More than ever, educators require assessment procedures and instrumentation that are technically adequate as well as efficient to guide data-based decision making. Thus, there is a need to understand perceptions of available tools, and the decisions made when using collected data, by the primary users of those data. In this paper, two studies that…

The influence of a federal report calling for a more orderly approach to teaching mathematics in the early grades will hinge largely on whether its message is accepted by the nation's diverse and often fiercely divided math community. Released this week, the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel recommends that schools present…

Administrators at West Virginia University violated procedures and displayed poor judgment in their "seriously flawed" response to an inquiry about a high-profile academic transcript, according to a report issued last week by an independent panel. The harshly worded report found that when the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" raised…

We provide an analysis of refereed papers published in the "Australian Journal of Outdoor Education," the "Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning," and the "Journal of Experiential Education" over the last decade. We developed a framework to classify the papers in terms of the authors' affiliations, the…

A prime role of institutional research is to contextualize institutional or survey data in a clear, accurate, concise, and compelling fashion. The purpose of this paper is to delineate the strategy used by a comprehensive Canadian community college to improve the analysis and reporting of student satisfaction surveys. Although data-rich with many…

This report provides information on degree and certificate programs offered and student program completions for fiscal year 2008-09 in North Dakota's public and private postsecondary educational institutions. Institutional programs are coded in accordance with the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP Code) system provided by the National…

This publication, presented in pocket guide format, contains data from 2008 vocational education and training (VET) statistics collections. It includes key data on students and courses, apprentices and trainees training activity, graduates, the financial operations of the VET system, and employers' use and views of the VET system. Among the…

The author conducted annual evaluations of the Associates Program from its inception. He attended one or more of the national symposia for Associates each year, interviewed each of the Associates and submitted reports to the National Center. As the number of participants in the Associates Program approached 100 and in 2008 the National Center…

This article reports on a focus group study of student experience and learning in a large humanities and social science faculty in Australia. The study explored student study/work/life issues, and student learning experiences. The article reports specifically on a discussion about combining meaningful learning in university classrooms with other…

This study analyzed the reporting of multilevel modeling applications of a sample of 99 articles from 13 peer-reviewed journals in education and the social sciences. A checklist, derived from the methodological literature on multilevel modeling and focusing on the issues of model development and specification, data considerations, estimation, and…

Although the concern for fostering opportunities for women and people of color in college athletics expanded under the leadership of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) president Myles Brand, significant challenges in hiring decisions remain. Brand said, "Though there has been some modest recent progress, there is an intolerable lack…

Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Council of Representatives (February 22-24, 2008, Washington, DC; and August 13 and 17, 2008, Boston, Massachusetts) and of the 2008 meetings of the Board of Directors (February, June, August, and December) are provided. These minutes are the official record of the actions of the Association taken during the…

This paper reports the findings of a Stage I meta-analysis exploring the achievement effects of computer-based technology use in higher education classrooms (non-distance education). An extensive literature search revealed more than 6,000 potentially relevant primary empirical studies. Analysis of a representative sample of 231 studies (k = 310)…

This paper compares the rhetorical organization of research article introductions in Brazilian Portuguese and in English within a subfield of Applied Linguistics. Using Swales' (1990) CARS model as an analytical tool, this exploratory study investigated 20 research articles. The findings indicate that introductions in Brazilian Portuguese tend to…

This article provides a summary report of American Psychological Association journal operations, 2006. This summary is compiled from the 2006 annual reports of the Council of Editors and from Central Office records.