Assessing student learning outcomes relative to a valid and reliable standard that is academically-sound and employer-relevant presents a challenge to the scholarship of teaching and learning. In this paper, readers are guided through a method for collaboratively developing and validating a rubric that integrates baseline data collected from…

Governments and other stakeholders are increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to monitor how well prepared they are for the challenges of the modern knowledge-based society. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework guiding the development of the assessment of literacy in the…

How does one build connections with students who do not feel they are part of the school community? Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City, Pennsylvania, always seemed to have a number of students who felt no connection to the school or their classmates. They skipped class or didn't participate when they did attend. They were prime candidates…

Background: Deaf children vary in the use of and proficiency in signed language. The majority of studies on writing skills of children who are deaf did not assess deaf children's proficiency in signed language and/or grouped together deaf children with varying sign language skills. Aims: Adopting a bimodal bilingual perspective, we examined…

As concern over teenagers' reading and writing skills mounts, an Alabama high school shows how to teach literacy in every subject. When Buckhorn joined the reading initiative, its teachers and top administrators attended the state's two-week summer workshop, and were inspired by its vision of literacy instruction across the content areas. But they…

Much that has been published to date on wiki use in college classes either explains what wikis are or speculates on what they might accomplish; few studies analyze how wikis have and have not worked when actually used in college classes. To this end, we report on a study conducted over two quarters, with three classes and two teaching teams in a…

Feedback from post graduate domestic and international students has highlighted the difficulties many have in coping with academic expectations of critical analytical thinking, reading and writing skills, academic language, referencing and expectations surrounding plagiarism and assessment. Many international students indicate that these concepts…

Research has confirmed that many students in the middle grades and high schools experience serious challenges with respect to content area tasks that involve literacy. Over time, educators have become more knowledgeable and informed about content literacy instructional practices for developing vocabulary, comprehension, study strategies, and…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of how lexical differences related to cohesion and connectionist models can distinguish first language (L1) writers of English from second language (L2) writers of English. Key to this analysis is the use of the computational tool Coh-Metrix, which measures cohesion and text difficulty at…

Hypotheses of population genetics are derived and tested by students in the introductory genetics laboratory classroom as they explore the effects of biotic variables (physical traits of fruit flies) and abiotic variables (island size and distance) on fruit fly populations. In addition to this hypothesis-driven experiment, the development of…

A diverse student population is a relatively recent feature of the higher education system in the United Kingdom. Consequently, it may be thought that more "traditional" types of assessment based around essay writing skills for science undergraduates may be of decreasing value and relevance to contemporary students. This article…

McCarry, a first grade teacher, formed a voluntary writing group, Writers' Lunch Club, that met the developmental and individual needs of children and inspired enthusiasm and writing success. In the article, she explains the guidelines, compares the club's writing strategies with those in the classroom, and lists tips and benefits.

The goal of this study was to design and evaluate fluency-based training units to help students eliminate inconcision. Participants first completed a 1.5-hr lesson on writing concisely and then a 5-min test during which they edited sentences containing inconcise text from the training units. Subsequently, participants were randomly assigned to an…

Purpose: This study examined whether late talkers identified at 24-31 months continued to have weaker language and reading skills at 17 years of age than typically developing peers. Method: Language and reading outcomes at 17 years of age were examined in 26 children identified as late talkers with normal nonverbal ability and normal receptive…

Speaking, listening, reading, and writing are all language activities. The human capacity for speaking and listening has a biological foundation: wherever there are people, there is spoken language. Acquiring spoken language is an unconscious activity, and, barring any physical deformity or language learning disability, like severe autism, all…