Examines the role of literature in the acquisition of literacy in English as a Second Language and Nigerian mother tongues. Provides a critique of the Nigerian literacy instruction model, and discusses how to help students acquire effective and efficient literacy. (Author/VWL)

Policy makers are turning away from individual performance pay, favoring school-based rewards that expand curriculum or fund other improvements. Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas have adopted performance-based rewards and sanctions. Policy makers must balance state and local control and align performance indicators with school…

A comparison between performance-based DISCOVER (Discovering Intellectual Strengths and Capabilities through Observation while allowing for Varied Ethnic Responses) assessment reports and two independent ratings in appraising 24 kindergartners' multiple intelligences through specific activities found that when intelligences were assessed through…

Introduction: The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) recognized that certification and recertification must be based on an assessment of performance in practice as well as an examination of medical knowledge. Physician self-assessment of practice performance is proposed as one method that certification boards may use to evaluate competence…

This article draws on the transcripts of focus group interviews held with three groups of students, all in their final year of four-year Bachelor degrees. All had completed the professional experience requirements for their course. One group comprised education students, one group comprised nursing students, and the third was studying engineering.…

Organisations devise training programmers to ensure that employees make an effective contribution to enterprise success. Not all organisations are likely to provide training, however, because there are significant trade-offs involved in terms of both costs and benefits. This article discusses the organisational determinants of training: larger…

A student's behavioral performance within the classroom is influenced, in large part, by the interaction that student has with the learning environment and the people in that environment. Identifying antecedent variables that effect student performance enables practitioners to set the stage for prosocial behavior and academic learning. One…

Six years ago, the Division of Education at Indiana University East began the process of developing a performance-based program consistent with its division's conceptual framework, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) principles, and Indiana state standards. One component of the state mandate is that all teachers…

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) program review process increasingly emphasizes the importance of performance-based assessment of early childhood teacher preparation programs. As part of the effort to address performance-based assessment requirements, the teacher educator program described in this study examined…

This article focuses on the design of competency-based performance assessment in e-learning. Though effort has been invested in designing powerful e-learning environments, relatively little attention has been paid to the design of valid and reliable assessments in such environments, leaving many questions to educational developers and teachers. As…

In 2000, the state of Nebraska passed legislation requiring the assessment of student performance on content standards, but its requirements were very different from those of any other state. Nebraska created what has come to be known as STARS (School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System). Under STARS, each of Nebraska's nearly 500…

This study reports on student experiences in an inquiry-oriented elementary science methods course. Students in this course designed and conducted an independent investigation, and then adapted that investigation to develop an inquiry-oriented lesson and a corresponding performance assessment. Students' written reflections expressed increased…

Processes are a series of actions, changes, or functions that bring about a desired result. Processes are the way educators work. However, few of them think in these terms. Instead, educators tend to describe their work in terms of functions, like maintaining the online teacher application system, or outcomes, like positive test results. Still…

As the context of special education has changed in the last quarter century, the role and work of the IEP team also has evolved. Today, the general education curriculum is central to the educational programs of all students. The expectation that is clearly communicated in federal policies and regulations, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and…

Practicing physicians generally are not engaged in either the methods of performance improvement for health care or the measurement and reporting of clinical outcomes. The principal reasons are lack of compensation for such work, the perception that the work of performance improvement adds no value and is a waste of time, the lack of knowledge and…