Educational assessment or educational evaluation is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, aptitude and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning. Assessment data can be obtained from directly examining student work to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or can be based on data from which one can make inferences about learning. Assessment is often used interchangeably with test, but not limited to tests. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community, a course, an academic program, the institution, or the educational system as a whole. The word 'assessment' came into use in an educational context after the Second World War.
Educational technology is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refers to the industry of companies that create educational technology.
Formative assessment, formative evaluation, formative feedback, or assessment for learning, including diagnostic testing, is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. The goal of a formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work. It also helps faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately. It typically involves qualitative feedback for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.
The Re-Engineering Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education project, or REAP, is one of six projects funded under the Scottish Funding Council's E-learning Transformation Programme. The project is piloting improved models of assessment across three universities - the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Glasgow.
Frank Smith (1928-2020) was a Canadian psycholinguist recognized for his contributions in linguistics and cognitive psychology. He was an essential contributor to research on the nature of the reading process together with researchers such as George Armitage Miller, Kenneth S. Goodman, Paul A. Kolers, Jane W. Torrey, Jane Mackworth, Richard Venezky, Robert Calfee, and Julian Hochberg. Smith and Goodman are founders of whole language approach for reading instruction. He was the author of numerous books.
The National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) is a program introduced by United States President George W. Bush on January 5, 2006 at the U.S. University President's Summit to develop the foreign language skills of American students, especially in "critical-need" foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Persian. The initiative was given $114 million in fiscal year 2007 and $26.6 million in 2008 to expand programs from kindergarten level to universities. Schools were additionally awarded $750 million for critical language education.
The Concord Consortium was founded in 1994 as an educational research and development organization to create large-scale improvements in K-14 teaching and learning through technology.
Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing is a book about the English boarding school Summerhill School by its headmaster A. S. Neill. It is known for introducing his ideas to the American public. It was published in America on November 7, 1960, by the Hart Publishing Company and later revised as Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood in 1993. Its contents are a repackaged collection from four of Neill's previous works. The foreword was written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who distinguished between authoritarian coercion and Summerhill.
Slow education is based upon Socratic, adaptive and non-standards based approaches to teaching. Slow education is in part a reaction to the overly compacted course content requirements teachers are experiencing from nationalized curricula worldwide, which many educators find students cannot cover in a single year with sufficient depth. Slow education is also a reaction to the proliferation of standardized testing, favoring instead qualitative measures of student and teacher success. Slow education is frequently a feature in free, democratic and home schools. However, it can be a significant element in any classroom, including those in college preparatory and rigorous environments. The term "slow education" was derived from the distinction between slow food and fast food or junk food, and is an effort to associate quality, culture, sustainability, and personalization with quality schooling.
Gerald Watkins Bracey was an American education policy researcher. He is best known for the annual "Bracey Report" in which he analyzed current trends in education, often in opposition to prevailing educational policies of the day. The reports were published over a seventeen-year period. The last report was unfinished, and his colleagues at the National Education Policy Center conducted the final revisions and published it in November 2009.
Barnett Berry is a research professor at the University of South Carolina, where he is the founding director of Accelerating for Learning and Leadership for South Carolina (ALL4SC) — an initiative launched in 2019, to marshal the resources of an entire R1 institution of higher education in service of high need school communities. Barnett’s career includes serving as a high school teacher, a social scientist at the RAND Corporation, a professor at UofSC, a senior state education agency leader, and senior consultant with the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, leading its state partnership network. From 1999 to 2018, Barnett led Center for Teaching Quality website, a non-profit he founded to conduct research and ignite teacher leadership to transform the teaching profession and public education for more equitable outcomes for students. Barnett has authored a wide array of over 120 policy and research reports, journal articles, and commissioned papers. His two books, TEACHING 2030 and Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead But Don't Leave, frame a bold vision for the profession's future. He is the 2021 recipient of the James A. Kelly Award for Advancing Accomplished Teaching from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and is a policy advisor for the Learning Policy Institute.
Teacher leadership is a term used in K-12 schools for classroom educators who simultaneously take on administrative roles outside of their classrooms to assist in functions of the larger school system. Teacher leadership tasks may include but are not limited to: managing teaching, learning, and resource allocation. Teachers who engage in leadership roles are generally experienced and respected in their field which can both empower them and increase collaboration among peers.
The Emergence of the American University is a non-fiction book in the history of education by Laurence Veysey, published in the 1965 by University of Chicago Press. It "trac[es] the development of the modern American university during its formative years from 1865 to 1910". It is based on and shortened from Veysey's doctoral dissertation.
Data-driven instruction is an educational approach that relies on information to inform teaching and learning. The idea refers to a method teachers use to improve instruction by looking at the information they have about their students. It takes place within the classroom, compared to data-driven decision making. Data-driven instruction works on two levels. One, it provides teachers the ability to be more responsive to students’ needs, and two, it allows students to be in charge of their own learning. Data-driven instruction can be understood through examination of its history, how it is used in the classroom, its attributes, and examples from teachers using this process.
The Lives of Children is a book by George Dennison about the First Street School, a small, alternative mini-school on the Lower East Side of New York City. The school had no administrators, four teachers, and 23 students of integrated racial background. The author establishes a philosophy of education and concept for future schools based on his experiences teaching there.
The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 is a history of the American Progressive Education movement written by historian Lawrence Cremin and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961.
Newcomer education is the specialized teaching of refugees, migrants, asylees, and immigrants who have resettled in a host country, with the goal of providing the knowledge and skills necessary to integrate into their country of refuge. Education is the primary way by which newcomers can adjust to the linguistic, social, and cultural environments of their new communities. Newcomer education aims to empower newcomers with a sense of self-efficacy and social integration, as well as giving them the skills to pursue employment or higher education. Newcomer education also aims to help address trauma, culture shock, and other negative effects of forced displacement. Education for newcomers can provide long-term prospects for stability of individuals, communities, countries and global society.
Howard Kirschenbaum is an American educator, author, researcher, and historic preservationist. He is a Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Development at University of Rochester’s Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
Professor Paul Black is an educational researcher, physicist and a current Professor Emeritus at King's College London. Black was previously Professor of Science Education and Director of the Centre for Science and Mathematics Education at the Chelsea College of Science and Technology and Head for Educational Studies at King's College London. He is a former Chair for the Task Group on Assessment and Testing and Deputy Chair of the National Curriculum Council, and is recognised as an architect of the national curriculum testing regime and the national curriculum for Science.
Geneva Gay is an American academic and author. She is an emerita professor at the University of Washington-Seattle.
