This article provides an overview of the special issue on groups in health care settings and describes how each contribution addresses challenges and opportunities in the health care field for group work. Fundamental criteria for evaluating groups in such settings are applied to each contribution. Finally, trends and opportunities about the future…

Bernard Barker's thesis that schools have been undermined over the past quarter of a century by a damaging combination of top-down, centralised reform and a desire to impose a market philosophy on education is powerful. This article analyses the nature of the apparatus of control--both statist and free-market--which has been applied to schools…

Opening U.S. educational publishing to the rest of the world promises fresh perspectives and new solutions--but not if U.S.-based editors, reviewers and readers fail to recognize the significance of research conducted outside the United States. This essay explores why U.S.-based reviewers easily miss the social importance and the intellectual…

Background: Since the discontinuation of Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in science at age 11 in England, pupil performance data in science reported to the UK government by each primary school has relied largely on teacher assessment undertaken in the classroom. Purpose: The process by which teachers are making these judgements has been unclear,…

Academic tracking is a common practice in American high schools. While its impact on the lives of teachers and students is well documented, few studies pay close attention to the criteria used to determine high school students' academic trajectories or how teachers select and apply these criteria. This review, which examines the types of…

This article is a report of a study that used data from multiple sources to explore the hypothesis that systemic barriers inherent in Colorado's teacher evaluation policies often contribute to ineffective teacher evaluations across the state. Data were collected from extant studies, focus groups, and surveys of teachers, site administrators/head…

Across the country, states and districts are designing principal evaluation systems as a means of improving leadership, learning, and school performance. Principal evaluation systems hold potential for supporting leaders' learning and sense of accountability for instructional excellence and student performance. Principal evaluation also is an…

In view of the strengthening momentum in efforts to reforms in examinations in higher education of India and Kerala in particular, and holding that teacher education is in privileged position to initiate examination reforms in higher education by virtue of its link with both school education and the higher education, this paper focuses attention…

In formal assessments of second-language speakers' fluency, the criteria used frequently fail to differentiate between real disfluency and interactionally effective practices, while superficially disfluent, that help with communication and are used by first language speakers. In this study, we focused on pausing, silences and self-repairs in the…

This paper discusses the effectiveness of the early evaluation questions conducted to determine the academic ability of the new students in the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Systems Engineering. Questions designed are knowledge based--on what the students have learned during their pre-university level. The results show students have…

Gender gaps in learning and education outcomes have changed dramatically over the last few years. However, researchers have not adequately assessed how the high school learning environment differentially affects boys and girls. An important component of the learning environment in US secondary school is the opportunity to learn in an Advanced…

This paper will examine the Times Higher Education's (THE) World University Rankings as a corporate media product. A number of empirical studies have critiqued the methodology of the THE, yet individuals, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and governments continue to use them for decision-making. This paper analyses the influence of…

The current research aimed to develop a multidimensional measure on the criteria of career success in a Chinese context. Items on the criteria of career success were obtained using a qualitative approach among 30 Chinese employees; exploratory factor analysis was conducted to select items and determine the factor structure among a new sample of…

Sound evaluation planning requires numerous decisions about how constructs in a program theory will be translated into measures and instruments that produce evaluation data. This article, the first in a dialogue exchange, examines how decisions about measurement are (and should be) made, especially in the context of small-scale local program…

Developmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment, are biologically based disorders that currently rely on behaviorally defined criteria for diagnosis and treatment. Specific behaviors that are included in diagnostic frameworks and the point at which individual differences in behavior constitute abnormality…