Software publishers association sales data programs: Methodologies,coverage and assumptions

The Software Publishers Association Research Department focuses its sales research efforts on tracking sales of packaged application software written for the desktop personal computer industry. Quarterly summaries of the data we collect are issued to the public in the form of sales press releases. Our goal in this article is to clarify the types of information we collect, the sources used, and the adjustments performed on the data available to the public. At the end of this article we discuss the software piracy loss estimation methodology.     

How teachers can use the professional evaluation standards

Conclusion Teachers need formal and working knowledge of educational evaluation for their work in traditional schools as well as in schools in the future. In the form of principles, the professional evaluation standards provide educational evaluation knowledge that teachers can use to acquire the working knowledge they want and can use. Professional development programs can help teachers grasp the substance and intent of educational evaluation principles, but the principles alone cannot empower teachers or build a system of profound knowledge shared within the organization and used to move it toward its goals. An investment in teachers through professional-development programs is important if teachers are to conduct evaluations and use evaluation results together as a routine part of doing business. An investment in teachers through professional-development programs must attend to the social and technical aspects of a change effort. The learning about evaluation and their principles must be organizationally valued and the learning nurtured and sustained.     

Overcoming Isolation: Women's Dilemmas in American Academic Science

Science is an intensely social activity. Professional relationships are essential forscientific success and mentors areindispensable for professional growth. Despitethe scientific ethos of universalism andinclusion, American women scientists frequentlyexperience isolation and exclusion at some timeduring their academic career. By contrast,male scientists enjoy informal but crucialsocial networks. Female scientists developnecessary strategies and defences, but manyleave or achieve less success in science whendeprived of necessary interpersonalconnections. There is indication that changewithin departments is occurring, but this isdependent upon institutional leadership.     

Quality Assessment in Initial Teacher Education: Lessons from the 1993/94 OFSTED Experience

Different interest groups define quality in different ways. Enterprises such as education, and, specifically, teacher education, serve many interest groups including funding bodies, employers and students as consumers. Assessment of quality in this context has to take account of the priorities of such groups if the process is to have credibility. Processes involved also have to take account of the purposes to which such assessments might be put. Issues related to the recent cycle of inspections of secondary initial teacher education courses are discussed in the light of these factors. The process is fairly robust and comprehensive and is thus well equipped to inform various stakeholders and to bring about improvement through inspection. Because of a range of variables which have the potential to influence the outcome of an inspection, the process is less valid as a mechanism for influencing resourcing or as a means of comparing quality in initial teacher education with that in other areas of higher education.     

Predictive validity of teacher ratings of creativity over 2 years

Fifty white, suburban middle-class children were tested in the fourth grade with six divergent thinking tests developed from Guilford's SOI model and in the sixth grade with the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Verbal Form A. In the fourth grade, these students' classroom teachers completed for each of them the Scale for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students. With IQ and reading and math achievement controlled via partial correlations, Guilford-like and Torrance measures were significantly correlated over 2 years but only teachers' rating of students as “sensitive to beauty and the aesthetic characteristics of things” was significantly related over 2 years to creativity measures. This characteristic appeared to be most crucial in the prediction of creativity for boys.