The purpose of this study is to compare the efficacy of three different approaches to professional development in Earth science education: preparing teachers to "adopt" expert-"design" curricula; preparing teachers to use a principled approach to design curricula; and preparing teachers to use a principled approach to "adapt" curricula. The claims…

Online courses have many components and dimensions. Both the form (structure) and the content (expression) are situated in an overall environment. The sum of these elements results in student outcomes and learning. In order to facilitate construction and evaluate the quality of an online course, a four-part rubric was designed to reflect:…

Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

In this article, the authors use qualitative and quantitative research to identify the performance of social actors whose decisions impact students and teachers, elucidate a set of measurements for their performance, and offer both a theoretical and research justification for these measurements. The work challenges two faulty assumptions behind…

Authentic and constructive learning experiences that include analysis of primary source documents are necessary elements of effective social studies teaching (Bailyn, 1994; Leinhardt, Stainton, & Virji, 1994; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991; Young & Leinhardt, 1998). This study examines the abilities of 70 fifth and seventh grade students to complete…

The use of online rater self-training is growing in popularity and has obvious practical benefits, facilitating access to training materials and rating samples and allowing raters to reorient themselves to the rating scale and self monitor their behaviour at their own convenience. However there has thus far been little research into rater…

The author describes teaching eighth-grade students about the civil rights movement. Teachers used photographs of students in the 1950s as a central theme of their unit about the U.S. civil rights movement. Using these photographs as a learning tool inspired the students to be engaged in history. At the end of the unit, students were able to…

Maja Wilson believes that efforts to standardize language through rubrics and generalized comments provide a disservice to students and undermine the power of the reading and writing experience. She advocates making use of our subjectivity as readers, conceding that her values cannot be standardized and often shift in response to interactions with…

The development of a scoring tool to be used with alternative and authentic assessment strategies is discussed, describing the parts of such a tool and the development process. The design is based on the Innovation Configuration (IC) process of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model. To begin, components of the test task are identified. Variations that…

In the fall of 1992, the National Association of Test Directors (NATD) surveyed its members on their involvement in the development of performance assessments and scoring rubrics. The extent to which members have developed performance assessments is reported, along with how they went about it, the advice they would offer others who are developing…

This pilot project had four goals: (1) to develop a writing rubric with kindergartners; (2) to have students write to a prompt and record observed behaviors for analysis; (3) to better understand the appropriateness of using a writing rubric with kindergartners; and (4) to form more effective ways for students to be more autonomous in their…

The degree to which modifications to the format of the scoring rubric and the associated training procedures affect the technical quality of the resulting scores was studied, and the perceived utility of each scoring method for influencing a teacher's instructional decisions positively was investigated. Two different methods were used to score…

This paper presents a rubric developed as a continuum for assessing elementary students' science process knowledge. The continuum was designed to capture the growth of an individual student's knowledge of processes that are essential to learning science. The assessment tool is meant to document changes in science processes that are incremental and…

Current educational theories emphasize assessment as a vital part of teaching-learning process. Alternative assessment techniques aim to expose and promote the process of the learning rather than the final outcome. Concept mapping is a technique for representing conceptual knowledge and relationships between concepts in a graphical form. Requiring…

Turn your teacher hiring process into a research-based protocol that is more apt to select teachers who will increase student achievement. Using the teacher quality indicators from the ASCD best-selling book "Qualities of Effective Teachers, 2nd Edition," the authors take the guesswork out of teacher hiring with a systematic structure and steps…