Assessing School Readiness: Validity and Bias in Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers' Ratings

As a part of efforts to evaluate and monitor the increasing public investment in early childhood education, teachers are being asked to assess children's school readiness. In this study, preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers rated children's skills in three areas (kindergarten readiness, academic skills, and communication skills), and these ratings were compared with direct assessments of the children's skills. Ratings by both groups of teachers tended to be more highly related to basic skills, such as counting and number naming, than to abilities such as solving applied problems and using expressive and receptive vocabulary. Preschool teachers' ratings had a lower association with children's observed skills and abilities than kindergarten teachers' ratings. Ratings of children attending Head Start were systematically inflated, but this relationship was mediated to a significant extent by the teachers' levels of education. More educated teachers rated children in a manner consistent with the children's directly assessed skills. Implications of these findings for informing future efforts to assess school readiness by using teacher ratings are discussed.     

我国西南诸省(区)农村学校体育现状调研

就西南诸省 (区 ) (广西、四川、贵州 )乡镇以下中、小学的体育教学、课余体育、影响农村学校体育发展的因素等问题进行了调查 ,发现西南诸省 (区 )农村学校体育仍然处于明显的落后状态。观念落后、场地、器材和专业及兼职师资缺乏、无适用教学大纲和教材是制约其发展的主要因素 ,据此提出了发展对策建议。     

试论休闲与休闲体育

运用文献资料调研的方法对休闲的概念、发展及休闲体育的概念、特征、分类、功能进行探讨。休闲体育是指人们在可自由支配时间内,自主地选择自己爱好的身体练习和运动项目,以达到愉悦身心、修身养性,实现和完善自我的一种社会活动。它是体育运动的重要组成部分,也是休闲的重要活动内容,在未来人们的日常生活以及社会经济发展中它将发挥着越来越重要作用。     

More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing

This article explores the basis of negative sentiments toward and current critiques of high-stakes student testing from within the education profession. To promote some balance for current policy debates, evidence for 10 unintended, unrecognized, or unarticulated positive consequences is provided. The article concludes with an examination of the relationship between high-stakes testing and accountability systems.     

What Should We Teach Children About Forgiveness?

The Primary and Secondary Handbooks on the National Curriculum for England state that children ‘should learn how to forgive themselves and others’. But what is involved in forgiveness? It is suggested that there is a strict view, which is shown to involve some ethically questionable attitudes, and a more relaxed view. Schools, it is suggested, need to introduce their students to an understanding of the complexities of these notions of forgiveness and other possible attitudes to wrongdoers. In the life and organisation of the school, however, it is argued that the more generous‐spirited attitude should prevail.     

体育预测方法评述

对体育预测方法作了整体的分析，讨论了定量预测和定性预测的优缺点，分析了体育复杂大系统组合预测技术，以及解决定性和定量相结合的综合集成方法，并探讨了体育预测方法的新发展。