National tests, public examinations, and vocational qualifications in England are used for a variety of purposes, including the certification of individual learners in different subject areas and the accountability of individual professionals and institutions. However, there has been ongoing debate about the reliability and validity of their…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the issues related to enabling the accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) in doctoral level awards, and illustrate the effects for candidates, others involved in the process and higher education (HE). Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a mainly qualitative evaluation…

A major barrier to actualizing the public health impact potential of screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is the suboptimal development and implementation of evidence-based training curricula for healthcare providers. As part of a federal grant to develop and implement SBIRT training in medical residency programs, the…

An evidence-based approach to professional development used to promote Head Start teacher adoption of evidence-based early childhood intervention practices is described. The article, includes a summary of findings from a meta-analysis of adult learning methods, a description of an approach to professional development informed by the meta-analysis…

Ability tests are used by teachers to provide additional context for interpreting student achievement and as a tool for differentiating instruction to the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of students. Tests that provide the most useful information for these purposes measure school-related content domains including verbal and quantitative…

Principals in school buildings are under immense pressure to improve outcomes for all students. Recent literature suggests this accountability may be at least partly warranted, as there is overwhelming evidence that building principals can positively impact student achievement through their behavior as effective instructional leaders. Much of the…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a popular if controversial initiative developed largely in the USA, but which is, as yet, little known in general education in Australia. However, this may change given the increased attention to accountability in recent times. The national NAPLAN and international PISA assessments are leading to pressure being…

Although learning science in informal non-school environments has shown great promise in terms of increasing interest and engagement, few studies have systematically investigated and produced evidence of improved conceptual knowledge and cognitive skills. Furthermore, little is known about how digital technologies that are increasingly being used…

In Indonesia, the notion of "study first" ("kuliah dulu") pressures young adults to refrain from sex and delay marriage until they finish tertiary education. Recent scholarship has viewed choices to abstain from sex as evidence of the potency of values of modernisation, Islamic culture and the contemporary importance of moral…

Class-size reduction (CSR) mandates presuppose that resources provided to reduce class size will have a larger impact on student outcomes than resources that districts can spend as they see fit. I estimate the impact of Florida's statewide CSR policy by comparing the deviations from prior achievement trends in districts that were required to…

Evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive, partly due to the challenge of identification as families sort themselves into school districts and resources are potentially allocated to compensate (or reinforce) differences in pupil abilities. Using variation in school resources induced by the location of waterfalls in…

Approximately one in four incarcerated male young offenders in the UK is an actual or expectant father. This paper reviews evidence on the effectiveness of parenting interventions for male young offenders. We conducted systematic searches across 20 databases and consulted experts. Twelve relevant evaluations were identified: 10 from the UK, of…

African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than Whites to be incarcerated, and are also disparately affected by HIV, hepatitis C, and substance use. Reaching these populations as they leave prison is important given high rates of substance use and sexual risk-taking behaviors among U.S. prisoners. A 12-session, culturally appropriate,…

In the last four years McKinsey and Company have produced two highly influential reports on how to improve school systems. The first McKinsey report "How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top" has since its publication in 2007 been used to justify change in educational policy and practice in England and many other…

We report here the overall results of a cluster randomised controlled trial of the use of computer-aided instruction with 672 Year 7 pupils in 23 secondary school classes in the north of England. A new piece of commercial software, claimed on the basis of publisher testing to be effective in improving reading after just six weeks of use in the…