Language arts teachers have usually restricted themselves to showing video interpretations of novels or filmed renderings of Shakespeare's plays, for fear of being labeled as that "person who shows movies." But film can be used as a "bridge" to other works of literature, i.e., terms, devices. For example, if the teacher wants…

With the advent of computer technology, students can now be informed about their progress and provided feedback limited only to the level of efficiency. For the 1999-2000 school year, a computer reporting program, TigerNet, was instituted in a junior high school in Pennsylvania. Through a year-long investigation, data were collected to determine…

This paper portrays community colleges as American institutions facing a critical need for self-assessment, especially as the new millennium approaches and effects an ever-increasing reliance on technology and information. Focusing on organizational sustainability, a generative method for change is described that emphasizes processes, team…

The symposium, "Taming the Rasch Tiger: Using Item Response Theory in Practical Educational Measurement," was organized to deemphasize the technical complexities of item response theory (IRT) and to show the audience how IRT can be used in practical educational measurement. Four papers from the symposium are summarized and comments are…

The University of South Dakota, which has the only doctoral level program in the state for the field of education, has mentored more than 150 Taiwanese students in its Division of Educational Administration. The participation of these students has created a global experiment for higher education and a learning context in which Eastern and Western…

Studies carried out over a 12-year period addressed fundamental questions on the use of Rasch-based item banks. Large field tests administered in grades 3-8 of reading, mathematics, and science items, as well as standardized test results were used to explore the possible effects of many factors on item calibrations. In general, the results…

Rasch methodology facilitates effective achievement comparisons to meet evaluation needs at the district, school, classroom, and individual levels. The five-year District Gains Graph developed by the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools charts fall-to-spring achievement gains in basic skills for Grades 3-8, as measured by the Portland Achievement…

Greater knowledge about the practical application of Rasch technology can help in avoiding misapplications and confusions in testing programs. Equal interval curriculum-based scaling makes possible the following improvements in measuring basic skills achievement by enabling testing programs to: (1) individualize the difficulty level of…

The field of international comparative education is constructed by relations of power and conflict. Comparative education contains an intrinsic tension between "sameness" and "difference." The dominant approach tends toward sameness and the elimination of variation, while one critique of the dominant approach tends toward an…

The book "Of Play and Playfulness" (Eastern Cooperative Recreation School, 1990) is recommended as a source of ideas for second language learning games. It describes folk dances, ideas for crafts, puppetry, games, and a variety of other activities from many countries. Several games from the book, easy to teach in a foreign language or…

The widespread popularity of the young adult novels of Judy Blume makes them important factors in the socialization process. Almost all of the characters in her books are members of the middle or upper-middle class, and with the exception of some of the characters in 4 of her 15 novels, all are white. Thus, Blume is teaching youth how to be…

Integrating information from local school district and community data sources is essential to understanding the relationships between them. A major problem in merging such data concerns the geographic incongruities of the boundaries of school districts (local education agencies) and the boundaries of communities. This paper focuses on resolution…

President Reagan's Fiscal Year 1987 budget was an attempt to increase dramatically spending on national defense, on nuclear weapons, while cutting back on social programs. The increases for almost all nuclear weapons indicate the Administration of the United States saw its major responsibility as one of providing a strong military, one centered on…

The use of film to supplement course material can be an excellent way to stimulate critical thinking. Film can be a particularly useful tool in the interpersonal communication course since students are able to observe both the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the characters. However, discussion prior to and following the film is important, so…

In "The Story of Little Black Sambo," initially written for her own children and published in 1898, Helen Bannerman describes the adventures of a young dark-skinned child and four tigers. Because it was smaller and more manageable than most children's books of the time--text and illustrations were positioned on the same page for high…