The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2013-2014…

Dynamic Assessment (DA) originated in the writings of L.S. Vygotsky more than 80 years ago, and despite its popularity among a small community of specialists it is not widely pursued by educational researchers. This paper seeks to strengthen dialogue between DA proponents and the broader assessment community by identifying potential contributions…

Are you using interviews in your classroom? Carolyn Frank's new book on interviewing is a powerful tool for teachers and educational researchers. Through an anthropological frame, this book explains techniques for ethnographic interviews and observations in and out of the classroom. Carolyn Frank shows how teachers in particular can use…

Background: This article serves as a conclusion to a TCR special issue devoted to understanding the impact of the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant (RTG) initiative. We examine four case reports prepared by scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Los Angeles…

Four trends important to educational research and development are traced, and serve as background for describing the evolving status of educational evaluation. The long-range future for educational evaluation is assessed. (MH)

Synthesizes the results of three previous task force efforts into a list of 25 tasks frequently needed in educational research and evaluation, and the skills and knowledge required to perform them. Tasks listed hold for the late 60's and early 70's. Developments subsequent to 1971 are not considered. (AM)

Summarizes criticisms of the community college in a list of six ways in which two-year colleges promote the socio-economic status quo. Reviews the writings of Clark, Jencks and Riesman, Cohen, Astin, Karabel, and Zwerling--all university-based critics. Suggests that two-year college educators analyze and profit from these criticisms. (GB)

Reviews the United Kingdom's Eleven-plus Examination and discusses its use in developing countries. Notes that the rise of the comprehensive school has made the use of the examination redundant. Points out that the examination still thrives outside the United Kingdom, perhaps because it was implemented differently in those locales. (KO)

In the early 1970s educational evaluation's fusion of respect for rationality, power to implement rational procedure, and an altruistic objective (improved instruction) appealed to educational researchers. Dealing essentially with closed systems, it measured program success by student performance on measurement instruments. Critics exclaimed that…

Education research is seen as increasingly integral to education policy and practice, and must contribute to achieving national educational improvement objectives. Urges educational researchers to assume a leading role in restructuring American education in the 1990s by turning their attention to the following four priorities: (1) assessment; (2)…

There is presently a wide gap between educational research and educational policy, which seems to result from the esoteric nature of much of the research as well as from the fact that policy is guided more often by economic or social concerns than by educational considerations. The results of a study of college impact on student development are…

In a survey of educational researchers, school and district administrators, and policymakers, 1,818 respondents rated educational practices and policies according to their influence on learning and assessability. Classroom practices, design and delivery of curriculum, and schoolwide practices were rated as more influential than federal, state, and…

Describes and analyzes Swedish curriculum theory and research over the last 20 years. Relates this to changes in the comprehensive school system and the decline of the welfare state. Recounts the break-up of the cooperative relationship among the research community, the National Board of Education, and the Ministry of Education. (MJP)

Participant evaluation research is described as a combination of three recent trends: action research conducted by teachers in their own classrooms, social action programs involving parent and community participation, and subjective epistemology which includes perceptions and contextual information within the accepted database. The planning phase…