The research reported in this paper is focused directly on assessing the validity of the "Teaching Knowledge about Reading and Reading Practices" (TKRRP) assessment. Following the recommendations of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA/AERA, 1999), the authors see validation as a process of constructing an…

Prior studies have shown that students who are the first in their families to attend college fail to persist in college more so than their continuing-generation (CG) counterparts do. Prior research on this phenomenon has helped to identify various factors that contribute to the lower college persistence of first-generation (FG) students. For…

Due to the growing focus on learner independence, peer assessment has received a lion's share of attention in recent years. Nevertheless, this idea is novel to most English language teachers and students in Taiwan where traditional assessment is still dominant. This study investigated college students' attitudes towards and possible language…

It is possible that human capital produces positive externalities to the society indirectly, through non-market channels such as health or crime. Another such channel could be the effect of education on the functioning of democratic decision-making. Measures of the functioning of democracy are bound to be controversial, but one such measure--voter…

The Student Evaluation of Instruction (SEOI) was administered to all full-time and part-time faculty. Approximately 97,160 surveys were sent out in 5,320 envelopes; 60,206 surveys were returned to the Office of Institutional Research. The return rate for the SEOI packet envelopes was 84%. The Instructors' reports were provided to academic,…

The "Student Evaluation of Instruction" (SEOI) was administered to all full-time and part-time faculty. Approximately 90,045 surveys were sent out in 4,433 envelopes; 54,174 surveys were returned to the Office of Institutional Research. The return rate for the paper surveys was 60%. Instructors' reports were provided to academic,…

Mounting pressure for transformational change in higher education driven by technology, globalization, competition, funding shortages, and increased emphasis on accountability necessitates that universities implement reforms to demonstrate responsiveness to all stakeholders and to provide evidence of student achievement. In the face of the demand…

Building on their important findings in "The Source of the River," the authors now probe even more deeply into minority underachievement at the college level. "Taming the River" examines the academic and social dynamics of different ethnic groups during the first two years of college. Focusing on racial differences in academic performance, the…

This paper reports on an exploratory investigation of the perceptions of information and communication technology (ICT) as a field of study and work in German secondary schools. A total of 160 students from five secondary schools in Lower Saxony participated in the study in February 2007, and four teachers of the students were interviewed. The…

This article intends to investigate the challenges of e-learning implementation with an emphasis on education innovation. The Botswana government imports technology rather than developing it in-house through or in association with a well-developed national research and development (R&D) centre. In simple terms, e-learning is the delivery of…

Novice teachers today struggle to integrate engaging pedagogy into their standards based curriculum. 21st century students have been immersed in technology from birth and are accustomed to multi-tasking with several types of technology each day. Students no longer rely on the traditional ways of communication and absorb their information via…

To better understand the views of teachers and administrators on the high school dropout problem, focus groups and nationally representative surveys were conducted of high school teachers and principals. A focus group of superintendents and school board members was also included. To help interpret the results, the authors convened a colloquium…

Parents deal with a complex web of choices when seeking and using knowledge and resources related to their young children's literacy development. Information concerning children's learning and development comes in many forms and is produced by an increasingly diverse range of players including governments, non-government organizations and…

Although there has been sizable growth in the number of empirical studies of shared forms of leadership over the past decade, the bulk of this research has been descriptive. Relatively few published studies have investigated the impact of shared leadership on school improvement. This longitudinal study examines the effects of distributed…

The purpose of this study was to examine individual differences in attitudes toward Audience Response Systems (ARSs) in secondary school classrooms. Specifically, the impact of gender, grade, subject area, computer comfort level, participation level, and type of use were examined in 659 students. Males had significantly more positive attitudes…