In recent decades testing has become a much more visible and high-stakes accountability mechanism that is now seen as a powerful tool that can be used to drive school improvement. The purpose of this book is to identify and analyze the key issues associated with test-based educational accountability and to chart the future of educational accountability research. Chapter contributions are intended to be forward looking rather than a compendium of what has happened in the past. The book prov...

Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are b...

Research is as critical to social work practice as individual and group counseling skills, policy analysis, or community development. Using an approach similar to those adopted in direct practice courses, this book integrates research with social work practice and in so doing, promotes an understanding and appreciation of the research process to social work students.Sixteen case studies adapted from actual events and case files illustrate different research approaches, including qua...

Bridge the great divide between distanced administrative duties and daily classroom impact. This book introduces a top-down power mechanism called defined autonomy, a concept that focuses on district-defined, nonnegotiable, common goals and a system of accountability supported by assessment tools. Defined autonomy creates an effective balance of centralized direction and individualized empowerment that allows building-level staff the stylistic freedom to respond quickly and effectively to ...

The***International Guide to Student Achievement*** brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic ac...

**A pioneering psychologist reveals how parents, teachers, and communities can prepare teenagers for rewarding working lives“An important book.” ―Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind**How do young people envision their future careers? What can families, schools, and communities do to help teenagers develop habits and values that will be useful in their occupational lives? In this groundbreaking work, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and sociologist Barbara ...

Published for the American Educational Research Association by RoutledgeThis landmark volume presents the work of the American Educational Research Association's Panel on Research and Teacher Education. It represents a systematic effort to apply a common set of scholarly lenses to a range of important topics in teacher education.The Panel's charge was twofold:*to create for the larger educational research community a thorough, rigorous, and ...

This book includes contributions from a variety of different perspectives on employee turnover. We categorize these myriad papers in terms of history, scope, theory development, and population generalization. Part I thus begins with an article by James Price, a pioneering thinker in the turnover field. Initiating the most systematic turnover research ever undertaken, Dr. Price describes his persistent quest to develop and refine a comprehensive theory of turnover. His 30-year intellectual ...

While categorization has always been one of the primary focuses of the social sciences, recent trends within these disciplines have tended to categorize various behaviours as disorders. Researching Resilience challenges this tendency to pathologize, and marks a profound shift in research methods from the study of disorder to the study of well-being.This collection assembles qualitative and quantitative studies from a diverse group of scholars and disciplines, stressing the...

Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics.The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and ...

"This book makes the reader think deeply about the role of curriculum planning and its connection to assessment in this age of accountability."—J. Jeannette Lovern, Associate Professor of Curriculum and InstructionEastern Kentucky University"For educators who want students and schools to be successful, this book provides a clear and proven process to accomplish this goal. It is succinct, yet packed with what′s really important to create, develop, assess, ...

This book provides an overview of the core professional issues in the field of child and youth care practice. The author explores themes ranging from relationships and the exploration of Self to career building and field-specific approaches to management. The book is written from a pragmatic perspective, and serves both to advance current thinking in the field about professional issues as well as to provide the student of child and youth care practice and practitioners with practical and a...