In this intervention, four geographers, all of whom have used Jason Dittmer's book, "Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity", in their classes, assess its status as a teaching resource. All have had considerable success using Dittmer's book, alongside other resources, to cultivate critical thinking and critical knowledge…

In their article Ruscio et al. (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) present a comparative study of some of the different variants of the "h" index. The study evaluates a total of 22 metrics, including the "h" index and "h"-type indices, as well as other conventional measures. The novelty of their work is to a large extent…

The article by Davis, Engberg, Epple, Sieg, and Zimmer (2010) represents one of the recent research efforts from economists in evaluating the impact of gifted programs. It can serve as a worked example of the implementation of the regression discontinuity (RD) design method in gifted education research. In this commentary, we first illustrate the…

This paper reflects on the work done at a large UK university to redesign assessment procedures in a way that was intended to contribute to an improvement in assessment literacy for staff. Existing practice was reviewed and showed that changes in assessment processes were needed to make the organization of assessment more consistent and more…

The Robert Bowne Foundation (RBF), which published "Afterschool Matters" from 2003 to 2008 and continues to fund the journal and related projects, is closing in December. "Afterschool Matters" sat down with Lena Townsend, executive director, to talk about RBF's legacy and continuing influence on literacy work in afterschool…

Digital media and work with technology has become a critical, integral part of teaching, scholarship, and service in the academy, transforming the ways faculty engage with students, conduct research, and serve their campus, local, and national communities. These guidelines--originally written in 1998 and updated in 2015--are designed to advise…

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and…

Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

This article shares the authors' personal stories that shed light on what to watch out for when the board takes up a performance review. The authors describe what they considered less-than-satisfying experiences with their board of education's process of performance assessment. They offered to do so with candor in hopes of helping their colleagues…

Rubric means red ochre--red earth--as in Bryce Canyon and Sedona. Red headers were used in medieval manuscripts as section or chapter markers, and you can bet that the Whore of Babylon got herself some fancy rubrics over the years. Through most of its history, the word has been attached to religious texts and liturgy; rubrics were used as…

In this article, we critique two recent theoretical developments about collaborative inquiry in evaluation--using logic models as a means to understand theory, and efforts to compartmentalize versions of collaborative inquiry into discrete genres--as a basis for considering future direction for the field. We argue that collaborative inquiry in…

In this webinar, Dr. Sarah Catherine K. Moore, Program Director at the Center for Applied Linguistics, outlined factors for content area teachers to consider as they design and deliver lessons for mainstream classrooms that include English learner (EL) students. This Q&A addressed the questions participants had for Dr. Moore following the…

Haertel's argument is that one must "expand the scope of test validation to include indirect testing effects" because these effects are often the "rationale for the entire testing program." The author strongly agrees that this is essential. However, he maintains that Haertel's argument does not go far enough and that there are two additional…

Disagreements are an inevitable part of life, but what happens if a school issue becomes truly divisive? It's impossible to go through this world without coming into conflict with someone at some point, and music educators are no more immune to this than anyone else. However, there are details and procedures peculiar to the teaching world, and…

We argue that the nativist-empiricist debate in developmental psychology is distorted, both theoretically and methodologically, by a shared framework of assumptions concerning the nature of representation. In particular, both sides of the debate assume models of representation that make the emergence of representation impossible. This, in turn,…