Early Numeracy Assessment: The Development of the Preschool Early Numeracy Scales     

David J. Purpura  Christopher J. Lonigan 《Early education and development》2013,24(2):286-313

Research Findings: The focus of this study was to construct and validate 12 brief early numeracy assessment tasks that measure the skills and concepts identified as key to early mathematics development by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2006 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2006). Curriculum focal points for prekindergarten through Grade 8 mathematics. Reston, VA: Author. [Google Scholar]) and the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008 National Mathematics Advisory Panel. (2008). Foundations for success: The final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. [Google Scholar])—as well as critical developmental precursors to later mathematics skills noted in the Common Core State Standards (2010 Common Core State Standards. (2010). Common Core State Standards: Preparing America’s students for college and career. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ [Google Scholar]). Participants were 393 preschool children ages 3 to 5 years old. Measure development and validation occurred through 3 analytic phases designed to ensure that the measures were brief, reliable, and valid. These measures were 1-to-1 counting, cardinality, counting subsets, subitizing, number comparison, set comparison, number order, numeral identification, set-to-numerals, story problems, number combinations, and verbal counting. Practice or Policy: Teachers have extensive demands on their time, yet they are tasked with ensuring that all students’ academic needs are met. To identify individual instructional needs and measure progress, they need to be able to efficiently assess children’s numeracy skills. The measures developed in this study not only are reliable and exhibit evidence of validity but also are easy to use and can be utilized for measuring the effects of targeted instruction on individual numeracy skills.  相似文献   

Searching for the Norm in a System of Absolutes: A Case Study of Standards-Based Accountability Reform in Pre-Kindergarten     

Christopher Brown 《Early education and development》2013,24(1):151-177

Research Findings: The emergence of standards-based accountability reforms in early childhood education has created new challenges for the field. This article presents findings from a case study that explored how stakeholders in a large urban pre-kindergarten program struggled to implement an assessment tool that aligned the normative academic achievement expectations found among their teachers and administrators with the absolute measures of this construct found in their state policymakers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms. Analyzing the tension that emerged in this process of alignment highlights the challenges early educators face as they fold their child-centered programs into these larger high-stakes standards-based kindergarten through grade 12 education systems. Practice and Policy: The findings from this study illuminate the need for early childhood education programs to understand how high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms define student achievement. Furthermore, as early childhood programs and personnel address these reforms, their responses need to be explicit about how their assessment measures are connected to their normative conceptualizations of student achievement and what this means for the education of children in their programs.  相似文献   

Crime types: a text/reader     

Christopher W. Mullins 《Journal of Criminal Justice Education》2013,24(3):400-402

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Editor’s Farewell     

Christopher J. Schreck 《Journal of Criminal Justice Education》2013,24(4):477-478

Abstract

Although journal outlets are beginning to put forth explicit criteria that define authorship, studies have also found that there are nonetheless components of authorship philosophies that remain interactional and culturally defined among members of particular scientific communities. In line with other scientific fields, authorship practices and philosophies are central to publishing in criminology. By drawing from a set of 40 interviews with elite scholars in the field, this paper investigates authorship philosophies prominent in criminology. This paper contributes to knowledge on criminological research practices in two ways. First, this paper contributes to the scant literature on authorship in criminology by investigating cultural definitions of what constitutes authorship right and order. Second, this paper contrasts widespread notions of scientific literate practices as being universal and instead builds on a body of work suggesting that literate practices in scientific communities are culturally defined.  相似文献   

The Student Risk Screening Scale: Exploring Dimensionality and Differential Item Functioning     

Christopher Schatschneider  Wendy Peia Oakes  Jemma Robertson Kalberg 《Educational Assessment》2013,18(3):185-203

This research attempted to discover the degree to which performance on assessments that have no direct consequences for individual students can be attributed to students' motivational states in addition to their underlying achievement in the domains measured. If such findings were reliable, it would allow us to correct underestimates of domain performance due to lack of motivation. Such corrections would be extremely interesting in explaining differential subgroup performance in state or national assessments that have institutional but not individual consequences. Recent information on international assessments (e.g., the Third International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS]) indicates that 12th-grade students in the United States are doing poorly on such assessments compared with their peers in other countries. These poor results are usually attributed to cognitive factors such as students' opportunities to learn, etc. However, a partial explanation may be motivational. Because the low-stakes tests were administered in these 12th-graders' final year in high school, this timing may have negatively affected motivation, and thus performance. Using TIMSS released math items, we provided $10.00 per item correct so as to increase a motivational effect and thus increase performance. However, the monetary incentive was not effective in improving performance.  相似文献   

