Despite the fact that rigor is generally advocated for gifted learners, how it should be measured is not well defined. This lack of specificity in defining academic rigor often makes it difficult to determine if curriculum for gifted learners met their learning needs. With this need in mind and in response to the challenge of the North Carolina…

English teachers are by nature rather imaginative, a trait that is not taught in a methods class or listed as a disposition in standards for teacher preparation. Whether as part of a learning activity or a "what if" question posed in a literature discussion, imagination and creativity are integral parts of classrooms and their inclusion is as…

During the last three decades the constructed response format has gradually gained entry in large-scale assessments of reading-comprehension. In their 1991 Reading Literacy Study The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) included constructed response items on an exploratory basis. Ten years later, in…

The purpose of the study reported on in this paper was to identify performance criteria and ratings in rubrics designed for the evaluation of learning in online asynchronous discussions (OADs) in post-secondary contexts. We analysed rubrics collected from Internet sources. Using purposive sampling, we reached saturation with the selection of 50…

Mobile learning has been recommended for motivating students on field trips; nevertheless, owing to the complexity and the richness of the learning resources from both the real-world and the digital-world environments, information overload remains one of the major concerns. Most mobile learning designs provide feedback only for multiple choice…

This quantitative study explored the impact of literacy integration in a science inquiry classroom involving the use of science notebooks on the academic language development and conceptual understanding of students from diverse (i.e., English Language Learners, or ELLs) and low socio-economic status (low-SES) backgrounds. The study derived from a…

Schools nationwide are transitioning to the Common Core--our advice to you: Be prepared, but don't go it alone! Our new book, "Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, 9-12," shows you that teaching the Common Core State Standards in high school doesn't have to be intimidating! This easy-to-use guide meets the particular needs of…

Schools nationwide are transitioning to the Common Core--our advice to you: Don't go it alone! Our new book, "Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, K-5," shows you that teaching the Common Core State Standards in the elementary grades doesn't have to be intimidating! This easy-to-use guide provides model lesson plans for…

Schools nationwide are transitioning to the Common Core--our advice to you: Don't go it alone! Our new book, "Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, 6-8," shows you that teaching the Common Core State Standards in the middle grades doesn't have to be intimidating! This easy-to-use guide meets the particular needs of middle…

This study examined whether teacher portfolios can be validly and reliably assessed by investigating the effect of an instructional tool on increasing the level of reflective thinking in elementary preservice teachers' portfolios. It also examined whether reflective thinking in preservice teachers' electronic portfolios represented sufficient…

Writing as one important skill in language proficiency demands validity, hence high schools are real places in which valid results are needed for high-stake decisions. Unrealistic and non-viable tests result in improper and invalid interpretation and use. Illustrations without any written research have proved their effectiveness in whatsoever…

This study provides specific evidence regarding the extent to which quantitative measures, common sense notional measures, and comprehensive measures adequately characterize spontaneous, although engaged, speech. As such, the study contributes to the growing body of literature describing the current limits of automatic systems for evaluating…

Efforts to increase teacher quality have focused on increasing both the admission and graduation standards required for students entering the profession. This study examined the relationship between common standards, such as college GPA, ACT scores, and Praxis exam scores, with student teacher performance as measured by an assessment rubric based…

Many times teachers hear students say: "Why are we learning this? Why do we have to know this? When are we going to use this outside of class time?" These common questions are probably familiar to most high school teachers. An 11th-grade English teacher attended a university-school district professional development (PD) program on…

No one has a bigger stake in teaching effectiveness than students. Nor are there any better experts on how teaching is experienced by its intended beneficiaries. Only recently have many policymakers and practitioners come to recognize that--when asked the right questions, in the right ways--students can be an important source of information on the…