Teachers in a middle school and a high school with high percentages of English language learners showed evidence of transformative learning during the 2 years in which they collaborated in an ongoing professional development activity called "learning labs," which include focused discussion of observations of colleagues' classrooms.…

This study was conducted to examine the differences in high school biology achievement and student affect towards teacher and content from the use of individualized correctives as part of mastery learning. An experimental pretest-posttest with control group design was used during the fall 2011 semester. Over a thirteen-week period, 99 students in…

This book compiles several essays about effective evaluation of teaching. Contents of this publication include: (1) Conducting Research on Student Evaluations of Teaching (William E. Addison and Jeffrey R. Stowell); (2) Choosing an Instrument for Student Evaluation of Instruction (Jared W. Keeley); (3) Formative Teaching Evaluations: Is Student…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of principals who have met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) with the special education subgroup. This was a qualitative study, utilizing interviews to answer the research questions. The first three research questions analyzed the areas of assessment, building-level leadership, and curriculum…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a formative evaluation of the efficacy of the Team Advisory program, an in-school intervention in an urban public high school using fitness to teach study skills and social responsibility, based on the perspective of its faculty (n = 9). The first research question asks what do Boston English Advisors…

This article explores the relationship between the lack of visible attention to formative assessment in degree specifications and its marginalization in practice. Degree specification documents form part of the quality apparatus emphasizing the accountability and certification duties of assessment. Ironically, a framework designed to assure…

Purpose: The focus of this research is to understand the role of the district superintendent, the building principal, and the school leadership team of classroom teachers as catalysts for innovation in instruction and classroom assessment. School characteristics and structures designed to specifically support professional learning communities are…

Programme evaluation is essential for quality assurance in education. In this paper, we describe our evaluation strategy for the first year of a new medical programme. Although we used multiple methods in the evaluation, the use of the focus group method was core. This paper reports our experiences of focus groups for this purpose. We describe the…

In this article we report on the effects of a digital intervention on the development of algebraic expertise of 17-18 year old students in the Netherlands. The question to be answered was whether the intervention would be effective and what factors influenced the outcome. With notions of formative assessment and symbol sense as guiding theoretical…

Formative Instruction is notoriously difficult for teachers to implement. I characterize Formative Instruction as a cognitive, technological, and organizational practice, describe a technology-supported, cross-cutting intervention in teachers' practice that responds to these dimensions, and make predictions about how results of the intervention…

Learn everything you need to know to implement an integrated system of assessment and grading. The author details the specific benefits of formative assessment and explains how to design and interpret three different types of formative assessments, how to track student progress, and how to assign meaningful grades. Detailed examples bring each…

In this qualitative study, we initiate a discussion as to why instructors should implement numerous assessments into their mathematics courses. We describe the purpose and structure of formative and summative assessments implemented in an undergraduate two-semester sequence of abstract algebra. The evaluations included homework, exams, projects,…

Three times a year, all students at one elementary school are universally screened using Curriculum-Based Measurements (CBM). This process allows school-based reading intervention and data teams to determine how students are responding to core reading instruction and which students would benefit from additional instructional support. This type of…

Problem statement and background: Feedback is essential to learning and practice improvement, yet challenging both to provide and receive. The purpose of this paper was to explore reflective processes which physicians described as they considered their assessment feedback and the perceived utility of that reflective process. Methods: This is a…

Traditional assessment methods such as tests and essays may not be adequate to evaluate students' ability to solve problems and think critically. I developed a qualitative assessment technique for a junior-level Wildlife Management Techniques course that incorporated written responses in a pre- and post-course reflection exercise. I provided the…