This paper considers the widening access and participation agenda, its implications for higher education institutions (HEIs) and contends that it must be underpinned by strategic measurement and monitoring. Access is viewed through the following lenses: (i) supporting participation, and (ii) facilitating equity. Using mixed methods, the paper…

In Sweden, the local schoolboard has the ultimate responsibility for school quality and student knowledge development, and is held responsible if the expected outcomes are not met. Assisting the board is the superintendent who is the Chief Executive Officer. The aim of the study is to investigate the board's relation to and expectations of the…

The paper analyses the grades assigned by the professors of the University of Milan to their students at the end of written exams, comparing what happened in academic year 2018-19 and in academic year 2020-21, i.e., before and during the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, the lockdown closed the classrooms, stopping…

This study aims to critically and systematically investigate the contemporary discourse within scholarship on world-class universities in different higher education context. It applies critical discourse analysis to review articles from some top higher education academic journals and books published between 2000 and 2019. Exploring the notion of…

Within the framework of the revised taxonomy of educational objectives created by Anderson and Krathwohl, this study attempted to describe the design and examine the learning outcomes of an intervention focused on the development of higher order thinking at an elementary education setting. A class of 21 sixth graders participated in the project,…

When seeking to explain the eventual outcomes of a higher education experience, do the personal attributes and background factors students bring to college matter more than what the college is able to contribute to the development of the student through education or other institutional factors? Most education studies tend to simply ignore…

The last three decades of board research has embarked on various aspects of school boards (Alsbury, 2008b; Delagardelle, 2008; Resnick & Bryant, 2010; Strauss, 2018) including characteristics of effective boards (Alsbury & Gore, 2015; Dervarics & O'Brien, 2016), importance of targeted school board trainings (Cook, 2014; Gann, 2015;…

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), with its illustrative scales and salient features of spoken language at the reference levels, is widely used as the base for rating scales for performance testing. If practitioners want to measure and report even small gains in proficiency, they need to adapt the descriptors to their local context…

First Language (L1) has been assumed to play a role in Second Language ability (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). However, the interplay between them across skill, task, or scoring criteria is more complex (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008). Using Many-Facets Rasch Measurement, this study investigates the main effects of examinee ability, rater severity,…

Numerous studies merely note divergence in students' and teachers' ratings of student noncognitive constructs. However, given the increased attention and use of these constructs in educational research and practice, an in-depth study focused on this issue was needed. Using a variety of quantitative methodologies, we thoroughly investigate…

Within the global higher education structure, many nations have followed various strategies to become one of popular destinations for international students. Similarly, employing national strategy focusing on internationalisation, Turkey achieved to become an emerging regional hub as the tenth most popular destination for international students.…

Positioning strategy and ranking are critical issues in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape. Unless there is conceptual congruence between positioning strategies and rankings, the signals may become diffused and confusing for prospective students. This paper seeks the congruence between positioning strategies and ranking. Since…

Cities such as New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Silicon Valley and other metropolitan areas, also known as "Superstar Cities," are very effective at attracting highly educated workers. In a virtuous cycle, these workers migrate to where the interesting, highly paid jobs are, where other smart young people live, and where the cultural…

School accountability systems can serve many purposes, including sharing information, measuring progress toward state and local goals, and supporting greater educational equity. Given the important role accountability systems play in states' education systems, states have taken the opportunity provided by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to…

In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement.…