Despite the impact of genetics on daily life, biology undergraduates understand some key genetics concepts poorly. One concept requiring attention is dominance, which many students understand as a fixed property of an allele or trait and regularly conflate with frequency in a population or selective advantage. We present the Dominance Concept…

In this study, the prototype of a new type of bilingual picture book was field-tested with two sets of mother-son subject pairs. This picture book was designed as a possible tool for providing children with comprehensible input during their critical period for second language acquisition. Context is provided by visual cues and both Japanese and…

Understanding genetic drift is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of biology, yet it is difficult to learn because it combines the conceptual challenges of both evolution and randomness. To help assess strategies for teaching genetic drift, we have developed and evaluated the Genetic Drift Inventory (GeDI), a concept inventory that measures…

The authors study the characteristics of students who take the Major Field Test in Business (MFT-B) versus those who do not. The authors find that students with higher cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) are more likely to take the test. Additionally, students are more likely to take the test if it is offered late in the semester. Further…

States with an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS) that received a flexibility waiver from some of the requirements of No Child Left Behind are required to phase out their use of this assessment. And, on August 23, 2013, the U.S. Department of Education published a proposed rollback of regulation that allowed the…

Program evaluation is an important part of Extension, especially with the increased emphasis on metrics and accountability. Agents are often the point persons for evaluation data collection, and Web-based surveys are a commonly used tool. The iPad tablet with Internet access has the potential to be an effective survey tool. iPads were field tested…

In the spring of 2012 students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education received national attention when they refused to participate in the field test of a teacher performance assessment being run by Pearson Incorporated and Stanford University. Students, led by their professor, demanded they be given informed consent about…

Background: Addressing the limitations of existing Local Wellness Policies (LWPs) and promoting their implementation remain priorities for health and education agencies. One gap has been the absence of a standard assessment to support LWP revision. During planning for an initiative to improve school nutrition and physical education policy, the…

This article describes the development of learning widget on m-learning and e-learning environments. A widget is a small, simple and useful application supporting user-oriented contents. The user may select and install widgets that are convenient as well as an auto-updating application including weather or calendar. These widgets are especially…

Developing mathematical talent in our students should be of primary consideration in education today as nations respond to the challenges of economic crises and ever-changing technological advances. This paper describes two U.S. federally funded curriculum projects, Project M[superscript 3], Mentoring Mathematical Minds, and Project M[superscript…

Much of modern biology has become increasingly chemical in character. Not surprisingly, students often have trouble understanding key ideas in biology because they lack foundational chemistry ideas. AAAS and BSCS are collaborating to develop and study a curriculum unit that supports students' ability to explain a variety of biological processes…

AAAS and BSCS are collaborating to develop and study a curriculum unit that supports students' ability to explain a variety of biological processes such as growth in chemical terms. The unit provides conceptual coherence between chemical processes in nonliving and living systems through the core idea of atom rearrangement and conservation during…

Preparing all students for success requires a renewed emphasis on supporting high-quality teaching, on using data to inform decision-making, and on creating a culture of high expectations. To support the shift toward college and career readiness, more than 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).…

Through the Common Core State Standards and the development of new assessments aligned to the standards, the public education system is undergoing a transformation--and administrators can help make this vision a reality. Today, more than 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards. The standards, however,…

The Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP) was developed in response to a lack of validated instruments designed specifically to measure the quality of inclusive practices, and it is based on research evidence on the effectiveness of specialized instructional strategies for meeting the individual needs of children in inclusive settings (Odom, 2004;…