Education Commons^™

Learn By Doing: A Case Study On Enhancing Students' Entrepreneurial Skills, Christiane Schroeter, Lindsey Higgins

Christiane Schroeter

No abstract provided.

Timss 2015 : A First Look At Australia's Results, Sue Thomson, Nicole Wernert, Elizabeth O'Grady, Sima Rodrigues

Nicole Wernert

The goal of TIMSS is to provide comparative information about educational achievement across countries to improve teaching and learning in mathematics and science. It is designed, broadly, to align with the mathematics and science curricula in the participating education systems and countries, and focuses on assessment at Year 4 and Year 8. It also provides comparative perspectives on trends in achievement in the context of different education systems, school organisational approaches and instructional practices; and to enable this, TIMSS collects a rich array of background data from students, schools and teachers, and also collects data about the education systems themselves. …

Testing The Effectiveness Of A Quality Assurance System: The Example Of Hong Kong, David Lim

Prof. David Lim

Operating a quality assurance system in tertiary education is the rule rather than the exception, because of the belief that it will improve quality. However, proving this is not easy. This study examines three ways of providing the evidence: the a priori method, the stepwise backtracking method, and the external evaluation method. The quality assurance system of the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong is used as a case‐study, but the findings on the advantages and disadvantages of using these methods have relevance for testing the effectiveness of quality assurance systems for other education institutions.

Connecting Self-Efficacy And Views About Nature Of Science In Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Andrew Elby

Gina Quan

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sharon E. Moore

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sherri L. Wallace

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

School Staff Workload Study: Final Report To The Australian Education Union – Victorian Branch, Paul R. Weldon, Lawrence Ingvarson

Dr Lawrence Ingvarson (Consultant)

The School Staff Workload Study was commissioned by the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (the Union) in March 2016. The study involved the design and delivery of an online survey by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The survey was a census of the Union membership and was open to the majority of members in Term 2, June 2016. The survey targeted three groups: teachers, school leaders (Principal class), and education support staff. The survey was intended to provide a detailed picture of the workload of the Union membership and, by extension, Victorian government school staff. Attention …

School Staff Workload Study: Final Report To The Australian Education Union – Victorian Branch, Paul R. Weldon, Lawrence Ingvarson

Dr Paul Weldon

The School Staff Workload Study was commissioned by the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (the Union) in March 2016. The study involved the design and delivery of an online survey by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The survey was a census of the Union membership and was open to the majority of members in Term 2, June 2016. The survey targeted three groups: teachers, school leaders (Principal class), and education support staff. The survey was intended to provide a detailed picture of the workload of the Union membership and, by extension, Victorian government school staff. Attention …

Students' Perceptions Of Student Evaluation Of Teaching (Set) Process, Ale J. Hejase, Rana S. Al Kaakour, Leila A. Halawi, Hussin J. Hejase

Leila A. Halawi

Researchers have mixed views about Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) as means to evaluate teaching where some agreed and others viewed SET as being biased. This study aims to measure students’ perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of the evaluation process in Lebanon. A survey questionnaire was administered to students from five Lebanese universities. Findings revealed that students were positive and perceived the evaluation process as effective and appropriate to evaluate teaching. Students identified students’ perceptions, instructors’ behavior, and course characteristics as variables that may impact the process. Results and implications were discussed for future research.

Australian Child Wellbeing Project Technical Report, Petra Lietz, Elizabeth O'Grady, Mollie Tobin, Martin Murphy, Greg Macaskill, Gerry Redmond, Katherine Dix, Sue Thomson

Dr Martin Murphy

The Australian Child Wellbeing Project (ACWP) was conducted from 2012 – 2015 using a mixed-methods, child-centred approach. Young people’s perspectives were used to inform a nationally representative survey of children’s wellbeing in the middle years. The aims of the ACWP survey were to benchmark child wellbeing in Australia and to provide useful information for services that promote young people’s healthy development. A final outcome of this project was to make the extensive ACWP database publically available in order to provide further opportunity to exploit the rich data and improve understanding. Accordingly, this technical report consolidates the research conducted by ACER …

