The author, an experienced teacher and teacher educator, describes how she has learned to incorporate assessment purposefully into every mathematics lesson she teaches. Such an approach, she writes, tells her whether the lesson was accessible to all students while challenging the more capable, what the students learned and still need to know, how…

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that in school evaluations, students will improve on state-mandated tests, but the improved scores will not influence a school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) status because those students' scores do not cross the proficiency point. A state's proficiency point on each of its standardized…

Two-level data sets are frequently encountered in social and behavioral science research. They arise when observations are drawn from a known hierarchical structure, as when individuals are randomly drawn from groups that are randomly drawn from a target population. When the covariance structures in the group level and the individual level are the…

Student evaluation of instruction in college and university courses has been a routine and mandatory part of undergraduate and graduate education for some time. A major shortcoming of the process is that it often relies exclusively on the opinions or qualitative judgments of students rather than the learning or transfer of knowledge that takes…

In this article, we report on an experiment designed to improve the learning of metabolic biochemistry by nutrition and medical undergraduate students. Twelve students participated in a monitored lunch and had their blood extracted for analysis: (1) before lunch; (2) 30 min after lunch; and (3) 3 h after lunch. The subjects were divided in two…

The relationships among teacher occupational stressors, self-efficacy, coping resources, and burnout were investigated in a sample of 247 Spanish secondary school teachers. Concretely, two specific aims were formulated in order to examine the effect of teaching stressors on teacher burnout and the role of self-efficacy and school coping resources…

Ensuring that learning takes place in physical education has been a challenge to physical educators for many years. "Busy, happy, and learning" is a variation of Judith Placek's (1983) landmark concept, defined in her article "Conceptions of success in teaching: Busy, happy and good?" In this article, Placek argues that many physical educators are…

This article reports on the findings of a questionnaire survey of 142 educational psychologists from England and Wales on their approach to the assessment of children with learning and behavioural problems. Participants were asked to report on the frequency with which they used a variety of approaches to assessment, including interviews with…

Two local methods for observed-score equating are applied to the problem of equating an adaptive test to a linear test. In an empirical study, the methods were evaluated against a method based on the test characteristic function (TCF) of the linear test and traditional equipercentile equating applied to the ability estimates on the adaptive test…

In this concluding article for an issue on serving students at-risk in Canada, emergent service themes are discussed, including the growing emphasis on prevention, a focus on lifelong learning, the development of children and youth centered service support and delivery models, and the movement toward agency and family collaboration. (Contains…

This paper describes how information and communication technology (ICT) is used in the modular Open University course "T209 Information and Communication Technologies: People and Interactions", first presented in 2002. In this course ICT is used to provide students with practical experience and to support an active and collaborative approach to…

Background: Hans Asperger drew attention to individuals who show the core symptoms of autism in the presence of high verbal intelligence. Methods: A review of the literature explores current issues concerning the diagnosis and nature of Asperger syndrome. Results: The behavioural and neurophysiological evidence to date suggests that Asperger…

The mathematics education community, in its call for reform, underscores the importance of mathematics instruction emphasizing the use of multiple representations in the presentation of concepts. The focus of the study was how teacher beliefs affect their ability to implement a multiple representations curriculum. The novice instructor's attitude…

In this article, the author approaches accountability testing from a more micro level and offers a response to the question, "What can be done to get assessment right at the classroom level?" The author's answer refers back to accountability issues by considering that class of assessments most commonly used for such a purpose, herein referred to…

A number of small countries face similar problems while organising external assessment of higher education institutions: how to select proper experts, how to prepare them and maintain? How to avoid bias or interest conflict between experts who evaluate the institution and the institution being evaluated? How to reduce the financial costs of…