The purpose of this book is to improve the direction and utility of the evaluation by program directors in charge, and the implementation of the evaluation by the evaluator. The authors contend that both of these goals can best be met by understanding each individual role. How to be Involved in Program Evaluation: * Provides a framework for understanding evaluation and the value of working within an evaluation model * Provides an overview of the General Evaluation Model (GEM) * Reviews the components of GEM from the viewpoint of the Evaluator and the Program Director-to emphasize the joint effort of the two persons * Presents aspects of evaluation as a profession, including standards developed by professional organizations, desired traits of the Evaluator, and advantages and disadvantages of the Evaluator coming from outside the organization as compared to inside the organization * Discusses the need for data collection instruments, and presents various examples, along with the advantages and disadvantages of the various evaluation instruments * Discusses the crucial role of reporting evaluation results * Discusses how the General Evaluation Model can be used to evaluate an entire school This book will be a valuable reference to program directors and evaluators.

Quantitative Data Analysis for Language Assessment Volume I: Fundamental Techniques is a resource book that presents the most fundamental techniques of quantitative data analysis in the field of language assessment. Each chapter provides an accessible explanation of the selected technique, a review of language assessment studies that have used the technique, and finally, an example of an authentic study that uses the technique. Readers also get a taste of how to apply each technique through the help of supplementary online resources that include sample data sets and guided instructions. Language assessment students, test designers, and researchers should find this a unique reference as it consolidates theory and application of quantitative data analysis in language assessment.

Meet calls for increased quality and understand accreditation expectations Author Linda Suskie is internationally recognized for her work in higher education assessment, and she is a former vice president of a major regional accreditor. In Five Dimensions of Quality: A Common Sense Guide to Accreditation and Accountability in Higher Education she provides a simple, straightforward model for understanding and meeting the calls for increased quality in higher education ever-present in today's culture. Whether your institution is seeking accreditation or not, the five dimensions she outlines will help you to identify ways to improve institutional quality and demonstrate that quality to constituents. For those wading through the accreditation process, which has become more difficult in recent years due to increasing regulation and pressure for greater accountability, Suskie offers expert guidance on understanding the underlying principles of the expectations of accrediting bodies. Using the model presented here, which is much easier to understand than the sometimes complex resources provided by individual accrediting bodies, American colleges and universities can understand what they need to do to earn and maintain their regional accreditation as well as improve overall institutional quality for their students. You'll be able to: * Identify ways to improve institutional quality * Demonstrate the quality of your institution to internal and external constituents * Avoid wasting time and energy on misguided institutional processes to comply with accreditation requirements By focusing on why colleges and universities should take particular actions rather than only on what those actions should be, Five Dimensions of Quality gives them the knowledge and strategies to prepare for a successful review. It is an ideal resource for leaders, accreditation committee members, and everyone on campus.

This book investigates the education and assessment of student midwives in clinical practice, paying particular attention to how their practice is graded. Chenery-Morris brings primary research, which explores students, mentors, and midwifery lecturers perspectives of practice learning and its assessment, together with the international literature on clinical knowledge, teaching and learning in practice and assessment of students drawn from a range of healthcare and education professions. Discussing how practice is graded, what constitutes valid practice knowledge, learning in clinical practice, evaluating practice learning and failing students, this book uses Basil Bernstein's theories to throw light on how we assess and whether we should assess performance in addition to whether a student is competent to practise. This is an important contribution to the field of midwifery education. It will also be relevant to those with an interest in practice education from a range of healthcare professions.

REVISE 11+ is the smart choice for 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning preparation. This Practice Book: Introduces the key skills needed for success in the Non-Verbal Reasoning exam Supports learners with worked examples and guided practice for every topic Provides practice through on-the-page and digital questions Prepares learners for the 11+ exams by focusing on important skills and strategies to develop confidence Measures success through checkpoint assessments and simple progress tracking. Preparation is more than this Practice Book! The REVISE 11+ series supports learners at every step of the journey. All titles in the series are fully integrated and work together to provide the best support for the 11+. Consolidate learning with the REVISE 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning Ten-Minute Tests. Take the next step with the REVISE 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning Practice Book 2. Get exam-ready with the REVISE 11+ Non-Verbal Reasoning Assessment Book.