National Assessment Program : Civics And Citizenship 2013 Year 6 And Year 10 : Technical Report, Kate O'Malley, Eveline Gebhardt, Renee Chow, Martin Murphy, Wolfram Schulz, Judy Nixon, Julian Fraillon

Dr Martin Murphy

In 1999, the State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers of Education, meeting as the tenth Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), agreed to the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century. Subsequently, MCEETYA agreed to report on progress toward the achievement of the National Goals on a nationally-comparable basis, via the National Assessment Program (NAP). As part of NAP, a three-yearly cycle of sample assessments in primary science, civics and citizenship and ICT was established. The three previous cycles of NAP – CC were conducted in 2004, 2007 and 2010. As a result of a 2010 …

Population Definitions For Comparative Surveys In Education, Martin Murphy

Dr Martin Murphy

This paper provides an overview of population definitions for large-scale comparative educational surveys. It has been prepared to help inform the development of a population definition and sampling framework that will be used in the British Council Global English research project. This paper examines a number of large-scale surveys including the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which is conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), as well as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO), both of which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation …

Longitudinal Success Of Calculus I Reform, Doug Bullock, Kathrine E. Johnson, Janet Callahan

Janet M. Callahan

This paper describes the second year of an ongoing project to transform calculus instruction at Boise State University. Over the past several years, Calculus I has undergone a complete overhaul that has involved a movement from a collection of independent, uncoordinated, personalized, lecture-based sections, into a single coherent multi-section course with an activelearning pedagogical approach. The overhaul also significantly impacted the course content and learning objectives. The project is now in its fifth semester and has reached a steady state where the reformed practices are normative within the subset of instructors who might be called upon to teach Calculus I. …

Revealing Student Misconceptions And Instructor Blind Spots With Muddiest Point Formative Feedback, Cindy Waters, Stephen J. Krause, Janet Callahan, Barry Dupen, Mary B. Vollaro, Peggie Weeks

Janet M. Callahan

Of interest to all engineering disciplines, well-designed formative feedback has the potential to enhance both instructor teaching and student learning. Delivering fundamental courses year after year, can ultimately lead faculty to use stale notes or slides from past years. This approach may save time, but does not meet the shifting needs of our students who have high expectations from their instructors. One simple method to improve teaching is to employ muddiest point reflections. Muddiest point reflections involve simply asking students to anonymously reflect on what was “muddy”, i.e. confusing, during class and to rank their level of confusion which not …

Evolution Of A First-Year Engineering Course, Noah Salzman, Janet Callahan, Gary Leroy Hunt, Carol Sevier, Amy J. Moll

Amy J. Moll

The first-year engineering course at Boise State University has evolved significantly over the past decade as a result of continuous improvement with a particular focus on student retention. The course was originally created in 1999-2001 as an “Introduction to Engineering” course in order to recruit students to one of the fields of engineering, by introducing those fields of engineering as topics across the semester. Over the first ten years, the course continued that introductory-to-field focus while also introducing a significant design element solving openended engineering problems. As a result of a five-year grant aimed toward improving first-year retention, the first-year …

Evolution Of A First-Year Engineering Course, Noah Salzman, Janet Callahan, Gary Leroy Hunt, Carol Sevier, Amy J. Moll

Janet M. Callahan

The first-year engineering course at Boise State University has evolved significantly over the past decade as a result of continuous improvement with a particular focus on student retention. The course was originally created in 1999-2001 as an “Introduction to Engineering” course in order to recruit students to one of the fields of engineering, by introducing those fields of engineering as topics across the semester. Over the first ten years, the course continued that introductory-to-field focus while also introducing a significant design element solving openended engineering problems. As a result of a five-year grant aimed toward improving first-year retention, the first-year …

English Learner Oral Language Production In Middle School Academic Classes, Kathryn Brooks

