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Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) provides partners with information for allocating limited budget resources. Challenges in conducting CEAs include collecting data across multiple sources, introducing cost ssumptions, and delivering the results to partners. This paper introduces strategies to address these challenges using the example of the Strengthening Accountability to Reach All Students (STARS) project, a government-implemented differentiated instruction project in Ghana. To implement the programme for one school year, including opportunity costs related to training, the differentiated instruction plus basic management arm cost $48 per child, while the differentiated instruction plus basic and enhanced management training arm cost $84 per child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue of instructional guidance in reciprocal peer tutoring with task cards as learning tools. Eighty-six Kinesiology students (age 17-19 years) were randomized across four reciprocal peer tutoring settings, differing in quality and quantity of guidance, to learn Basic Life Support (BLS) with task cards. The separate and combined effect of two instructional guidance variables, role switching and role definition, was investigated on learning outcomes. In all settings student pairs were given 20 min to learn BLS. Individual student performance was measured before (baseline), immediately after (intervention) and two weeks later (retention). Repeated ANOVA showed strong learning gains but no significant differences between groups for total BLS scores. However, at retention significantly more students from the most guided condition remembered and consequently performed all BLS skills. It is concluded that guidance comprising role switching and role definition enhances skill retention in reciprocal peer tutoring with task cards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do signals of high aptitude shape the course of collegiate study? We apply a regression discontinuity design to understand how college major choice is impacted by receiving a higher Advanced Placement (AP) integer score, despite similar exam performance, compared to students who received a lower integer score. Attaining higher scores increases the probability that a student majors in that exam subject by approximately 5 percent (0.64 percentage points), with some individual exams demonstrating increases as high as 30 percent. A substantial portion of the overall effect is driven by behavioral responses to the positive signal of receiving a higher score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reform and remediation assigned to college students for the improvement of their completion rates. Topics discussed include the mainstreaming at the City University of New York (CUNY), the patterns of the challenges faced by the CUNY with remedial education, and the use of common syllabus by the instructors.

This article explores the role of students' prior, or antecedent, genre knowledge in relation to their developing disciplinary genre competence by drawing on an illustrative example of an engineering genre-competence assessment. The initial outcomes of this diagnostic assessment suggest that student ability to successfully identify and characterize rhetorical and textual features of a genre does not guarantee their successful writing performance in the genre. Although previous active participation in genre production (writing) seems to have a defining influence on student ability to write in the genre, such participation appears to be a necessary but insufficient precondition for genre competence development. The authors discuss the usefulness of probing student antecedent genre knowledge early in communication courses as a potential source for macrolevel curriculum decisions and microlevel pedagogical adjustments in course design, and they propose directions for future research.

Whether education systems can stimulate or attenuate the demand for private supplementary tutoring by acting on the quality of provided school instruction is a complex and relatively unexplored issue. This study aims to reduce this knowledge gap by analysing the relationships between private tutoring attendance and instructional quality perceived at individual and classroom levels. Regression analyses are performed on a representative sample of 1280 pupils in the senior grade of lower secondary Czech schools. In mathematics and national language, students who find the school instruction interesting, who learn a lot, whose teachers can motivate them and explain the subject well, are less likely to use private tutoring in this subject. By increasing the quality of teaching in these subjects, schools and teachers may indirectly reduce the demand for private tutoring. However, perceived quality of school instruction in English language does not affect English tutoring, which is procured by affluent families irrespective of the perceived quality of school instructions. • The study aimed to determine the relationships between school instructional quality and private tutoring attendance. • A representative sample of 1280 Czech lower-secondary students was analysed. • In mathematics and national language, the lower the perceived quality of school instruction, the higher the likelihood of taking private tutoring. • No such relationship was found for tutoring in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angoff-based standard setting is widely used, especially for high-stakes licensure assessments. Nonetheless, some critics have claimed that the judgment task is too cognitively complex for panelists, whereas others have explicitly challenged the consistency in (replicability of) standard-setting outcomes. Evidence of consistency in item judgments and passing scores