This feature focuses on the five areas an institution needs to know before implementing holistic measures. These include: what does a holistic review entail, how to be legally complaint, Sedlacek's noncognitive variables, applying student success measures, and the vital importance of training.

School accountability systems in the United States have been criticized on a number of fronts, mainly on grounds of completeness and fairness. This study examines an alternative school quality framework--one that seemingly responds to several core critiques of present accountability systems. Examining results from a pilot study in a diverse urban…

The small amount of work on workplace writing assessment has focused almost entirely on student readiness for professional writing or included case studies of employer expectations for new writers. While these studies provide insight into current pedagogies for technical writing and writing instruction in general, the main conclusion to be drawn…

A high school in the northwestern United States has a student population composed primarily of low income and minority students. Yet something that sets the school apart is a four-year graduation rate of 95%. While it is difficult to determine all of the factors that contribute to this academic success, this article explains students' perceptions…

This paper focuses on the potential of competency assessment to support the long-term growth of the labour market by facilitating the appropriate employment of skilled immigrants. A competency-informed approach involves looking holistically at an individual's ability to apply knowledge and skills with appropriate judgment in a defined setting. The…

Equal access to relevant, quality education creates pathways for greater economic growth, improved health outcomes, sustained democratic governance, and more peaceful and resilient societies. Education promotes positive socio-economic progress and enhances standards of living. Strengthening education systems--the people, public and private…

The approaching 50th anniversary of nurture is an opportunity to tell the story of nurture groups and consider what the underlying rationale, philosophy and principles have to offer now in meeting today's challenges, especially the high numbers of exclusions from education, the increased demand for mental health services and the impact on…

Collaborative problem solving, creativity, innovation, and continuously improved performance outcomes are the normative expectations for organizations in the early 21st century. At the same time, workers seek not only equitable compensation for their efforts, but also opportunities for professional growth and development as well as acknowledgement…

The skills, knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and personality traits that lead to creative thinking and creative behavior do not exist--and do not develop--in a vacuum. They are inextricably tied to content, to domains, in particular, and they therefore vary by domains. The more we learn about creativity, the more we discover how domain specific…

With increasing technological changes and needs in society, technology and engineering education has received much attention in school science. Yet, technology traditionally has been subordinated to science or simply taken as the application of science. This position has resulted in a limited understanding of teaching technological and engineering…

Faculty and administrators still struggle to practice and support a holistic approach to engaged scholarship. Many institutions have created a culture of engaged scholarship, yet faculty are looking for practical ways to plan, implement, and reflect on engaged scholarship due to productivity expectations. New faculty are often drawn to the idea of…

Mixed-methods research (MMR), as an inter-discourse (quantitative and qualitative) methodology, can provide applied linguistics researchers the opportunity to draw on and integrate the strengths of the two research methodological approaches in favour of making more rigorous inferences about research problems. In this article, the argument is made…

In this issue, we have compiled six original papers, outcomes from the U.S. National Science Foundation (US-NSF)-funded REESE (Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering) 2020 Vision: The Next Generation of STEM Learning Research project. The purpose of 2020 Vision was to re-envision the questions and frameworks guiding STEM…

Does America needs more welders and fewer philosophers? Community college humanities professors and administrators say it benefits all students, whether liberal arts or career track, to take courses in philosophy, history, political science, language arts, and other liberal arts subjects. And they're developing innovative humanities curricula to…

In the centenary of the death of Patrick Henry Pearse--one of the leaders of Ireland's 1916 Rebellion--it is interesting to reflect on the relevance of his writing for contemporary approaches to lifelong and lifewide learning. Pearse's essay "The Murder Machine" was forged within the tradition of progressive education movements in the…