Using Test Scores From Students With Disabilities in Teacher Evaluation

Much of the recent focus of educational policymakers has been on improving the measurement of teacher effectiveness. Linking student growth to teacher effects has been a large part of reform efforts. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on how to treat test scores from students with disabilities in growth‐based teacher effectiveness indicators, despite the fact that these students make up approximately 13% of the K‐12 student population. In this study, we leverage longitudinal data from the population of teachers in one state to explore practical questions related to including general assessment scores from students with disabilities in teacher evaluation. Findings suggest that including test scores from students with disabilities allows more teachers to be evaluated and does not substantially affect teachers’ scores. Moreover, including disability‐related covariates can allow for fairer evaluations for teachers with many students with disabilities in their class.     

Repeat Testing Effects on Credentialing Exams: Are Repeaters Misinformed or Uninformed?

To mitigate security concerns and unfair score gains, credentialing programs routinely administer new test material to examinees retesting after an initial failing attempt. Counterintuitively, a small but growing body of recent research suggests that repeating the identical form does not create an unfair advantage. This study builds upon and extends this research by investigating changes in responses to specific items encountered on both the first and repeat attempts. Results indicate that scores gains for repeat examinees who were assigned an identical form were not different from repeat examinees who received a different, but parallel, form. Analyses of responses to individual items answered incorrectly on the initial attempt found that examinees 68% of the time selected the same incorrect option on their second attempt, suggesting repeaters are misinformed rather than uninformed. Implications for feedback, remediation, and retesting policies are discussed.     

Mexican American Male Masquerades in the Institution as Bully

This Black and Chicana Feminist case study challenges national discourse surrounding school bullying as individualistic, student-centered. We explore the warrior lens of Mexican/Mexican-American males. While masquerading institutional compliance, they simultaneously unmask policies, practices as the means to control mind/bodies/spirit. This research seeks to uncover and more deeply understand lived realities at intersections of race, class, and gender while highlighting these young men’s agency to physically and psychologically resist that which seeks to circumscribe their educational and social outcomes. Within an elusive and subversive rasquachismo resourcefulness, they adhere to expectations while masquerading compliance to create spaces of resistance and survival within the institution as bully.     

Providing Cognitively Just Subject Access to Indigenous Knowledge through Knowledge Organization Systems

This article explores cognitively just, reliable subject access to indigenous knowledge through knowledge organization systems (KOSs). Cognitive justice requires that indigenous people be able to access materials in a way that respects their worldview, yet dominant KOSs are based on positivist, Western approaches that are fundamentally incompatible. Alternatives to universal systems include the creation of new KOSs and the adaptation of universal ones. Going forward, emerging web technologies are presented as key to moving away from universalist schemes and toward specialized access.     

Re-framing information literacy: Problem-based learning as informed learning

This study explores an online information literacy module that uses problem-based learning (PBL). The goal was to enable students to experience information literacy in a richer way, by moving away from a focus on locating information sources to one of information use in the construction of knowledge. A content analysis of the research journals and reflection papers of students (N = 15) in a distance education school library media administration endorsement program suggests that PBL was an effective approach for some students, but not others. Some students were motivated by working on authentic problems, and at least half the students engaged deeply with information and discovered new questions and angles for research during the process. These students applied more sophisticated evaluation strategies and were more metacognitive in their thinking, assessing their progress and shifting strategies as they progressed through the module.     

Enhancing achievement motivation and performance in college students: An attributional retraining perspective

Academic performance in higher education ultimately involves a complex interplay of student attributes and the educational environment. Although instruction is regarded as the major environmental factor affecting scholastic success, other factors can become more important when teaching does not produce the desired results. Attributional retraining is one alternative that shows considerable promise for enhancing students' motivation and achievement striving by changing how students think about their successes and failures. This paper reviews attributional retraining studies published since 1985 having a higher education focus. Their conceptual and methodological strengths and weaknesses are discussed in relation to Weiner's attribution theory. Within this context, attributional retraining is presented as a potentially viable and important intervention for improving college students' academic development, especially those students deemed to be at risk. In particular, attributional retraining is considered as an adjunct to, and possible aspect of, effective teaching.Support for this research was provided to Raymond P. Perry by Franz E. Weinert, Max Planck Institute, Munich, and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-91-1296). The junior authors contributed equally to the article and are listed alphabetically.     

Evidence-based decision-making: awareness,process and practice in the management classroom

In an increasingly information rich environment, it is important to teach students decision-making alongside information gathering and management methods. This paper examines the implementation of evidence-based decision-making in a first year introduction to management course at a large university in the Midwestern United States. Students learned decision awareness, decision-making process creation and decision practice alongside areas of management and basic business principles. Students perceived increased skill in decision-making, both individually and in groups. This venture has implications for others looking to help students not only learn experientially, but also improve critical thinking in practice.     

Bringing Content into the Picture: Proposing a Tri-Partite Model for Digital Preservation

Digital preservation is a complex field that is rapidly maturing and increasingly focusing on content as well as the human element of digital preservation. This conceptual article examines a number of digital preservation models meeting a variety of needs created by different communities. Given the guidance these models have afforded digital preservation, considering the present, and looking to the future, this article proposes a tri-partite model for thinking about digital preservation in an era of robust community involvement: the Digital Preservation Triad. The Triad focuses on 1) Management, including elements relating to documentation and human resources; 2) Technology; and 3) Content.