is necessary to justify using the passing scores for consequential decisions. Few studies, however, have directly evaluated consistency across different standard-setting panels. The purpose of this study was to investigate consistency of Angoff-based standard-setting judgments and passing scores across 9 different educator licensure assessments. Two independent, multistate panels of educators were formed to recommend the passing score for each assessment, with each panel engaging in 2 rounds of judgments. Multiple measures of consistency were applied to each round of judgments. The results provide positive evidence of the consistency in judgments and passing scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared short-form constructed responses evaluated by both human raters and machine scoring algorithms. The context was a public competition on which both public competitors and commercial vendors vied to develop machine scoring algorithms that would match or exceed the performance of operational human raters in a summative high-stakes testing environment. Data (N = 25,683) were drawn from three different states, employed 10 different prompts, and were drawn from two different secondary grade levels. Samples ranging in size from 2,130 to 2,999 were randomly selected from the data sets provided by the states and then randomly divided into three sets: a training set, a test set, and a validation set. Machine performance on all of the agreement measures failed to match that of the human raters. The current study concluded with recommendations on steps that might improve machine-scoring algorithms before they can be used in any operational way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resident doctors have an important and integral responsibility of teaching a number of individuals. The purpose of this study urns to measure the effectiveness of the University of Saskatchewan's resident-as-teacher training course - Teaching Improvement Project Systems (TIPS). Residents who attended the TIPS course from January, 2010 through June, 2013, x rere recorded in microteaching sessions before the course as well as during Day 1 and Day 2 of TIPS. Resident teaching skills improved significantly as a result of the TIPS course, especially from pre-TIPS to Day 1. Further research is required to study to what extent and under what circumstances these skills are implemented after completion of the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on medical topics which include the cognitive training for older adults, measuring the intensity of light in melanopsin age, and the attentional capture depends on the relationships between target, and nontarget.

We develop a search model to explain the long tail effect. Search targetability, or the quality of search, is explicitly modelled. Consumers are searching for the right products within the right categories. As search costs decrease, or search targetability increases, additional variety of goods catering to long tail consumers will be provided, and the concentration of sales across different categories of goods decreases. The effects of a decrease in search costs or an increase in search targetability on consumer utility, prices, and profits depend on whether the type coverage increases. Decreases in search costs and increases in search targetability have different qualitative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne de l'Éducation is the property of Canadian Society for the Study of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Choosing a system of interest and identifying the interactions of the system with its environment are crucial steps in applying the relation between work and energy. Responses to problems that we administered in introductory calculus-based physics courses show that many students fail to recognize the implications of a particular choice of system. In some cases, students do not believe that particular groupings of objects can even be considered to be a system. Some errors are more prevalent in situations involving gravitational potential energy than elastic potential energy. The difficulties are manifested in both qualitative and quantitative reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in inclusive classrooms are challenged to provide reading instruction for students with a wide range of instructional levels. This article reports on the implementation of guided reading in four middle years inclusive classrooms, the impact on student engagement and reading progress, and teacher perspectives on the guided reading approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tutoring is often a useful supplement to traditional classroom teaching in Canada. Cross-age tutoring, which involves a tutor a few years older than a tutee, has been reported to be more effective than same-age tutoring, as it promotes responsibility, empowerment and academic performance. However, the current same-age classroom teaching may act as a barrier to cross-age tutoring because the latter requires plenty of coordination, preparation and organization. At Crescent School, an all-boys independent school in Toronto, Canada, a pilot online cross-age peer-tutoring program was launched in September 2014, named Crescent School vLearning. The purpose of this study was to formally assess the program, and quantitatively gauge its success. Thirty-six questions were randomly selected from the vLearning website, examined for response time and response quality as assessed by students and teachers. The fast response times as well as the high-quality of responses have resulted in the program gaining traction in the school. As vLearning continues to catch-on with students, the team of Upper School tutors will soon need to be expanded to accommodate the increasing volume of questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of