In an age that dictates accountability and verifiability of educational programs, institutions of higher education are called on to justify their programs. To meet these demands, there is a need for improved methods for the evaluation of teacher education programs. More importantly, there is a need for the development of methods and procedures to conduct continuous and on-going evaluation that can aid the process of program improvement. Many institutions have had difficulties in developing and implementing satisfactory systems for conducting needed evaluation. In recent years the standards for the approval of teacher education programs in all of the states were strengthened as were the standards for approval by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). These revised standards put even more emphasis on accountability and the need for both summative and formative evaluation in a teacher education program. Tennessee Technological University has long been recognized as an institution with an exemplary project in program evaluation. As a result, in 1986, the state of Tennessee established at Tennessee Technological University, a Center for Teacher Education Evaluation. The Center began work in July 1986, on the development of models and systems for conducting teacher education program evaluation. To most, teacher education program evaluation is simple and straightforward. Evaluation includes a set of options, a set of criteria, data collection and interpretation, x and then use in meeting accountability needs.

This collection, now in paperback, explores how universities are coping with the range of reforms and changes taking place across higher education today. Analyzing areas such as leadership, quality management, strategic thinking, collegiality and academic work, and from the perspective of different agents within higher education including students, academics and management, this book examines the various differences between reform attempts and the actual changes happening in universities.

The arrival of the computer in educational and psychological testing has led to the current popularity of adaptive testing---a testing format in which the computer uses statistical information about the test items to automatically adapt their selection to a real-time update of the test taker's ability estimate. This book covers such key features of adaptive testing as item selection and ability estimation, adaptive testing with multidimensional abilities, sequencing adaptive test batteries, multistage adaptive testing, item-pool design and maintenance, estimation of item and item-family parameters, item and person fit, as well as adaptive mastery and classification testing. It also shows how these features are used in the daily operations of several large-scale adaptive testing programs.

Linda C. Wing and Bernard R. Gifford How should a society committed to the ideas of individual merit, equal opportunity, and the free marketplace allocate scarce educational and employment opportunities? How can that society draw distinctions fairly and justifiably-among people competing against each other for the same opportunity? These are among the central questions of a democracy. How a society answers them reveals a great deal about its values and its priorities, and determines a great deal about its future course. In recent decades, we have placed the standardized pencil-and-paper test at the center of these fundamental questions about the nature of opportunity allocation in American life. In more and more areas of our lives-schools, employment, the military-we rely upon the standardized test to rank or classify people, and to assure ourselves that we have done so fairly. The papers gathered here were prepared at the invitation of the National Commission on Testing and Public Policy. (The editors of this volume were involved in the commission from its inception in 1987 until shortly after the publication of its major public report in 1990-Bernard Gifford as Chair and Linda Wing as Associate Director. 1) Each chapter focuses on an aspect of employment testing-a topic that could hardly 1 POLICY ISSUES IN EMPLOYMENT TESTING 2 be more in need of calm deliberation and reasoned discussion than it is today."

The media now regularly feature breakthroughs on the influence of prenatal hormones on the brain and behavior, for instance the link to financial performance or risk management. Based on these findings and their own experiments, the authors present the Hormonal Quotient (HQ) as a scientific, holistic and reliable career management and personal development tool for professionals. Eight HQ profiles and their corresponding typical business skills and preferences are presented and enable the reader to benchmark their HQ with peers, design an ideal career plan, build a winning team in business and find the perfect work-life balance. A complimentary website allows readers to easily measure their HQ online.

By the author of "The Right Sensory Mix," Berry-AMA Book Prize Finalist 2011 - one of the four best marketing books in 2011 according to the American Marketing Association Foundation.

The Berry-AMA Book Prize is awarded annually be the American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF) and recognizes books whose innovative ideas have had significant impact on marketing and related fields.

The rediscovery of the value of apprenticeships has been one of the most significant trends in vocational education in recent years, and has prompted an array of research and development projects in countries around the world. In this volume, the renewed interest in the apprenticeship tradition and the various steps towards the implementation of innovative apprenticeship programmes are analysed and discussed from different perspectives.

Beginning with a number of chapters that describe recent developments in apprenticeship training in different national contexts, the book moves on to analyze the way in which both the quality and profitability of apprenticeship act in concert as the most influential drivers of innovation in this field.

In sum, this book makes an important contribution to the international literature on apprenticeship. It draws together some of the leading researchers in the area, and with its overview of a number of national Vocational Education and Training (VET) projects, provides a body of knowledge on current practices and issues that has previously been lacking in this complex interdisciplinary field. The lessons learned from countries' experiences, as presented in this book, provide a valuable platform for policy-makers and scholars alike.

