The authors describe how a university research center partners with intermediary organizations and high schools to use research methods to support particular goals. These researcher-practitioner partnerships establish goals, articulate effective strategies, and co-construct new approaches to address the challenges of school reform. The article…

This paper discusses the online Personal Learning Planner (PLP) project underway at the National Institute of Community Innovations (NICI), one of the partners in the Teacher Education Network (TEN), a 2000 PT3 Catalyst grantee. The Web-based PLP provides a standards-linked "portfolio space" for both works in progress and demonstration collections…

Web-based courses are promising in that they are effective and have the possibility of their instructional design being improved over time. However, the assessments of said courses are criticized in terms of their validity. This paper is an exploratory case study regarding the validity of the assessment system used in a semi presential web-based…

"Online Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation: Emerging Practices" provides a view of the possibilities and challenges facing online educators and evaluators in the 21st Century. As technology evolves and online measurement and assessment follow, "Online Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation: Emerging Practices" uses…

This article describes an alternative way of testing--a performance assessment--that is different both in process and goals from typical tests, but closer to what teachers believe assessment should be. Teachers who have helped to create, refine, and use this new generation of tests find them valuable because they measure the skills and concepts…

A model incorporating prerequisite mathematics performance and other variables deemed to be associated with learning elementary statistics (ES) is developed. The relationship between ES performance and the explanatory variables is well represented by the logistics form. Aptitude, effort and motivation are the only significant explanatory variables…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of various cognitive abilities and aspects of math performance with computational estimation skill among third graders. Students (n=315) were assessed on language, nonverbal reasoning, concept formation, processing speed, long-term memory, working memory, inattentive behavior, basic reading…

The attentional blink refers to the finding that the 2nd of 2 targets embedded in a stream of rapidly presented distractors is often missed. Whereas most theories of the attentional blink focus on limited-capacity processes that occur after target selection, the present work investigates the selection process itself. Identifying a target letter…

This paper reports on research into a national education program within one of Australia's largest trade unions. The program was designed to assist the union's staff and elected officials respond to the rapidly changing industrial and political conditions in the manufacturing sector. It is ambitious in scope comprising sixteen modules that range…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

Performance assessment in the UK science General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) currently relies on pupil reports of their investigations. These are widely criticized. Written tests of procedural understanding could be used as an alternative, but what exactly do they measure? This paper describes small-scale research in which there was…

This article reports on "Beyond the OPI: Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) Design Project," a three-year (1997-2000) research initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education International Research and Studies Program. The primary goal of the project was to develop an integrated skills assessment prototype that would measure…

Purpose: In 2 experiments, the assumption that continual orienting to tinnitus uses cognitive resources was investigated. It was hypothesized that differences in performance of tinnitus and control groups would manifest during demanding or unfamiliar tasks that required strategic, controlled processing and that reduced performance was not related…

In three studies, the effects of visual and phonological distinctness on the visual-verbal paired associate learning of dyslexic and normal readers at the age of 10-12 were examined. We hypothesized that both groups would be equally affected by the visual distinctness of the pictures, whereas the learning performance of the dyslexic children would…

The international competitiveness of national higher education systems is an important political issue in many countries. These politics drive some governments to reform their systems by borrowing elements from societies with systems thought to be superior. These authors argue that a simple transfer of isolated elements from one higher education…