set 1981 : no. 1

The need to assess how much students have learned has been fundamental in education for as long as there have been students and teachers. Long before standardized tests of achievement came on the scene, teachers were making such judgements. They based them on information gleaned from familiar sources: direct observation of students' work, class recitations, conversations with the student or other teachers, daily quizzes, and final examinations. All these bits of information entered… Read more

There are three major methods of determining how readable (i.e. understandable) prose is.
1. The teacher, from experience, makes an estimate Teacher Estimates.
2. The pupil tries reading it (and a test can be used to find how well the pupil read) - Direct Assessment.
3. Someone applies a readability formula - Prediction Formulas.
However, each of these methods has specific uses - and specific limitations.
 

Putting things in order is an important way of organising them. Children who can organise objects, according to colour, or size, or what they are used for, are well on the way to being able to think about organising other things, but young children have only limited ability to order objects and to plan their use, for example. Young children often don't notice features of objects that are important for organising them, and they tend to notice only one or two features at a time.
… Read more

It is important to explore the relation between research and policy and this can be done by reviewing some of the findings of research which have focussed on transition from school. Although the subject has engaged the interests of researchers, particularly psychologists and sociologists, for many years, a sense of urgency has been given to it because of the very high rates of teenage and youth unemployment which have been apparent in many industrially advanced countries since the early… Read more