Academic assertiveness is an essential capability that is required of students who wish to achieve academic and professional success. Written for students who are aiming to achieve college success, Achieving Success through Academic Assertiveness: Real life strategies for today's higher education students focuses on the challenges that learners face and encourages positive actions that support triumphs in learning situations. Jennifer Moon creatively explores the importance of this emerging topic and how assertiveness is linked to the process of learning and overall student development, critical thinking and academic achievement.

Mark Paige takes an in-depth look at the interaction of Value Added Models (VAMs) and the law of teacher evaluation. It notes that the hasty adoption of VAMs in evaluation and employment law actually complicates efforts to improve teacher quality, especially at the local level. In brief, VAMs' costs vastly outweigh their benefits. The book advocates for a complete removal of VAMs in high-stakes decisions. It sets forth numerous recommendations for administrators and policymakers to enable them to effectively deal with the complications created by VAMs.

The Aptitude Myth addresses the decline in American children's mastery of critical school subjects. It contends that a contributing cause for this decline derives from many Americans' ways of thinking about children's learning: They believe that school performance is determined very largely by innate aptitude. The Aptitude Myth traces the deep historical origins, the spread and elaboration, and the eventual triumph of the belief in the determining power of mental abilities "given" at birth and therefore fixed. Covered is 600 B.C.E. until 1926 (when the S.A.T. was first administered). The belief in aptitude, assumed by many Americans to be the modern view of learning ability, is revealed as an archaic way of thinking that originated in the imaginations of our ancient forebears and gradually gained credibility over 2,500 years. In recent times, the belief became elaborated to include the fanciful notion that more-than-modest academic study injures a child's health. Having inherited this mindset, Americans don't know how to insure that children gain mastery. A new mindset is needed. The final chapter offers a transformative mindset.

The challenges of implementing the high-stakes provisions of NCLB and IDEA are relatively new. This book presents the latest assessment models to help meet the challenges of NCLB and IDEA through the use of universal design, testing accommodations, technology-based testing, and alternate assessments.Recognizing the promises and challenges associated with assessment and testing, the author provides general and special educators with the knowledge and skills to differentiate their testing.aClassroom Testing for ALL Students: Beyond Standardized Assessmentsaoffers techniques, practices, examples, and resources to aid teachers in providing all students with access to appropriate testing programs and accountability systems that foster their teaching and their students' learning.

How can teachers use the comprehension strategies put forward in books like "Strategies That Work" and "Mosaic of Thought" to help students become not just better readers and thinkers but also better test takers? The four authors of "Put Thinking to the Test" have spent years pursuing that question and have developed a groundbreaking approach, as their colleague Ellin Keene writes in the foreword to the book:
" I knew that Lori, Patrick, Cheryl and Missy met frequently to discuss professional issues and that they were working on a book related to testing. I had no idea, however, that their proposal would be so fresh, so original and, simultaneously, so sensible and immediately useful."

Just as comprehension strategies have helped millions of students learn to read like proficient readers, they can also help students think like effective test-takers. The authors show how students can use background knowledge, mental images, synthesizing, monitoring, inferring, questioning, and determining of importance to understand the genre of tests and to think through the problems they are given. Instead of engaging in artificial and disconnected activities to cram for upcoming tests, students learn skills and strategies that will serve them throughout their school careers and beyond.

Presenting numerous classroom vignettes featuring students in grades 3-8, "Put Thinking to the Test" includes: examples of the direct application of thinking strategy instruction to test taking;actual work samples from lessons used with students;additional lesson ideas that go beyond the teaching described in the vignettes;detailed anchor charts;background on how the authors came to understand this work so that a staff, team, or individual teacher can apply these concepts in their own school setting.

This book aims to isolate specific success factors for underrepresented minorities in undergraduate engineering programs. Based on a three-phase study spearheaded by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the findings include evidence that hands-on exposure to problem-based courses, research, and especially internships are powerful catalysts for engineering success, and that both college adjustment and academic skills matter, in varying degrees, to minority success. By encompassing an unusually large number and range of programs, this research adds to the evidence base for the importance of hands-on exposure to the work of engineering.

Interdisciplinary Education in the Age of Assessment addresses a prevalent need in educational scholarship today. Many current standards-driven curricula follow strict subject-specific guidelines, leaving educators little room for interdisciplinary innovation. This book gears itself toward developing assessment models specific to interdisciplinary education, positioning itself as a seminal volume in the field and a valuable resource to educators across the disciplines. Each chapter covers a major subject area (literacy, science, math, social studies, bilingual education, foreign language, educational policy) and discusses methods of assessing integrated/ interdisciplinary curriculum and instruction.