Promoting high standards in education while striving for equal opportunities under the budget constraints - these are the new global objectives of education systems. This book brings together research-based evidence on the effectiveness of major Australian, Dutch, and UK improvement efforts in education at both primary and secondary level, whilst making comparisons with similar US initiatives. The book addresses several major questions in this new environment. Those questions include: how to combat educational disadvantages, how to integrate pupils with special educational needs in regular education, how to implement educational standards initiatives, how to restructure secondary education, how to implement decentralized policy-making, and how to implement a class size reduction initiative? Finally, the authors suggest directions for future research in order to increase our understanding of what works in education and why.

This book details a unique training evaluation approach developed by David J. Basarab, Sr. currently the Manager of Evaluation at Motorola University. This approach was developed in part based on information from his graduate coursework with Dr. Darrell K. Root, professor of program evaluation and educational administration at the University of Dayton. It enabled Motorola to evaluate their corporate training programs to determine whether money spent on training was an investment or an expense. This evaluation approach is also significant in determining either the effectiveness of or the opportunities to improve corporate training programs. In this text, The Training Evaluation Process, David Basarab and Darrell Root provide commercial industry training with a step-by-step approach to use when evaluating training progrruns, thus allowing training to be viewed as an investment rather than an expense. This text focuses on assessing training programs, so that they may be improved. This approach provides a successful procedure to use when evaluating training programs. Included in the text is a comprehensive explanation of the evaluation model developed by D. L. Kirkpatrick (Kirkpatrick, D. L., November 1959) in which he described four levels of evaluating training progrruns: Level 1 -Reaction: Evaluate to learn participants' perception to the training program. Level 2 -Learning: Evaluate to determine whether participants have learned the course subject matter. Level 3 -Behavior: Evaluate participants' use of newly acquired job skills on the job. Level 4 -Results: Evaluate the organizational impact of training on company's workforce.

In the abstract, training is seen as valuable by most people in business and industry. However, in the rush of providing training programs "on time" and "within budget," evaluation of training is frequently left behind as a "nice to have" addition, if practical. In addition, the training function itself is left with the dilemma of proving its worth to management without a substantive history of evaluation. This book is designed to provide managers, educators, and trainers alike the opportunity to explore the issues and benefits of evaluating business and industry training. The purpose is to motivate more effective decisions for training investments based on information about the value of training in attaining business goals. Without evaluation, the value of specific training efforts cannot be adequately measured, the value of training investments overall cannot be fully assessed, and the contributions of the training function to the corporation's goals cannot be duly recognized. Articles are grouped into three sections, althou~h many themes appear across sections. The first section estabhshes the context of training evaluation in a business organization. The second section emphasizes evaluation of training products and services; and the third section discusses costs and benefits of evaluation, and communication and use of evaluation results in decision making. In Section I, the context of training evaluation is established from a variety of perspectives. First, training and trainin~ evaluation are discussed in the context of corporate strateglc goals.

During the past two decades, evaluation has come to play an increasingly important role in the operation of educational and social programs by national, state, and local agencies. Mandates by federal funding agencies that programs they sponsored be evaluated gave impetus to use of evaluation. Realization that evaluation plays a pivotal role in assuring program quality and effectiveness has maintained the use of evaluation even where mandates have been relaxed. With increased use --indeed institutionalization --of evaluation in many community, state, and national agencies, evaluation has matured as a profession, and new evaluation approaches have been developed to aid in program planning, implementation, monitoring, and improvement. Much has been written about various philosophical and theoretical orientations to evaluation, its relationship to program management, appropriate roles evaluation might play, new and sometimes esoteric evaluation methods, and particular evaluation techniques. Useful as these writings are, relatively little has been written about simple but enormously important activities which comprise much of the day-to-day work of the program evaluator. This book is focused on some of these more practical aspects that largely determine the extent to which evaluation will prove helpful.

This book was first published in 1977.

The highly anticipated second edition of "Understanding by Design" poses the core, essential questions of understanding and design, and provides readers with practical solutions for the teacher-designer. The book opens by analyzing the logic of backward design as an alternative to coverage and activity-oriented plans. Though backward from habit, this approach brings more focus and coherence to instruction. The book proposes a multifaceted approach, with the six "facets" of understanding. The facets combine with backward design to provide a powerful, expanded array of practical tools and strategies for designing curriculum, instruction, and assessments that lead students at all grade levels to genuine understanding. The second edition, a refined work, has been thoroughly and extensively revised, updated, and expanded, including improvement of the UbD Template, the key terms of UbD, dozens of worksheets, and some of the larger concepts. The authors have successfully put together a text that demonstrates what best practice in the design of learning looks like, enhancing for its audience their capability for creating more engaging and effective learning, whether the student is a third grader, a college freshman, or a faculty member.