students' prior, or antecedent, genre knowledge in relation to their developing disciplinary genre competence by drawing on an illustrative example of an engineering genre-competence assessment. The initial outcomes of this diagnostic assessment suggest that students' ability to successfully identify and characterize rhetorical and textual features of a genre does not guarantee their successful writing performance in the genre. Although previous active participation in genre production (writing) seems to have a defining influence on students' ability to write in the genre, such participation appears to be a necessary but insufficient precondition for genre-competence development. The authors discuss the usefulness of probing student antecedent genre knowledge early in communication courses as a potential source for macrolevel curriculum decisions and microlevel pedagogical adjustments in course design, and they propose directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary university the large classes associated with many core units mean that tutorials are often taken by many part-time sessional who are typically employed on a casual basis, paid an hourly rate and not paid to attend the lectures. Given this situation, unit coordinators are often responsible for another phase in curriculum development, namely constructing written tutorial plans that outline the tutorial processes and explicate some of the central ideas and knowledge from the lectures. These plans are designed to be informative for the tutors as well as providing a guide for the teaching and learning in the tutorials. In this paper, using analytical tools made available in Critical Discourse Analysis, I analyse a written tutorial plan as an example of a university curriculum text. The analysis opens up new ways of seeing these texts and for reviewing and critiquing my university teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a framework that integrates assessment and targeted instruction within a multi-tiered intervention system to increase student achievement and identify those students that need additional intervention. Each Tier is identified by the content and intensity of the intervention and the personnel who carry out the intervention. Although educators can identify the characteristics of Tier I and Tier III intervention, many are not able to do so for Tier II. This article presents an in depth look at the components of Tier II intervention and implications for implementation at site based programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that translation is a process which facilitates access to the world culture. Source texts (ST) are a huge cultural asset for the translator in his or her attempt to bring along useful and precious knowledge to the target language (TL), thus making the target language readers benefit from that valuable heritage. The extra-linguistic information and a very good knowledge of the social context are extremely precious tools for the translator seeking to break down every possible barriers existing between the SL and the TL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I analyze a program implemented in Texas schools serving underprivileged populations that pays both students and teachers for passing grades on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that program adoption is associated with increased AP course and exam taking, increases in the number of students with high SAT/ACT scores, and increases in college matriculation. The rewards don 7 appear to distort behaviors in undesirable ways, and I present evidence that teachers and students were not simply maximizing rewards. Guidance counselors credit the improvements to greater AP access, changes in social norms towards APs, and better student information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elementary school students often misinterpret the equal sign (=) as an operational rather than a relational symbol. Such misunderstanding is problematic because solving equations with missing numbers may be important for the development of higher order mathematics skills, including solving word problems. Research indicates equal-sign instruction can alter how typically developing students use the equal sign, but no study has been conducted on the effects of such instruction for students with mathematics difficulty (MD) or how equal-sign instruction contributes to word-problem-solving skill for students with or without MD. In the present study, the authors assessed the efficacy of equal-sign instruction within word-problem tutoring. Third-grade students with MD (n = 80) were assigned to word-problem tutoring, word-problem tutoring plus equal-sign instruction (combined) tutoring, or no-tutoring control. Combined tutoring produced greater improvement on equal sign tasks and open equations than did the other 2 conditions. On certain forms of word problems, combined tutoring, but not word-problem tutoring alone, produced more improvement than did the control condition. When compared at posttest with 3rd-grade students without MD on equal-sign tasks and open equations, only combined tutoring students with MD performed comparably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to develop best practices for online video library tutorials, this research study used an interview-based research method to investigate usability, findability, and instructional effectiveness. The findings document student learner preferences and are the basis for guidelines for future tutorial development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective self-reflection is a key component of excellent teaching. We describe the types of self-reflection identified in tutors' reflective statements following a peer observation of teaching exercise. We used an adapted version of the