Interdisciplinary Education in the Age of Assessment addresses a prevalent need in educational scholarship today. Many current standards-driven curricula follow strict subject-specific guidelines, leaving educators little room for interdisciplinary innovation. This book gears itself toward developing assessment models specific to interdisciplinary education, positioning itself as a seminal volume in the field and a valuable resource to educators across the disciplines. Each chapter covers a major subject area (literacy, science, math, social studies, bilingual education, foreign language, educational policy) and discusses methods of assessing integrated/ interdisciplinary curriculum and instruction.

The primary purpose of this book is to demonstrate how proven quality assurance tools and methods that have been applied successfully in the manufacturing and service industries for the past 20 years can be applied in the testing industry. It defines what is meant by the term "quality" in testing and reviews how three business process concepts standards, process planning and design, and continuous improvement can be used to improve the way in which tests are designed, administered, scored and reported so that errors can be eliminated.

Issues of access, social exclusion and widening participation dominate educational policy agendas and are a shared global challenge. Participation in higher education and adult lifelong learning activities can be a life-changing experience that opens up new opportunities. However, access remains unequal. People from lower socio-economic backgrounds, those living in the most deprived areas and people from minority ethnic groups are underrepresented. In this book, we focus on how we can move the field of widening participation forward, paying specific attention to the theories and methods we can use to better understand and tackle the problem of underrepresented groups in post-compulsory education, and how individuals and institutions can be supported. We argue that in order to make sense of these issues, it is important to engage in both the findings of widening participation research and the theoretical foundations which underpin them. This way, alternative perspectives on the widening participation agenda and emerging research and policy can be explored from alternative perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Continuing Education.

A lot hangs on the summative grades that students are given. A good degree opens doors which otherwise might remain closed. Yet, as higher education is now a mass rather than an elite system, what is expected of its graduates is different from the expectations of previous generations. Students are expected not only to be able to demonstrate high standards of academic achievement, but also a variety of capabilities that have at different times been given labels such as 'generic skills' and 'transferable skills'. These abilities are difficult to grade for a variety of reasons and some graduates may be losing out because their particular strengths are given insufficient acknowledgement in current summative assessment practices. Using the UK honours degree classifications as a case study, this book appraises the way in which summative assessment in higher education is approached and shows that the foundations of current practices (in the UK and elsewhere) are of questionable robustness. It argues that there is a need to widen the assessment frame if the breadth of valued student achievements is to be recognised adequately.

This book investigates the relationship developed between the researcher/evaluator and the commissioning arts and cultural producer in providing an opportunity to rethink the traditional process of reporting back on value and impact through the singular entity of funds acquittal. Using three commissioned evaluations as examples, the discussion outlines the two positions most often adopted by researchers/evaluators, external and distanced or embedded and collaborative, and will argue the merits and deficiencies of the two approaches. This text also investigates the role of the researcher/evaluator as a broker of stakeholder interests; how cultural organizations can partner in data gathering and develop a participatory approach to the research; what role the researcher/evaluator can have in the dissemination of evaluation findings and recommendations; and makes recommendations on which partnership type is more affective in a commissioned evaluation model for an arts and culture organization in the Australian landscape.

This book focuses on dilemmas inherent in the practice of assessment in the contemporary context. New forms of assessment are being introduced in all sectors of education and training, and the culture of assessment is shifting. The authors in this volume discuss the practice of assessment, reporting empirical research on modes of assessment within a variety of educational contexts, while also addressing conceptual and theoretical aspects of assessment. Though most publications on assessment do not go beyond one sector or phase of education and only consider assessment in one national context, this volume is cross-sectoral and international in scope. This groundbreaking book illustrates the conceptual and practical dilemmas of assessment and raises issues that are relevant and applicable across a variety of modes of assessment and across various contexts where assessment takes place.