Community College and High School Reform: Lessons from Five Case Studies     

Will J. Jordan  Linda Cavalluzzo  Christopher Corallo 《Community College Journal of Research & Practice》2013,37(9):729-749

The research reported in this paper examined a set of innovative high school programs on community college campuses. Specifically, a full-time dual enrollment program and 4 middle college high schools were studied. The authors used in-depth interviews and observational data to investigate the structure, processes, and perceptions of effectiveness of the programs. The study found multiple missions for these programs and identified common features that appear to play an important role in their formation and relative success. Although constituent perceptions of effectiveness were overwhelmingly positive, the programs did not systematically collect and analyze empirical evidence of their effectiveness.  相似文献   

Governance Paradigms of Public Universities: An international comparative study     

Joe Christopher 《Tertiary Education and Management》2013,19(4):335-351

This study aims to develop a conceptual model of the wider influencing forces impacting the governance paradigms of public universities. It draws on the multi-theoretical governance concept and seeks to identify these forces through the lens of chief audit executives using a qualitative research approach. The interview data supported by published literature reveal universities are affected differently by a number of common influencing forces, resulting in different governance paradigms. These findings provide insights as to the causal factors that shape a public university’s governance paradigm. The practical implications of the findings are that these forces need to be taken into account in future governance studies of universities as it provides the basis to determine their stakeholder base; consequent contractual obligations with them; and the governance control mechanisms and processes to be developed and implemented at the board, operational and assurance levels of governance.  相似文献   

Is there something rotten in the state of Denmark? The paradoxical policies of inclusive education – lessons from Denmark     

Thomas T. Engsig  Christopher J. Johnstone 《International Journal of Inclusive Education》2013,17(5):469-486

By 2015, 96% of the entire student body in the Danish public school system must receive his or her education within the regular classrooms, and referrals to segregated special education must be reduced radically. This is the consequence of the so-called ‘Inclusion Law' passed in the Danish parliament in April 2012. The law contains a political ambition that at least 80% of the students in the public school should be proficient in reading and math when measured in national tests, and the percentage of the most proficient students must increase every year. Historically, Denmark's inclusive education is informed by the rights and ethics discourse from The Salamanca Statement. However, this article explores the paradoxical policies of inclusive education in Denmark that seem to lie on a continuum that ranges from Salamanca-inspired, equity-focused inclusion to a more US-inspired, accountability-focused inclusion.  相似文献   

Module Development Through Peer-assisted Student Support: An initial evaluation     

Gary Packham  Christopher Cramphorn  Christopher Miller 《Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning》2013,21(2):113-124

The importance of effective module development in terms of content and delivery is becoming increasingly significant within higher education. The majority of evaluation exercises are relatively static and reactive, predominantly utilising standardised evaluation questionnaires. This paper examines the effectiveness of utilising peer-assisted student support, a form of student-centred learning to provide module feedback that cannot be easily identified through traditional methods. Data from meeting logs, observations, interviews and questionnaires demonstrates that student-centred learning feedback can enhance module development, identifying and prompting effective remedial action in shorter timescales. The paper therefore concludes that feedback from student-centred learning initiatives is a viable and dynamic alternative to traditional modes of module development that requires further consideration .  相似文献   

The Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Human and Social Capital: A Case Study from Ghana     

Soniia David  Christopher Asamoah 《The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension》2013,19(3):239-252

Abstract

Based on a case study of Ghanaian cocoa farmers who attended farmer field schools (FFS), this paper explores the impact of the FFS methodology on farmers’ technical knowledge, experimentation, knowledge diffusion, group formation and social skills as a way of assessing whether the relatively high costs associated with the method is justified. We carried out focus group discussions for exploratory purposes and a formal survey of 70 FFS graduates and 70 non-FFS farmers. The superior knowledge test scores of FFS graduates relative to non-FFS farmers demonstrates the effectiveness of the method for communicating complex knowledge and information to farmers in a way that allows them to understand it and retain it. An assessment of changes in farmers’ experimental capacity showed variable results. On the one hand, a significant proportion of FFS graduates applied some of the principles and practices learned to solve productivity problems with other crops, while others did not perceive any change in their experimentation behaviour. Significantly, an important skill farmers learned in the FFS was making observations on cocoa trees and the wider ecosystem as the basis for decision-making. The case study confirmed that FFS strengthened social cohesion among cocoa farmers and enhanced individual social skills by creating new networks for knowledge exchange and support, promoting group formation and improving farmers’ confidence and ability to work more effectively in groups. The paper concludes by recommending areas for improving FFS and highlights how strengthening human and social capital in cocoa growing communities can serve as a springboard for broader development activities.  相似文献