Classroom teachers need to make sound judgments and decisions concerning curricular and instructional issues. The teachers who wish to become more effective in the classroom should learn to develop their own research designs since educational research reported in journals is often inconclusive, conflicting, or not relevant to the classroom…

Examination of selected national and state level career education curriculum development projects provided the basis for consideration and comparison of major strategies used in deriving curriculum content. Those found most useful included the theoretical base, philosophical base, introspection, function approach, task analysis, Delphi approach,…

The National Job Corps Study has been conducted since 1993 to provide Congress and program managers with the information they need to assess how well Job Corps attains its goal of helping students become more responsible, employable, and productive citizens. The cornerstone of the study was the random assignment of all youths found eligible for…

A study explored which nonexperimental comparison group methods provide the most accurate estimates of the impacts of mandatory welfare-to-work programs and whether the best methods work well enough to substitute for random assignment experiments. Findings were compared for nonexperimental comparison groups and statistical adjustment procedures…

The 1998 High School Transcript Study (HSTS) provides the U.S. Department of Education and other policymakers about current course offerings and students' course taking patterns. In 1998 the nationally representative sample for the HSTS included 25,422 students graduating in 1994 from 264 high schools. Approximately 94% of the sampled students…

The development and administration of practical skills tests in science as part of the Second Science Study of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement are described. Scoring and sampling for Hungary, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States are reviewed. (SLD)

Community involvement is conceptualized as a typology of the following processes of social change: (1) conversion; (2) mobilization; (3) allocation of resources; and (4) instruction. The effects of these forms of involvement are considered in a review of 13 evaluations of programs for disadvantaged youth involving the community. (SLD)

This chapter examines the use of popular theatre as a methodology to investigate racialized minority girls' processes of identity formation and experiences of exclusion and belonging in predominantly white, urban Victoria, B.C., Canada. The article draws on transnational feminist frameworks that emphasize intersectionality and locality to…

This study investigated construct validity and factorial invariance of a performance assessment of reading comprehension and writing proficiency through a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) structure using confirmatory factor analysis. The performance assessment was administered to 1,023 fifth and sixth graders. Interrater reliability was examined for…

The objective of this study was to evaluate quantitatively through meta analysis the effectiveness of child sexual-abuse prevention programs conducted over the past 10 years. Eighteen controlled studies evaluating such programs were coded for salient features and study outcomes and were then described using the common scale of effect size. An…

The evaluation of Utah State University's distance education course in French as a second language consists of two separate reports, one of the instructional materials used and the other based on a later site visit. Evaluation of instructional materials focuses on a commercially available textbook and related student workbook and audio tapes, an…

A proposed research project focusing on the role of parents in promoting their children's learning of English as a Second Language is outlined. Specifically, the research would investigate the extent to which parental support and interaction of various kinds will enhance the learning and acquisition of English in low-income Hispanic kindergarten…

The 1994 High School Transcript Study (HSTS) provides the Department of Education and other policymakers with information about current course offerings and students' course-taking patterns in the nation's secondary schools. One objective was to determine changes in course offering and selection patterns since the previous studies in 1982, 1987,…

This paper explains the process used to validate the construct validity of the Factors Influencing Pursuit of Higher Education Questionnaire. This questionnaire is a literature-based, researcher-developed instrument which gathers information on the factors thought to affect a person's decision to pursue higher education. The questionnaire includes…

This study evaluated the mathematics and reading/language arts curriculum for grades 6 through 8 in an Illinois private school for gifted students. Emphasis was on determining whether the current curriculum meets the needs of these students and whether students are challenged to develop problem solving and critical thinking skills. Evaluation was…