Kathryn Brooks

Because of current federal and state educational policies, oral language development is an often overlooked aspect of language and literacy use and development of English Learning (EL) students in K-12 schools in the United States. This article describes a study in which a researcher used an ecobehavioral approach to investigate the conditional probability that young adolescent EL students would produce language in content area classes as they engaged in four different instructional grouping configurations: whole class, small group, one-to-one, and individual instruction. Significant differences emerged between instructional grouping configurations in terms of EL student production of oral academic language. Overall, …

English Language Learner Academic Engagement And Instructional Grouping Configurations, Kathryn Brooks, Linda P. Thurston

Kathryn Brooks

This study used and ecobehavioral approach to investigate the conditional probability that English language learning (ELL) students would engage in academic tasks in urban middle school content area classrooms within different instructional grouping configurations. These configurations included whole class, small group, one-to-one, and individual instructions. The participants in the study included 28 native Spanish-speaking students who were all identified as being English language learners (ELL). The findings on this study indicate that participants were most likely to engage in academic tasks during small group and one-to-one instruction. They were least likely to engage in academic tasks during whole class and …

Creating Conditions For Transforming Practicing K-12 Mainstream Teachers Of English Language Learners, Susan R. Adams, Kathryn Brooks

Kathryn Brooks

Critical incident reflection journal writing provides a rich source for identifying high impact components of Project Alianza, a graduate course for mainstream secondary teachers funded by a US Department of Education Title III Professional Development grant. In this narrative pilot study featuring one strand of existing data, the co-authors, who are also co-instructors and co-researchers, begin the first rounds of analysis to identify emerging key conditions and contributing factors featured within specialized graduate courses for encouraging dispositional change and professional efficacy toward English language learners (ELLs) in practicing K-12 mainstream educators. Using Mezirow’s adult transformational learning theory (1991), Kegan’s stage …

Creating Inclusive Learning Communities For Ell Students: Transforming School Principals' Perspectives, Kathryn Brooks, Susan R. Adams, Trish Morita-Mullaney

Kathryn Brooks

School-level administrators are often concerned about tertiary supports for English language learners (ELLs), such as translating signs and school documents or offering Spanish classes for their teachers. Although modeling and learning the heritage language(s) of the ESL population can be helpful, its focus on language differences can limit our considerations of broader systemic challenges that impact the success of ELLs in our schools. This article shares the dialogues that school administrators are having about ELL students and discusses the use of social justice and equity focused professional learning communities as a way to transform this discourse to address the broader …

Test-Based Accountability Systems: Concerns For Indiana’S Multilingual Learners And Their Teachers, Kathryn Brooks, Brooke Kandel-Cisco

Kathryn Brooks

Indiana’s current test-based accountability system grew, in part, out of decades of federal-level educational reform initiatives. This article reviews the history of Indiana’s test-based accountability system for schools and details how the system calculates evaluative ratings for Indiana teachers and schools. Additionally, the article analyzes how the Indiana accountability system contradicts what is known about appropriate measurement of English language learners and lists psychometric and validity concerns such as valid assessment, non-random assignment, norming groups, and ceiling/bottom effects. This article calls for a system in which multiple assessments offer rich data for school and teacher evaluations.

Fostering Understanding Of Early Numeracy Development, Kate Reid, Nicola Andrews

Dr Kate Reid

In 2012, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) began the Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study: Transitions from Preschool to School (LLANS:TPS). The study is part of a program of longitudinal literacy and numeracy research at ACER that started with a seven-year longitudinal study of children’s developing literacy and numeracy throughout primary school, which began in 1999 with a cohort of 1000 children from 100 schools around Australia (Meiers et al., 2006). The original Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study (LLANS) developed new instruments for assessing children’s literacy and numeracy understanding in the first three years of primary school and described …

Sucidality In Sexual Minority Youth, Franci Crepeau-Hobson, R. Glazier, A. Scheer

Franci Crepeau-Hobson

No abstract provided.