categories developed by Grushka, McLeod and Reynolds in 2005 to code text from 20 written statements as technical (26% of comments), practical (36% of comments) and critical (33% of comments). Tutors also wrote about the affective aspects of the exercise and the majority of such comments were positive. Most tutors reflected in a holistic way about their teaching, noting the importance of getting the technical aspects right while also being concerned about pedagogical matters and issues beyond the classroom. The exercise was an effective way to prompt tutors to reflect on their teaching and helped tutors articulate and formalise their learning from the peer observation activity. Suggestions for further exploration of the reflective practice of tutors are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student retention in higher education might be prioritised by funding authorities and universities but robust measurement of non-completion is elusive. This investigation explores untapped data sources to enrich understanding of non-completion. The analysis features the main undergraduate course in a part of a large UK university with retention concerns. Three data sources were explored; Registry, course administration and electronic information systems. Discrepancies emerged in data from them, with students' electronic engagement data revealing withdrawal patterns not evident in the other sources. The departures profile revealed by the information systems data is used to conjecture association between type of departure and stage of departure drawing on time-based retention models. The analysis also draws on material from focus groups of course administrators and tutors. The results demonstrate a new way of pinpointing and quantifying non-completion over time, electronic footprint analysis, which provides an additional basis for formulating and monitoring retention strategies. While not explaining why individuals withdraw, they reveal more about when they appear more likely to do so. Using data already captured they constitute feasible means of improving retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study reports on the effectiveness at one-year follow-up of an after-school prevention program targeting 6th grade African American youth residing in high-risk urban areas. The program, conducted on-site over the school-year period, involved a group mentoring approach emphasizing remedial education and an appreciation of African American cultural heritage in promoting school bonding, social skills development, and greater academic achievement. Behavioral and adjustment outcome data were obtained from two participating middle-school sites (intervention and comparison, involving 237 and 241 students, respectively) serving essentially equivalent urban communities. Results of the study revealed significant effects for academic achievement and behavior in terms of grade point average and teacher ratings that favored students at the intervention site. At this site, greater participation of parents in the intervention program was found to be positively related to improvement of the children in grade point average. No differential site-related changes in negative behavior were observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preschool teachers working in blended classrooms are faced with identifying which children need intensive instruction as well as being responsible for directly linking individualized learning outcomes with state or federal early learning standards. The series of studies presented were designed to illustrate how teachers working in blended preschool programs provided intensive instruction on individual skills that were related to a common early learning standard (i.e., prewriting). Results suggest that embedding intensive instruction during daily activities is not only effective but also efficient given the relatively short amount of time it took for children to acquire individualized skills. Future research should examine interventions that produce effective and efficient results given the constraints imposed by the schedule of publicly funded blended preschools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative learning through case-based or problem-based learning (PBL) scenarios is an excellent way for students to acquire knowledge and develop decision-making skills. However, the process is threatened by the movement towards more self-directed learning and the migration of students from campus-based to workplace-based learning. Paper-based PBL cases can only proceed in a single direction which can prevent learners from exploring the impact of their decisions. The PREVIEW project, outlined in this article, trialled a replacement to traditional paper PBL with virtual patients (VPs) delivered through a virtual world platform. The idea was that an immersive 3D environment could provide (a) greater realism (b) active decision-making and (c) a suitable environment for collaboration amongst work-based learners meeting remotely. Five VP scenarios were designed for learners on a Paramedic Foundation Degree within the virtual world second life (SL). A player using the MedBiquitous VP international standard allowed cases to be played both within SL and on the web. Three testing days were run to evaluate the scenarios with paramedic students and tutors. Students unfamiliar with the SL environment worked through five PBL scenarios in small groups, shadowed by 'in-world' facilitators. Feedback indicated that the SL environment engages students effectively in learning, despite some technology barriers. Students believed SL could provide a more authentic learner environment than classroom-based PBL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many young Indigenous Australian students continue to underachieve in Western mathematics. National test results