Everybody seems to be talking about Assessment for Learning. This book shows you how to do it. The thinking behind the highly influential 'Assessment for Learning' approach is translated into usable and practical strategies for all those teaching literacy in primary and secondary classrooms. The authors show how thinking, learning and assessment can be linked together in a creative and integrated fashion, so that thinking promotes learning, learning enables assessment to take place and assessment acts as a stimulus to both thinking and learning. Concise teachers' notes for a broad range of dynamic techniques explain for each: what the approach is how you use it for assessment how you can manage it in the classroom how it helps with learning. Downloadable resources are included with all of the activities and ideas that can be used on Interactive Whiteboards. Active Assessment for English will prove inspiring reading for all literacy teachers at primary and secondary levels, LEA advisers and inspectors.

This book analyses and discusses the recent developments for assessing research quality in the humanities and related fields in the social sciences. Research assessments in the humanities are highly controversial and the evaluation of humanities research is delicate. While citation-based research performance indicators are widely used in the natural and life sciences, quantitative measures for research performance meet strong opposition in the humanities. This volume combines the presentation of state-of-the-art projects on research assessments in the humanities by humanities scholars themselves with a description of the evaluation of humanities research in practice presented by research funders. Bibliometric issues concerning humanities research complete the exhaustive analysis of humanities research assessment. The selection of authors is well-balanced between humanities scholars, research funders, and researchers on higher education. Hence, the edited volume succeeds in painting a comprehensive picture of research evaluation in the humanities. This book is valuable to university and science policy makers, university administrators, research evaluators, bibliometricians as well as humanities scholars who seek expert knowledge in research evaluation in the humanities.

***** Online Resources are open access. No code is required ***** It is vital to understand the challenges and provide the right support for learners with dyscalculia and specific learning difficulties in mathematics. The book provides: * an overview of current research explaining the nature and causation of dyscalculia * guidance on the identification of dyscalculia * examples of how to carry out informal and formal assessments * an explanation of the principles of multisensory mathematics teaching * an outline of a structured programme (for learners aged 5-14), together with examples of lesson planning and activities. Designed for teachers specialising in the assessment and teaching of learners with dyscalculia, and those undertaking courses leading to Approved Teacher Dyscalculia (ATD) and Associate Membership of the British Dyslexia Association (AMBDA), the book is useful to any professional looking for an understanding of this area of specific difficulty.

Mark Paige takes an in-depth look at the interaction of Value Added Models (VAMs) and the law of teacher evaluation. It notes that the hasty adoption of VAMs in evaluation and employment law actually complicates efforts to improve teacher quality, especially at the local level. In brief, VAMs' costs vastly outweigh their benefits. The book advocates for a complete removal of VAMs in high-stakes decisions. It sets forth numerous recommendations for administrators and policymakers to enable them to effectively deal with the complications created by VAMs.

Using Differentiated Classroom Assessment to Enhance Student Learning introduces pre- and in-service teachers to the foundations, data use, and best practices of the DCA framework. As differentiated instruction practices increasingly enable K-12 educators to individualize learning in their classrooms, it is important that this framework be extended to assessment as well. This concise yet comprehensive book explains the science and rationale behind DCA as well as principles and strategies for both formative and summative assessments. Replete with vignettes, sample outputs, and recommendations, this is a lively and much-needed guide to understanding, enacting, and analyzing grouped and individualized assessments.

Effective evaluation of a pupil's performance and of resources available is a vital part of successful teaching. Originally published in 1983, this non-statistical guide aims to help teachers organise their work so as to improve their assessment of their pupils and also to analyse their own management efforts. A model is developed showing how teachers can progressively structure their work to increase the objectivity of their assessment. The use of published tests and the production of tests by teachers is covered, but the focus throughout is on the part played by assessment in the organisation of learning. The steps recommended are arranged so that the first yield the largest return. But none requires any statistical expertise or a large investment of time. The second part of the book shows how schools can be evaluated by their staff - school organisation, staff development and the curriculum are given special attention in this step-by-step guide to effective and rewarding school assessment.

What students are deemed to have achieved when they are sixteen is the measure of how successful or otherwise their progress through the system of compulsory education has been. And yet despite the importance of the process there has been no clear consensus about how best to assess students at sixteen. The various formal examinations which have been tried have now largely been superseded by the GCSE: a common system of examining at sixteen. Originally published in 1988, the book discusses the development of this system, its application to the main subject areas of the curriculum and some of its innovative aspects from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. In addition, it also looks at the broader aspects of assessment of pupils at the age of sixteen and how we can give a more rounded indication of their achievements and abilities by the use of profiles and records of achievement.