Discusses the consequences for equity issues in testing and evaluation that come with the inclusion of performance assessment components in public examinations. Uses data from the British General Certificate of Secondary Education to show effects on course work offered and gender equity and that student evaluation does not always function as…

Reports on the development and evaluation of a transitional bilingual program for grades 2 through 5. Evaluation results based on achievement of 42 students and 42 comparisons show that the program is more effective than the transition program students typically receive. Discusses implications for education of English learners. (SLD)

Investigated relationships among different types of errors occurring during probability problem solving by 50 graduate students without mathematical sophistication. Categorized errors as text comprehension, conceptual, procedural, and arithmetic/computation errors. Discusses implications for the teaching and learning of probability problem…

Describes the fieldwork aspect of the British study "The Improving Schools Project." Identifies themes emerging from the first phase of the study in 13 secondary schools. Describes these themes: (1) multiple starting points; (2) the complex and interactive nature of school improvement; (3) missing instructional level; and (4 ) importance of…

Analyzes codes of conduct that are a charter component of the "Schools of the Future" initiative in Victoria (Australia), a school reform effort that involves nearly 300 schools. Results show that schools need to emphasize a closer connection between students' rights and responsibilities, align discipline and rewards, and focus on preparation for…

Uses data from an evaluation of an alternative teacher certification program to illustrate the value and use of multilevel models to examine site-to-site outcome differences data from multisite evaluations, showing how a traditional analysis approach can overlook effective interventions and miss important links between program implementation and…

The 12 chapters of this special issue focus on national findings and analyses from five Western European countries that participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), an international comparative study of mathematics and science achievement. Focuses on populations of 9- and 13-year olds in England, Germany, Sweden,…

Describes a laboratory teaching method that utilizes open-ended investigations that are meaningful and relevant, yet do not demand excessive amounts of the student's time. (MLH)

Discusses positive effects of using a personalized system of instruction, including self-pacing and modular curriculum, with classes of fewer than 30 members. (MLH)

Discusses the use of experimental simulation by digital computer as a laboratory teaching tool in a mechanical engineering course on measurements. (MLH)

Describes a study showing that students in an engineering class in which assigned homework problems were graded did not perform better than students whose homework was not graded. (MLH)

In this study retrospective verbal reports were collected in order to study cognitive processes activated when solving simple additions. The research was devoted to a revision and validation of the earlier presented process model (Svenson 1975) by using retrospective verbal reports as a complement to the response latencies analyzed earlier.…

Studies the relationship between subjective word frequency and some of the most common word attributes, familiarity, associability and pronounciability, all measured with the method of magnitude estimation. Also considers how individuals scale words in terms of comprehensibility and at the same time how this dimension is related to the other…

The use children make of utterances and messages seems to be of great relevance to teachers, because it is possible to facilitate and stimulate certain language uses by planning the educational setting. Discusses one theory of language function in order to clarify the problems and perspectives of this kind of psycholinguistic research. (Author/RK)

Article suggests certain tasks must be performed before a pupil can learn to read. What these tasks are depends upon whether teaching method is analytic--introducing words as whole units to be broken down--or synthetic--introducing individual written signs as sounds, to be built up into meaningful units. (RW)