indicate that they are two years behind their peers. Success in mathematics is important to Indigenous students as it leads to employment opportunities and can assist in identifying power differences among socio-economic classes (Gustein, 2003). The focus of this paper is the preparatory year. One-on-one interviews were conducted with 48 students (average age 4 years and 11 months) at the commencement and completion of the preparatory year. Pre- and post-intervention test results of BOEHM (an oral language test), School Entry Number Assessment (SENA) and patterning ability were collected. The pre- and post-intervention test results indicated that, although Australian Indigenous students scored significantly lower on the pre-intervention test with regard to their understanding of number, an intervention focusing, first, on the language of mathematics and, secondly, on representations that support mathematical thinking assisted these students to begin to bridge the gaps in their learning. This paper begins to tease out classroom actions that supported their engagement with and understanding of Western mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of sport education to achieve an autonomy-supportive fitness curriculum for teachers to achieve their own obstacle- course fitness unit in the U.S. Sport education can be accomplished through integration of direct instruction, cooperative small-group work, and peer teaching. A season planning which was structured on a three-day instructional rotation including teacher instruction, team practice, and team competition is presented. Also discussed are recommendations which might be useful for teachers in promoting autonomy features in sport education.

The article discusses the significant task development that teachers of physical education subject need to follow to achieve active responses from students and to convey the total idea of the subject's content. These methods include celebration which is the appreciation of student performance through a minimal accountability or feedback, and the calibration which refers to the proper sequencing of lessons and subject matter allocated for the particular day. Also presented are examples of tasks in which the celebration and calibration approaches are applied.

In a simulated last-minute test preparation scenario, the authors examined the extent to which practice can influence accuracy of self-assessment, overall test performance, and memory of a familiar knowledge domain. They simulated test preparation by exposing students to practice questions, allegedly from a study guide. The test preparation consisted of either answering questions (retrieval practice) and then checking the correctness of the answers or reviewing questions along with their answers (review-only practice). Immediately after either form of practice, students took a test with questions whose content was conceptually related to the practice test questions. In this study, both forms of practice had a beneficial effect on self-assessment prior to the test and on overall test performance. When the authors examined specific memory responses, they found practice to benefit the frequency of correct responses that students defined as experiences of remembering and knowing. The effect of practice was not modulated by the recency of the acquisition of the domain being tested (at least within the time span of an academic semester). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard setting methods such as the Angoff method rely on judgments of item characteristics; item response theory empirically estimates item characteristics and displays them in item characteristic curves (ICCs). This study evaluated several indexes of rater fit to ICCs as a method for judging rater accuracy in their estimates of expected item performance for target groups of test-takers. Simulated data were used to compare adequately fitting ratings to poorly fitting ratings at various target competence levels in a simulated two stage standard setting study. The indexes were then applied to a set of real ratings on 66 items evaluated at 4 competence thresholds to demonstrate their relative usefulness for gaining insight into rater “fit.” Based on analysis of both the simulated and real data, it is recommended that fit indexes based on the absolute deviations of ratings from the ICCs be used, and those based on the standard errors of ratings should be avoided. Suggestions are provided for using these indexes in future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs for improving the academic skills of students enrolled in public schools Grades K-8 in the United States and further investigates for whom and under what conditions tutoring can be effective. The authors found 21 studies (with 28 different study cohorts in those studies) reporting on randomized field trials to guide them in assessing the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs. Overall, the authors found volunteer tutoring has a positive effect on student achievement. With respect to particular subskills, students who work with volunteer tutors are likely to earn higher scores on assessments related to letters and words, oral fluency, and writing as compared to their peers who are not tutored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving learning standards is at the forefront of current educational philosophy, and is the goal of sound educational practice. That “all children can learn” and there will be “no child left behind” presume that teaching and assessment practices must benefit all children. Agreement in principle is nearly universal. Practical implementation, however, is another matter. One philosophy of learning and instruction that has a long history of targeting instruction and achievement for all students is mastery learning. This article examines (a) fundamental tenets that mastery learning is built upon, (b) the clear connection between learning standards and mastery learning, and (c) how mastery is often erroneously implemented. It then outlines the defining features of mastery and how to implement them. These defining features include developing clear objectives, setting a mastery standard, using criterion-referenced assessments, and grading incentives for students to learn beyond initial mastery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent findings demonstrate that the most effective reading instruction may vary with children’s language and literacy skills. These Child × Instruction interactions imply that individualizing instruction would be a potent strategy for improving students’ literacy. A cluster-randomized control field trial, conducted in 10 high-moderate poverty schools, examined effects of individualizing literacy instruction. The instruction each first grader received (n = 461 in 47 classrooms, mean age = 6.7 years) during fall, winter, and spring was recorded. Comparing intervention-recommended amounts of instruction with observed amounts revealed that intervention teachers individualized instruction more precisely than did comparison teachers. Importantly, the more precisely the children received recommended amounts of instruction, the stronger was their literacy skill growth. Results provide strong evidence of Child × Instruction interaction effects on literacy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on how educators develop concept-focused teaching. It cites that most common problem in science learning is that educators tend to teach the subject focusing on the topic and not on the concept. As a consequence, educators tend to teach vague ideas to the students and sometimes they tend to miss crucial concepts of the subject. The article provides ways on how teachers could teach science related topics to the students. It further advises educators that they should teach the students beyond the objectivity of science.

The authors examined how the regular use of Monte Carlo Quizzes, learning logs, or non-random quizzes impacted student completion of assigned reading and preparedness for class. A questionnaire was used to gather data on student perceptions and self-reported reading behavior in response to each of the methods over the course of a semester. Results suggested that students in classes that used the learning log method were more motivated to complete readings, felt better able to contribute to class discussions, and were more likely to recommend the assessment method than students in classes that used the other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal changes demand educators to apply new pedagogical approaches. Many educational stakeholders feel that serious games could play a key role in fulfilling this demand, and they lick their chops when looking at the booming industry of leisure games. However, current toolkits for developing leisure games show severe shortcomings when applied to serious games. Developing effective serious games in an efficient way requires a specific approach and tool set. This article describes the EMERGO methodology and generic toolkit for developing and delivering scenario-based serious games that are aimed at the acquisition of complex cognitive skills in higher education. Preliminary evaluation results with case developers using the EMERGO methodology and toolkit and with learners using EMERGO cases are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on peer tutoring has found that students sometimes benefit academically from tutoring other students. In this study we combined quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore how untrained peer tutors learned via explaining and responding to tutee questions in a non-reciprocal tutoring setting. In support of our hypotheses, we found that tutors learned most effectively when their instructional activities incorporated reflective knowledge-building in which they monitored their own understanding, generated inferences to repair misunderstandings, and elaborated upon the source materials. However, tutors seemed to adopt a knowledge-telling bias in which they primarily summarized the source materials with little elaboration. Tutors’ reflective knowledge-building activities, when they occurred, were more frequently elicited by interactions with their tutee. In particular, when tutees asked questions that contained an inference or required an inferential answer, tutors’ responses were more likely to be elaborative and metacognitive. Directions for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study in which applications were integrated in the Multivariable Calculus course at the Technion in the framework of supplementary tutorials. The purpose of the study was to test the opportunity of extending the conventional curriculum by optional applied problem-solving activities and get initial evidence on the possible impact of the tutorials on students' beliefs about the value of learning mathematics with applications. The study lasted three semesters and consisted of three experiments in which supplementary tutorials were offered in different forms: a weekly evening meeting for interested students, a weekly extra hour added to the conventional calculus class, and a workshop which introduces mathematics concepts from the application perspective. The study reveals: (1) significant positive effect of the tutorials on the students' beliefs (in all three experiments); (2) statistically significant advantage of the group involved in the tutorials in relation to the group that learned in the conventional way (second experiment); (3) students' positive evaluation of the workshops for better understanding the course lectures (third experiment). Grounding on the study experience, we