Ecological Neuropsychology, R. C. D'Amato, Franci Crepeau-Hobson, M. Geil, L. Huang, E. Mcgrain

Franci Crepeau-Hobson

No abstract provided.

Higher Education Standards Panel Consultation : Transparency Of Higher Education Admissions Processes: Response From The Australian Council For Educational Research, Daniel Edwards, Brad Jackel

Dr Brad Jackel

This document has been prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in response to the Higher Education Standards Panel’s Consultation on the Transparency of Higher Education Admissions Processes. In developing the document, ACER has drawn on previous experience working in admissions research and admissions testing, and on discussions over time with universities in Australia as a result of this work relating to the issues of relevance to this consultation. This document explores four key areas identified by ACER as critical to improving the admissions processes of higher education providers in Australia. In developing this document, we have approached …

Higher Education Standards Panel Consultation : Transparency Of Higher Education Admissions Processes: Response From The Australian Council For Educational Research, Daniel Edwards, Brad Jackel

Dr Daniel Edwards

This document has been prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in response to the Higher Education Standards Panel’s Consultation on the Transparency of Higher Education Admissions Processes. In developing the document, ACER has drawn on previous experience working in admissions research and admissions testing, and on discussions over time with universities in Australia as a result of this work relating to the issues of relevance to this consultation. This document explores four key areas identified by ACER as critical to improving the admissions processes of higher education providers in Australia. In developing this document, we have approached …

Investing In Teachers, Adeola Capel, Hilary Hollingsworth, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Alison Lonsdale, Yung Nietschke, Rachel Parker, Kate Reid, Jeaniene Spink, Mollie Tobin, Mary Fearnley-Sander, Jacinta Overs

Dr Kate Reid

This evaluation compares evidence from the literature with Australia’s experience in supporting teacher development in a range of developing countries. It uses case studies to good effect in explaining choices made, the extent to which expectations were or were not met, and the lessons for future Australian assistance for teacher development. The evaluation found mixed results. In cooperation with governments and other donors, Australia has made positive contributions, such as improving teacher frameworks and curriculums, and training teachers through a range of interventions. However, there is room to improve—for example, in enhancing policy, strengthening analysis and negotiating new investments—so teacher …

Investing In Teachers, Adeola Capel, Hilary Hollingsworth, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Alison Lonsdale, Yung Nietschke, Rachel Parker, Kate Reid, Jeaniene Spink, Mollie Tobin, Mary Fearnley-Sander, Jacinta Overs

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

This evaluation compares evidence from the literature with Australia’s experience in supporting teacher development in a range of developing countries. It uses case studies to good effect in explaining choices made, the extent to which expectations were or were not met, and the lessons for future Australian assistance for teacher development. The evaluation found mixed results. In cooperation with governments and other donors, Australia has made positive contributions, such as improving teacher frameworks and curriculums, and training teachers through a range of interventions. However, there is room to improve—for example, in enhancing policy, strengthening analysis and negotiating new investments—so teacher …

Dps Exemplary Schools Case Study: A Cross-Case Analysis, Honorine Nocon, Alan Davis, Tracy Keenan, Ruth Brancard, Barbara Dray, Heather L. Johnson, Kara Mitchell, Sally Nathenson-Mejia, Nancy Shanklin, Sheila Shannon, Shruti Poulsen, Maria Thomas-Ruzic, Ron Tzur, Geeta Verma

Sheila Shannon

No abstract provided.

Survive And Thrive During Testing Season, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Right now, students across the nation are embarking upon a series of standardized tests following intense days and weeks of test preparation accompanied by anxiety and worry from both parents and educators. Many of these test participants are English as a Second Language (ESL) learners with a wide diversity of learning potential, social and emotional challenges, strengths, cultures and interests. Among these young learners, there are many who put themselves to bed in the evening, get themselves up and ready for school, and do not have breakfast, arranged homework times or adult support to guide their school days...