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.     

An Evaluation of the Context Curriculum — Dispelling a Myth

Student surveys were conducted during each of the two semesters of the first year of operation of the Context Curriculum at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The processes of the evaluation used are related to current ideas on evaluation. The evaluation relied heavily on the development and use of student questionnaires. Later in the year teaching staff and departmental heads were surveyed. Teaching staff were consulted about the questions to be included in the student questionnaire and also about the procedures to be used for analysis of the student responses and distribution of the summaries of responses. Special care was taken to ensure that the summaries for particular classes were revealed only to the class teacher. The evaluation showed that most students and their teachers are positively disposed towards the Context Curriculum. However, students were generally unsure of their department's support of the Context Curriculum. The opinions of teachers of the Context Curriculum and heads of department were more polarised than those of students. Both students and their teachers reported that they believed that other students and staff were unimpressed by the Context Curriculum. The evaluation showed this to be a myth.     

Suchting on the nature of scientific thought: Are we anchoring curricula in quicksand?

Scientific thought and the nature of science have been perennial concerns of science teachers and science curriculum developers. That is, the development of students' scientific thinking patterns and understandings of science as a way of knowing have been formally identified as desired outcomes of science instruction since the beginning of this century, and arguably earlier (Lederman 1992). Our desire to help students develop scientific thinking skills and an adequate understanding of the nature of science continues to this day, as is evidenced by the various contemporary reforms in science education (AAAS 1993; National Research Council 1994). Wallis Suchting's comprehensive search for a definition of the nature of scientific thought (Suchting 1995) has significant implications for the aforementioned goals of the science education community. Notwithstanding the almost certain disagreements regarding Suchting's analytical methods, his ultimate conclusion that there is no final, ultimate answer to the question of the nature of scientific thought should receive careful consideration as it has significant implications for science instruction, curriculum development, research in science education, and the content and focus of science education reform. In particular, these implications relate specifically to the science education community's current conceptions of science process, nature of science, and multiculturalism in science.     

Order and duration of stimuli are important determinants of reactivation

Prior cuing treatments intended to alleviate the forgetting of a conditioned avexsion-to an odor were tested with 18-day-old rats. Previous experiments had shown that when such pups were conditioned with the use of a CS?/CS+ procedure, pretest presentation of the CS? or US, but not the CS+, alleviated the forgetting otherwise seen after a 3-h retention interval. In Experiment 1, it was determined that the forgetting was not alleviated if the GS? was either preceded or followed by presentation of the CS+, despite the fact that the CS?/CS+ ordering mimicked that of original conditioning. Experiment 2 was an examination of the balance of extinction and reactivation effects caused by presenting the CS+ for varying durations following the 3-h retention interval. The forgetting over this interval was alleviated if the CS+ was presented for 5 or 15 sec, but not 30 sec. With an increase in duration of exposure from 15 to 30 sec, the consequences of the CS+ as a prior cuing treatment apparently shifted from reactivation to extinction. Experiment 3 was a test of the interaction between the consequences of different lengths of CS+ exposure and the effectiveness of adding CS? to the CS+ as a reactivation treatment. The varied effectiveness of reactivation treatments is discussed interms of a change in stimulus conditions from training to reactivation.     

Subskill mastery among elementary and middle school students at risk in mathematics

In the present study, we evaluated the number of attempts required to master specific subskills for working with whole and rational numbers among students at risk for math difficulties. Participants included a subset of students in grades four through eight receiving supplemental math support. Mastery—defined as 85% correct on short tests—was assessed following instruction for each subskill. Using survival analysis, we evaluated the number of attempts required to reach a .50 and a .90 probability of mastery on each subskill. The number of required attempts varied across subskills, with many subskills requiring more than one attempt to demonstrate mastery. Further, some of the most difficult content was aligned with curricular standards below students’ grade level. Thus, among students identified for supplemental support, it may be worthwhile to remediate select subskills that fall outside of the grade‐level curriculum before providing additional instruction on grade‐level content. Implications for math subskill assessment and remediation are discussed along with limitations and directions for future research.