The addition of 'clinically significant impairment' (American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, Author, 2013) to the diagnostic criteria for autism in DSM-5 attempts to establish a threshold for the condition. However, the increased prominence of the neurodiversity paradigm and social model of…

Standardized observation systems seek to reliably measure a specific conceptualization of teaching quality, managing rater error through mechanisms such as certification, calibration, validation, and double-scoring. These mechanisms both support high quality scoring and generate the empirical evidence used to support the scoring inference (i.e.,…

One of the widely known evaluation models adapted to education is the Kirkpatrick model. However, this model has limitations when used by evaluators especially in the complex environment of higher education. Addressing the scarcity of a collective effort on discussing these limitations, this review paper aims to present a descriptive analysis of…

Education-focused roles represent a large and rapidly increasing share of the academic workforce in UK higher education. This expansion has resulted in the emergence of dedicated career tracks running in parallel with established teaching and research routes. Role descriptors and promotion criteria for these roles typically require evidence of…

Background: In 2016-17 an important consensus was established regarding the use of the diagnostic label 'developmental language disorder' (DLD) to describe children with a persistent language problem having a functional impact on communication or learning and in the absence of any other biomedical condition. Despite this consensus, past research…

Changing health-care climates mean evaluators need to provide findings within shorter time frames, but challenges remain in the creation of rapid research designs capable of delivering quality data to inform decision-making processes. We conducted a review of articles to grapple with these challenges and explore the ways in which rapid evaluations…

Wisconsin's technical colleges appear to receive unusually high funding levels per student compared to other public two-year colleges nationally. Yet our review has found more than 100,000 technical college students being served in Wisconsin are absent in national data, likely inflating the funding figures. Accounting for the missing students…

For over 30 years, the notion of authentic assessment in higher education has been adopted in academic practice, but it has managed to escape substantial critique. Although there have been multiple definitions and operationalisations of authentic assessment, current practice tends to foreground mimicking of work tasks. Authenticity cannot be…

The cry that today's higher education students are particularly individualist is a commonly-heard one. In England, the considerable personal cost of tuition is often blamed for creating a series of negative student traits, including consumerism (an idea that one has bought the right to a degree) and individualism (a sense of the individual as the…

Since 2007, two taxonomies have been proposed to identify the components of evaluation practice that may be specified in an evaluation policy. Little is known, however, about how these taxonomies align with evaluation policies developed by philanthropic foundations. Through thematic analysis, this article first compares 12 foundation evaluation…

This study examines the views of assessment of programme directors at a Portuguese public university (n = 60). Data were collected through a questionnaire which included closed and open-ended questions. The participants hold different professional categories and come from medical and health sciences, exact sciences, engineering and technology,…

Objectives: Discussions of fairness in criminal justice risk assessments typically lack conceptual precision. Rhetoric too often substitutes for careful analysis. In this article, we seek to clarify the trade-offs between different kinds of fairness and between fairness and accuracy. Methods: We draw on the existing literatures in criminology,…

Does the choice of observation instrument make a difference in the feedback and ratings that teachers receive? This study explores how lessons are rated differentially across various observation instruments. To investigate this question, ten randomly selected mathematics lessons were rated using six different observation instruments. Overall…

Despite the rising popularity of big data, there is speculation that evaluators have been slow adopters of these new statistical approaches. Several possible reasons have been offered for why this is the case: ethical concerns, institutional capacity, and evaluator capacity and values. In this method note, we address one of these barriers and aim…

Premised on the idea that evaluators should be familiar with a range of approaches to program modifications, I review several existing approaches and then describe another, less well-recognized option. In this newer option, evaluators work with others to identify potentially needed adaptations for select program aspects "in advance." In…