Since test items are the building blocks of any test, learning how to develop and validate test items has always been critical to the teaching-learning process. As they grow in importance and use, testing programs increasingly supplement the use of selected-response (multiple-choice) items with constructed-response formats. This trend is expected to continue. As a result, a new item writing book is needed, one that provides comprehensive coverage of both types of items and of the validity theory underlying them.

This book is an outgrowth of the author s previous book, Developing and Validating Multiple-Choice Test Items, 3e (Haladyna, 2004). That book achieved distinction as the leading source of guidance on creating and validating selected-response test items. Like its predecessor, the content of this new book is based on both an extensive review of the literature and on its author s long experience in the testing field. It is very timely in this era of burgeoning testing programs, especially when these items are delivered in a computer-based environment. Key features include

Comprehensive and Flexible No other book so thoroughly covers the field of test item development and its various applications.

Focus on Validity Validity, the most important consideration in testing, is stressed throughout and is based on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, currently under revision by AERA, APA, and NCME

Illustrative Examples The book presents various selected and constructed response formats and uses many examples to illustrate correct and incorrect ways of writing items. Strategies for training item writers and developing large numbers of items using algorithms and other item-generating methods are also presented.

Based on Theory and Research A comprehensive review and synthesis of existing research runs throughout the book and complements the expertise of its authors.

Bernard R. Gifford In the United States, the standardized test has become one of the major sources of information for reducing uncertainty in the determination of individual merit and in the allocation of merit-based educational, training, and employment opportunities. Most major institutions of higher education require applicants to supplement their records of academic achievements with scores on standardized tests. Similarly, in the workplace, as a condition of employment or assignment to training programs, more and more employers are requiring prospective employees to sit for standardized tests. In short, with increasing frequency and intensity, individual members of the political economy are required to transmit to the opportunity marketplace scores on standardized examinations that purport to be objective measures of their abilities, talents, and potential. In many instances, these test scores are the only signals about their skills that job applicants are permitted to send to prospective employers. THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TESTING AND PUBLIC POLICY In view of the importance of these issues to our current national agenda, it was proposed that the Human Rights and Governance and the Education and Culture Programs of the Ford Foundation support the establishment of a ''blue ribbon" National Commission on Testing and Public Policy to investigate some of the major problems, as well as the untapped opportunities, created by recent trends in the use of standardized tests, particularly in the workplace and in schools.

This book provides an alternative method for measuring individual differences in psychological, educational, and other behavioral sciences studies. It is based on the assumptions of ordinal statistics as explained in Norman Cliff's 1996 Ordinal Methods for Behavioral Data Analysis. It provides the necessary background on ordinal measurement to permit its use to assess psychological and psychophysical tests and scales and interpret the data obtained. The authors believe that some of the behavioral measurement models used today do not fit the data or are inherently self-contradictory. Applications of these models can therefore lead to unwarranted inferences regarding the status of the derived variables. These methods can also be difficult to apply, particularly in small-sample contexts without making additional, unrealistic assumptions. Ordinal methods more closely reflect the original data, are simple to apply, and can be used in samples of any size. The book's approach is in essence a return to simple empiricism in psychological measurement. Ordinal Measurement in the Behavioral Sciences provides: *methods for analyzing test responses; *extensive discussions of ordinal approaches to analyzing data that are judgments of stimuli; *methods for treating psychological data in ways consistent with its ordinal nature so as to stimulate new developments in this area; and *ordinal test theory and the unfolding methods that are applicable to cross-cultural studies. Advanced students, researchers, and practitioners concerned with psychological measurement should find this book relevant. Measurement professionals will find it provides useful and simple methods that stimulate thought about measurement's real issues.

I personally learned to know Ralph Tyler rather late in his career when, in the 1960s, I spent a year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His term of office as Director of the Center was then approaching its end. This would seem to disqualify me thoroughly from preparing a Foreword to this "Classic Works. " Many of his colleagues and, not least, of his students at his dear Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, are certainly better prepared than I to put his role in American education in proper perspective. The reason for inviting me is, I assume, to bring out the influence that Tyler has had on the international educational scene. I am writing this Foreword on a personal note. Ralph Tyler's accomplishments in his roles as a scholar, policy maker, educational leader, and statesman have been amply put on record in this book, not least in the editors' Preface. My reflections are those of an observer from abroad but who, over the last 25 years, has been close enough to overcome the aloofness of the foreigner. Tyler has over many years been criss-crossing the North American con tinent generously giving advice to agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, lecturing, and serving on many committees and task forces that have been instrumental in shaping American education."

