are conceptualized and positioned in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to examine underlying assumptions about the environment. The NGSS are a recent set of science standards in the USA, organized and led by Achieve Inc., that propose science education…

The 1994 National Standards for Arts Education were succeeded by a new generation of standards published in 2014 by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS). This iteration of voluntary standards provided a new foundation for designing curriculum for visual arts education. The design of the standards utilized the curriculum model…

This brief examines state-defined long-term goals for improving achievement in states' Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans as of January 2018, and offers early insights into the varied approaches states have taken in setting long-term goals, timelines, and trajectories to reach their goals.

The space between the two epigraphs presented at the beginning of this article marks the difference between an insider and an outsider. Ms Barbieri, from "Voices from the Middle," made the first comments as an expression of what reflective practice -- observing and critiquing video tapes of hers and others' teaching -- could mean to her…

The 2018-19 year continued the important work of refining and improving the new accreditation system. Significant progress was made by the Commission, the Committee on Accreditation (COA), and the Commission staff with respect to implementation of the revised accreditation system. The accreditation system is the primary means by which the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how school districts dealt with the challenges of implementing new science learning standards in their middle schools. Six Long Island school districts of varying size and levels of need, with different curricula models, and distinct building grade-level configurations were purposefully selected as case…

The construct of academic language--while of great interest, in part, because of recently adopted or revised content and English-language development (ELD) standards that explicitly focus on academic language--and its role in the academic success of all students, including young learners and English learners (ELs), is far from clearly understood.…

The purpose of this study was to develop a standard-setting method appropriate for use with a diagnostic assessment that produces profiles of student mastery rather than a single raw or scale score value. The condensed mastery profile method draws from established holistic standard-setting methods to use rounds of range finding and pinpointing to…