This paper examines the Knowledge Age and how economic factors are causing educators to rethink and reinvent education. Two key factors in education in the Knowledge Age will be education for an economy of innovation, and the increasing virtualization of education. We present knowledge building pedagogy as a model for education in the Knowledge…

The release of the latest results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) garnered all the usual headlines about America's lackluster performance and the rise of competitor nations. To be sure, the findings--that America's fifteen-year-olds perform in the middle of the pack in both reading and math--are disconcerting for a…

Although many researchers and policy analysts (e.g., Harris, Glazerman et al., 2011; 2010) consider value-added to be the state of the art in school and teacher productivity measurement, only a minority of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) Round 1 and 2 grantees used value-added as a measure of school or teacher performance. Fourteen of the 34 grantees…

This dissertation explores the hypothesis that language processing proceeds in "windows" that correspond to representational units, where sensory signals are integrated according to time-scales that correspond to the rate of the input. To investigate universal mechanisms, a comparison of signed and spoken languages is necessary. Underlying the…

There are those who agree with Tom Pettitt that we are entering into a period where text based literacy is no longer the only measure of intelligence, nor is it the only form of valuable communications and knowledge acquisition for today's media-centric children. As Prensky states, today's youth speak "digital" as their primary language. While his…

The characteristics of a state's accommodations policy may affect a state's decision about whether to develop an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS). A very restrictive accommodations policy may make it more difficult for some students to participate in the state's regular assessment used for accountability…

Computer-based testing, or e-assessment, has the potential to deliver immediate results for the benefit of schools. This paper describes a project that aimed to exploit this potential by designing e-assessments where the results were intended for use by teachers in planning the next steps in teaching and learning: low-stakes, formative assessment.…

This article details an investigation into the onscreen marking (OSM) of Liberal Studies (LS) in Hong Kong--where paper-based marking (PBM) of public examinations is being phased out and wholly superseded by OSM. The study involved 14 markers who had previously rated Liberal Studies scripts on screen in the 2009 Hong Kong Advanced Level…

Although there is a plethora of online learning studies, relatively few studies have probed into teachers' online technology adoption. It is suggested that faculty resistance to technology be one of the key hindrances to the future development of distance learning. Several studies have argued that teachers' resistance to technology, one of the key…

As the technological age reaches its peak, so does the need to improve assessment for online instruction. Assessment includes all activities that teachers and students undertake to get information that can be used to improve teaching and learning (Black and William,1998b). Assessment is a critical factor of the learning environment. The popularity…

Background/Context: The collegial analysis of student work artifacts has been effective in advancing the practice of experienced teachers; however, the use of such strategies as a centerpiece for induction has not been explored, nor has the development of tool systems to support such activity with novices. Purpose/Objective: We tested the…

Considerable research has investigated the link between academic achievement and social behavior. The authors set the context for their work by reviewing some of the research that has been done. To address similarities and limitations in previous research, they included concurrent ratings of behavior from teachers and children's performance on…

How students understand, feel about and respond to assessment might contribute significantly to learning behaviour and academic achievement. This paper reviews studies that have used a relatively new self-reported survey questionnaire ("Students' Conceptions of Assessment"--SCoA) about student perceptions and understandings of…

Social capital has traditionally been defined in terms of the amount of resources that one derives as a result of a diversity of interpersonal relationships. However, the quality of these relationships across development has not been examined as a contributor to social capital and few studies have examined the significance of various age-salient…

We investigate students' negative perceptions about an online peer assessment system for undergraduate writing across the disciplines. Specifically, we consider the nature of students' resistance to peer assessment; what factors influence that resistance; and how students' perceptions impact their revision work. We do this work by first examining…