propose for further discussion a stage model of the applied problem solving cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the use of latent class analysis for the detection of differences in item functioning on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III). A two-class solution for a latent class model appeared to be defined in part by ability because Class I was lower in ability than Class 2 on both the PPVT-III and the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT). This difference was much larger on the PPVT-III for the low-ability class. No difference was found for the high-ability latent class, suggesting that the difference was a result of something in the PPVT-III that was not present in the EVT. The difference on the PPVT-Ill for low-ability children appeared to be a result of the structure of the items on the test, which seems to encourage the overriding use of the novel name-nameless category strategy for the selection of an answer—a strategy not available on the EVT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although computerized adaptive tests have enjoyed tremendous growth, solutions for important problems remain unavailable. One problem is the control of item exposure rate. Because adaptive algorithms are designed to select optimal items, they choose items with high discriminating power. Thus, these items are selected more often than others, leading to both overexposure and underutilization of some parts of the item pool. Overused items are often compromised, creating a security problem that could threaten the validity of a test. Building on a previously proposed stratification scheme to control the exposure rate for one-dimensional tests, the authors extend their method to multidimensional tests. A strategy is proposed based on stratification in accordance with a functional of the vector of the discrimination parameter, which can be implemented with minimal computational overhead. Both theoretical and empirical validation studies are provided. Empirical results indicate significant improvement over the commonly used method of controlling exposure rate that requires only a reasonable sacrifice in efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the moderating effects of learning-teaching fit and cross-cultural differences on the relationships between expatriate training and training effectiveness. Survey methodology was adopted to obtain data from the opinions of expatriates in foreign companies within Taiwan and China. Quantitative data analyses were adopted to answer the study research questions. Results of this study revealed that perceived needs for expatriate training have significant impacts on the training effectiveness of expatriates. The level of fit between the expatriate's learning style and the instructor's teaching method, and the degree of perceived cross-cultural differences between parent country and host country could moderate the effectiveness of expatriate training. These results implied that expatriates who perceived higher levels of fit between their learning styles and instructor teaching method, perceived lower cross-cultural differences and perceived higher demand for training tended to achieve higher training effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New to teaching composition, we resisted student conferences as either adding to on-site work hours or misusing class time. We also feared reading and responding on the spot, thinking we might handle the task poorly. However, once we designed and practiced our own tutorial approach, we saw dramatic improvements in students' writing and morale. Conferences have become a productive, satisfying class activity and a way to avoid the frustrations of midnight paper-grading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines an after-school tutorial program for eighth grade special education and at risk students. The program is a joint effort of the special education program at Hofstra University and a school district in Long Island, New York. Particular focus is given to the academic goals of the program in assisting student achievement in reading and math, and to the integration of the arts in academic instruction. An art outreach project involving collage creation is presented and the use of art as a means of student communication is explored. Implications for special educators considering arts integration are also examined.

This Ph.D research project studies the relationship between alternative educational spaces (AES) in conventional and formal education, and the learning of children who have been portrayed as "failure students" by the educational system. It is intended to think in what way changes in the configuration of institutional spaces aimed at learning, have had an influence on primary education and if it is possible to help these children recover or develop a strong wish for learning in educational institutions. It is possible to say that the case studied functions as an AES. What I here state is that its placement in a porous zone operates as a condition of alternative functioning and, simultaneously, constitutes one of its results. Being the case situated in three organizational contexts allows escaping from external regulations and its placement in a net that seems to contribute to the installation of psico social filiation and transmission processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dr. Rasinski discusses concerns about teachers teaching reading scientifically and neglecting artistic components of text as the result of high stakes testing ramifications. Dr. Rasinski thinks that rather than allow the profession of reading to be guided solely by a scientific orientation, teachers need to demand reading and reading instruction also be treated as the art it is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]