When George Bernard Shaw wrote his play, Pygmalion, he could hardly have foreseen the use of the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy in debates about standardized testing in schools. Still less could he have foreseen that the validity of the concept would be examined many years later in Irish schools. While the primary purpose of the experimental study reported in this book was not to investigate the Pygmalion effect, it is inconceivable that a study of the effects of standardized testing, conceived in the 1960s and planned and executed in the 1970s, would not have been influenced by thinking about teachers' expectations and the influence of test information on the formation of those expectations. While our study did pay special attention to teacher expectations, its scope was much wider. It was planned and carried out in a much broader framework, one in which we set out to examine the impact of a standardized testing program, not just on teachers, but also on school practices, students, and students' parents.

Attempting fonnally to evaluate something involves the evaluator coming to grips with a number of abstract concepts such as value, merit, worth, growth, criteria, standards, objectives, needs, nonns, client, audience, validity, reliability, objectivity, practical significance, accountability, improvement, process, pro duct, fonnative, summative, costs, impact, infonnation, credibility, and - of course - with the tenn evaluation itself. To communicate with colleagues and clients, evaluators need to clarify what they mean when they use such tenns to denote important concepts central to their work. Moreover, evaluators need to integrate these concepts and their meanings into a coherent framework that guides all aspects of their work. If evaluation is to lay claim to the mantle of a profession, then these conceptualizations of evaluation must lead to the conduct of defensible evaluations. The conceptualization of evaluation can never be a one-time activity nor can any conceptualization be static. Conceptualizations that guide evaluation work must keep pace with the growth of theory and practice in the field. Further, the design and conduct of any particular study involves a good deal of localized conceptualization."

Attempting fonnally to evaluate something involves the evaluator coming to grips with a number of abstract concepts such as value, merit, worth, growth, criteria, standards, objectives, needs, nonns, client, audience, validity, reliability, objectivity, practical significance, accountability, improvement, process, pro duct, fonnative, summative, costs, impact, infonnation, credibility, and - of course - with the tenn evaluation itself. To communicate with colleagues and clients, evaluators need to clarify what they mean when they use such tenns to denote important concepts central to their work. Moreover, evaluators need to integrate these concepts and their meanings into a coherent framework that guides all aspects of their work. If evaluation is to lay claim to the mantle of a profession, then these conceptualizations of evaluation must lead to the conduct of defensible evaluations. The conceptualization of evaluation can never be a one-time activity nor can any conceptualization be static. Conceptualizations that guide evaluation work must keep pace with the growth of theory and practice in the field. Further, the design and conduct of any particular study involves a good deal of localized conceptualization."

This book is about the practice of decision making by school principals and about ways to improve this practice by capitalizing on evaluation dimensions. Much has been written on decision making but surprisingly little on decision making in the school principalship. Much has been also written on evaluation as well as on evaluation and decision making, but not much has been written on evaluation in decision making, especially decision making in the principalship. This book presents two messages. One is that decision making in the principalship can be studied and improved and not only talked about in abstract terms. The other message is that evaluation can contribute to the understanding of decision making in the principalship and to the improvement of its practice. In this book we call for the conception of an evaluation-minded principal, a principal who has a wide perspective on the nature of evaluation and its potential benefits, a principal who is also inclined to use evaluation perceptions and techniques as part of his/her decision-making process. This book was conceived in 1985 with the idea to combine thoughts about educational administration with thoughts about educational evaluation. Studies of decision making in the principalship had already been on their way. We decided to await the findings, and in the meantime we wrote a first conceptual version of evaluation in decision making. As the studies were completed we wrote a first empirical version of same.

Decision-Oriented Educational Research considers a form of educational research that is designed to be directly relevant to the current information requirements of those who are shaping educational policy or managing edu cational systems. It was written for those who plan to conduct such research, as well as for policy makers and educational administrators who might have such research conducted for them. The book is divided into three main parts. Part I is background. Chapter 1 describes some of the basic themes that are woven throughout subsequent chapters on decision-oriented research. These themes include the impor tance of taking a systems view of educational research; of understanding the nature of decision and policy processes and how these influence system re search; of integrating research activities into the larger system's processes; of the role of management in the research process; of researchers and managers sharing a sense of educational purposes; and of emphasizing system improvement as a basic goal of research process. Chapter 2 is a discussion of the background of the research activities that form the bases of this book. Our collaboration with the Pittsburgh public school system is described, as are the methods and structure we used to build the case histories of our work with the district. Part II, encompassing chapters 3 through 9, addresses basic generaliza tions about decision-oriented educational research that we have derived from our experiences."