Competency-Based Instruction (CBI) is a model for professional education with potentially significant implications for rehabilitation counselor training. A simple description of the basic concepts of CBI is presented together with several related issues and potential benefits. (Author)

Changes in the college and university environment (oversimplified instructional materials, demand for detailed instructions, avoidance of challenge in curricula, overuse of student evaluation of faculty) suggest that in their efforts to recruit and retain students, institutions have promoted students' increased intellectual dependency. This…

Describes an organized set of materials prospective school health educators should develop to accurately represent their newly acquired skills and competencies. The portfolio should include cooperating teacher evaluations, videotapes of teaching episodes, examples of their work, samples of assessment instruments, statements of philosophy, examples…

This paper explains the development of a National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education project to move the professional accreditation process to one which focuses primarily on the performance of candidates and institutions. It discusses program quality review and notes possible differences between the current system and such a system in…

A survey of 859 school psychologists who indicated prior experience conducting bilingual psychoeducational assessment identified 36 factors used to comply with provisions in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act relating to assessing bilingual or limited-English-proficient students. Seventeen additional factors that were overlooked and…

A University of Washington study that found professors who are easy graders receive better evaluations than those who are tougher, and another study showing faculty enthusiasm alone raises student evaluations, have shaken a long-standing consensus among researchers that student evaluations are a good measure of a teacher's skills. Most…

Critiques William Mehrens' 1992 article on performance assessment, claiming that Mehrens professes to favor performance assessment but only as an afterthought to traditional assessment, and Mehrens' view of traditional assessment limits his portrayal of performance assessment. The paper encourages the research community to support performance…

Uses oral-language skills assessment to illustrate sound classroom assessment practices, stressing interrelationships among teaching, learning, and assessment and viewing assessment as a continual, ongoing reference in a dynamic process, not an end in itself. Describes supportive classroom environments, explains oral language profiles, and…

Cognitive science research has created considerable change in people's understanding of what learning is and how it happens. This change has implications for teaching, learning, and assessment. To develop students' deep understanding of a subject, teachers must understand cognitive theories of learning and apply them in their classroom-assessment…

Provides advice, models, and information concerning time management for higher education geography students. Reiterates the need for personal planning and scheduling. Addresses such issues as deadlines, reading time, field classes, work space, leisure time, and dissertations. Includes eight sample charts and schedules. (MJP)

An extension of an earlier study of 842 college students' conceptions of learning draws on in-depth analysis of the experiences of 12 individuals. It was found that individual comments about learning are only understood when viewed within the larger context, highest-achieving students were those who were most reflective in learning, some students…

Forty children (ages five to nine) with or without reading disabilities, matched for mental age or reading age, completed a phoneme-grapheme learning task. Reading-disabled children took more trials than controls to learn correspondence pairs. Performance on the phonological processing task of short-term memory was the best predictor of overall…

One University of Georgia business administration department has experimented with having faculty interview a fellow faculty member's students for insights into enhancing the learning environment inside and outside the peer faculty's classroom. A description of the program looks at how the interviews were conducted, the value of the interactions…

Conflicting policy decisions, scaling difficulties, teacher resistance, and mediocre results are slowing adoption of authentic student-evaluation measures. With more conservative state leadership, California and Arizona rejected performance assessment, and other states have followed. Despite various setbacks, new assessments are becoming the norm.…

Three studies compared the common Likert agree/disagree question form to a behavioral observation form for faculty evaluation. The Likert-type format prompted global, impressionistic responses; the behavioral observation form prompted more objective responses. Results suggest use of behavioral observation rather than agree/disagree questions can…