Purpose/Objective: Under the reauthorized Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states and districts retain greater discretion over the measures included in school quality report cards. Moreover, ESSA now requires states to expand their measurement efforts to address factors like school climate. This shift toward more comprehensive measures of school…

In recent years, the concept of Assessment for Learning (AfL) has travelled across countries, giving rise to a range of educational policy initiatives and school development projects. While researchers have focused on issues such as how formative assessment can support student learning and lead to more efficient classroom practices, less attention…

A complex and contested concept, sustainability presents a great challenge to teachers and learners. Field study is a potentially promising venue to unpack the problematics of sustainability in practice. This paper reflects on the Cascadia Sustainability Field School, offered through the University of Victoria, Canada, providing an overview of the…

Conducting field-based research with teacher participants can be difficult, particularly in the area of recruiting teacher participants and retaining them in the study. This case study will give readers an example the Trials One research team experienced when attempting to recruit a large number of in-service special education teachers to assist…

For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of India's young adults have volunteered to collect data for an annual household education related survey. The survey is called the Annual Status of Education Report or ASER, for short. The ASER survey is a unique methodology of citizen-led assessments. The purpose of this article is to describe and…

I report on postgraduate students conducting survey research on information and communications technology (ICTs) in South African schools, focusing on the notion of e-maturity. The dual emphasis of the paper is on students' collaborative experience of the authentic research process including their experience of e-maturity within the target schools…

This issue brief is focused on state efforts to improve education in science, technology, engineering, and math--collectively known as the "STEM" disciplines. The brief is largely based on a March, 2009 American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) field trip to Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, and describes Ohio's success in advancing STEM education…

The use of fieldwork in evaluation presents the fieldworker and agencies connected with educational evaluation with a number of critical problems. Four of these problems are identified and discussed: 1) definition of the "problem"; 2) multiplicity of signals, expectations, and responses; 3) dispensation of fieldwork data; and 4) collection of data…

Based on personal experiences in conducting intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the social, emotional, and personal aspects of fieldwork that are often neglected in the literature are considered. The fieldwork involved observations within five diverse secondary schools during a 2-year period in conjunction with a project on microcomputer…

Some aspects of fourth generation evaluation procedures that have been advocated by E. G. Guba and Y. S. Lincoln were examined empirically, with emphasis on areas where there have been discrepancies between theory and field-based experience. In fourth generation evaluation, the product of an evaluation is not a set of conclusions, recommendations,…

A teacher education program evaluation model incorporates six features: program modification; field-based perspective; longitudinal approach; involvement of all related program personnel; reliable and comprehensive data; and examination of importance or values as well as effectiveness. Operation of the model, reaction of participants and…

The four papers in this report summarize several research and development efforts currently being undertaken on behalf of the Government of Papua New Guinea. In the first paper, the Indigenous Mathematics Project, established in 1977 to investigate various aspects of traditional and Western mathematical development, is described. The intent of the…

This chapter describes the implementation and lessons learned from the conduct of three field experiments in education. All three evaluation designs used randomized assignment. Results showed even under very adverse and unstable conditions, randomized designs can be maintained. (LMO)

Discussed are research methods as applied to research in the mathematics classroom. Included in the discussion are objectivity, development, evaluation, observation, reflection, research design and methods, and data reduction. (CW)

To satisfy federal requirements, the National Center for Education Statistics and the Division of Adult Education and Literacy planned a nationally representative household sample survey to assess the literacy skills of the adult population of the United States, to be conducted by the Educational Testing Service with the assistance of Westat, Inc.…