Loughshore Educational Resource Centre is a religiously integrated, co-educational, special needs and secondary school situated in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Loughshore works with a wide clientele of pupils across the spectrum of need and ability from the metropolitan area of Belfast. It plays a vital role as an educational base for a multiplicity…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of blogs as part of a formative assessment practice, to report how reflective peer-to-peer learning can be designed and provided in online higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The research relies on a qualitative approach. The empirical setting comprised an online higher education…

In recent years there has been growing theoretical interest in exploring the relationship between the interpretation and use of high-stakes proficiency test scores. In these discussions, the role of institutional test users (or test score consumers) has received only limited attention. This may be due, at least in part, to the lack of consensus in…

Objective: No longitudinal studies beginning in childhood have estimated the cumulative prevalence of psychiatric illness from childhood into young adulthood. The objective of this study was to estimate the cumulative prevalence of psychiatric disorders by young adulthood and to assess how inclusion of not otherwise specified diagnoses affects…

This article focuses on historical admissions policies and offers a more nuanced and more substantial treatment of the relationship between Populism and higher education. Prior accounts of admissions in the late nineteenth century have sensibly focused upon the tension between secondary school leaders who were mindful of their multiple…

Mixed quantitative and qualitative methods were used to assess student attitudes toward the assessment criteria for higher-order critical and analytical thinking skills in writing-intensive curricula in first-year, general education courses. The courses varied in emphasis on critical thinking in the criteria used to assess writing. The analysis is…

The "Common European Framework of Reference" (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001) provides a competency model that is increasingly used as a point of reference to compare language examinations. Nevertheless, aligning examinations to the CEFR proficiency levels remains a challenge. In this article, we propose a new, level-centered approach to…

One of the goals of game designers is to design for an engaging experience and for social interaction. The question is how. We know that games can be engaging and allow for social interaction, but how do we achieve this or even improve on it? This article provides an overview of several scientific approaches that deal with this question. It…

The federal mandate for "highly qualified" teachers, along with heightened scrutiny of public education, has resulted in the development of state-mandated teacher certification examinations across the nation. Since teacher education programs in Texas are held accountable for the success rates of program completers on the Texas…

The study investigates the chances of gaining admission to Georgian higher education in relation to residential origin. The analysis of broad trends is combined with details from an in-depth individual-level inquiry. Qualitative data on the entire population of 150,000 applicants over the period 2005-9, together with interview data from a…

Studies of high-school science course sequences have been limited primarily to a small number of site-specific investigations comparing traditional science sequences (e.g., Biology-Chemistry-Physics: BCP) to various Physics First-influenced sequences (Physics-Chemistry-Biology: PCB). The present study summarizes a five-year program evaluation…

The paper develops a new model of the essential factors required to be a top business school in the world for the benefit of schools recognized by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan. Globally, top business schools are those that excel in research, attract strong faculty, and successfully foster student development. The present…

Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) at the secondary-school level has undergone transformation, especially in the last 25 to 30 years brought about by the implementation of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1984. Earlier, the VTE education focus was to prepare students for entry-level jobs that did not require a…

In this paper, we report on a study to quantify the impact on student learning and on student assessment literacy of a brief assessment literacy intervention. We first define "assessment literacy" then report on the development and validation of an assessment literacy measurement instrument. Using a pseudo-experimental design, we…

Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates increased by 4.4%. We present evidence that certain institutions are better at…