Recently, policymakers have called for increased grade point average (GPA) requirements and many state education agencies are implementing "highly selective criteria" for teacher preparation program admission. These changes attempt to increase the quality of future teachers despite the inconclusive research base for such practices. Using…

Art in Botswana primary schools is taught under the umbrella term Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), a subject that encompasses various arts disciplines. The arts disciplines are Physical Education, Music, Design and Technology, Home Economics, and Drama and Dance. The subject introduces learners to various disciplinary knowledge, media, and…

This article seeks to provide an insight into the role of school principals dealing with newly multicultural and multi-faith student populations by drawing on a mixed-methods study on state-funded multi-denominational community national schools in Ireland. The study explores the extent to which school principals address the increasing social and…

The music industry is built on a system of expert evaluation focused on sound, but the foundations are challenged by recent research, which suggests that sight trumps sound. This presents a challenge to music educators, who train the next generation of expert performers and listeners. The aim of this study is to investigate students' perceptions…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Capstone Assessment as Faculty Development (Rowanna L. Carpenter, Seanna M. Kerrigan, and Vicki L. Reitenauer); (2) Using a Doctoral Program Entrance Assessment: Reflections on a Pilot Program and the Admissions Process (Robyne Elder); (3) Highlights of the 2018 HEDS…

While traditionally the viva voce examination had a central role in student assessment it fell out of favour as higher education expanded. This paper describes the development of a digital video viva examination to promote a more authentic and lower stakes method of assessment for students in their final under-graduate module. The paper presents a…

Employing longitudinal, multisite comparative mixed-methods, we describe patterns of reclassifying and not reclassifying eligible English learner (EL) students to fluent English proficient, and we identify factors impeding and facilitating reclassification. Analyses of administrative data for 7 cohorts of students over 3 years in one district and…

The major trend in ELT materials evaluation has been the measurement of general satisfaction levels against borrowed items from previous checklists. However, their real quality can be accurately assessed through contextually relevant criteria. In this study, 85 English teachers, and 500 seventh-graders evaluated the effectiveness of their…

Public flagship universities were established to provide an excellent education to their states' residents and are therefore well-positioned to enhance social and economic mobility within their states. Yet in many cases, too few low-income students and students of color have access to these elite colleges and the opportunities they provide. This…

This article intended to analyze a current piece of international education practice in terms of its underlying values, culture, and philosophy, including the concept of international education (e.g., a curriculum model, an organizational or institutional structure, or a management style), and have particularly selected curriculum model to…

StudentU is a comprehensive program that provides education, nutrition, and social support services to disadvantaged middle and high school students outside of the regular school day. In this paper I investigate the effects of this multiyear program on the early high school outcomes of participating students by exploiting data from oversubscribed…

Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this article examines the efficiency and effectiveness of financial inputs and demographic data for educational outputs as measured by the Year 12 results for New South Wales secondary schools using a panel dataset from 2005 to 2010. Effective schools, in these analyses, are those that have higher Year 12…

In the context of higher education, a competence may be understood as the combination of skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and abilities that underpin effective and/or superior performance in a professional area. The aim of the work reported here was to design a set of procedures to assess a transferable competence, i.e., problem solving, that…

This article examines the outcomes of a study across four discipline areas in order to develop course-based assessment strategies in closer cooperation with students. Second-year students (n = 48) from different disciplines were engaged in two phases of activity-orientated workshops. Phase 1 sought their perceptions of feedback. Phase 2 saw…

The usefulness of explicit knowledge of the second language is a matter of controversy in the field of second language acquisition. In this regard, it has been argued that explicit representations might be useful for some structures but not for others (R. Ellis, 2006; Roehr & Gánem-Gutiérrez, 2009). The goal of this study was to examine…