Understanding Instructionally Useful Assessment offers new insights into how various types of assessments, from the state to the classroom, will differ in their usefulness for supporting instructional decision-making and student learning. In order to most effectively serve students, it is essential that educators avoid conflating the assessment information that teachers use for instructional purposes and the data that leaders and administrators use for evaluative or monitoring purposes. This book provides classroom teachers as well as school and district leaders with a clear conception of what makes assessments—their purpose, design, reporting, and resulting information—useful or not for informing instruction and how they can select assessment tools suited to specific purposes. Each chapter addresses the knowledge and skills that K-12 staff need in order to challenge claims made by policymakers, test vendors, or even other educators that any assessment can be used to inform instruction. Educators will come away better prepared to remove unnecessary or redundant assessments from their systems and to create structures, policies, and processes that best support the instructional usefulness of assessments for student learning.

Increase student achievement with a systematic approach to lesson design. Learn how to identify enduring understandings, set goals, establish benchmarks, and monitor progress to move your students to mastery of standards, while differentiating to meet their diverse needs.

The specific—and varied—ways in which assessment and evaluation can impact learning and teaching have become an important language education research concern, particularly as educators are increasingly called on to implement these processes for improvement, accountability, or curricular development purposes. Useful Assessment and Evaluation in Language Education showcases contemporary research that explores innovative uses of assessment and evaluation in a variety of educational contexts. Divided into three parts, this volume first examines theoretical considerations and practical implementations of assessment conducted for the purpose of enhancing and developing language learning. Part 2 addresses novel assessment development and implementation projects, such as the formative use of task-based assessments, technology-mediated language performance assessment, validation of educational placement tests for immigrant learners, and the use of assessment to help identify neurolinguistic correlates of proficiency. The final section of the book highlights examples of argument-based approaches to assessment and evaluation validation, extending this critical framework to quality assurance efforts in new domains. Adding to research on traditional and conventional uses of testing and evaluation in language education, this volume captures innovative trends in assessment and evaluation practice that explicitly aim to better inform and enhance language teaching and learning.

First Published in 1987. The technical knowledge that constitutes instructional technology includes practical procedures for using existing media to deliver instruction, and also to deliver portions of instruction that supplement the communications of an instructor. Instructional technology includes practical techniques of instructional delivery that systematically aim for effective learning, whether or not they involve the use of media. It is a basic purpose of the field of instructional technology to promote and aid the application of these known and validated procedures in the design and delivery of instruction.

Perspectives on Transitions in Schooling and Instructional Practice examines student transitions between major levels of schooling, teacher transitions in instructional practice, and the intersection of these two significant themes in education research. Twenty-six leading international experts offer meaningful insights on current pedagogical practices, obstacles to effective transitions, and proven strategies for stakeholders involved in supporting students in transition. The book is divided into four sections, representing the four main transitions in formal schooling: Early Years (Home, Pre-school, and Kindergarten) to Early Elementary (Grades 1–3); Early Elementary to Late Elementary (Grades 4–8); Late Elementary to Secondary (Grades 9–12); and Secondary to Post-Secondary (College and University). A coda draws together over-arching themes from throughout the text to provide recommendations and a visual model that captures their interactions. Combining theoretical approaches with practical examples of school-based initiatives, this book will appeal to those involved in supporting either the student experience (both academically and emotionally) or teacher professional learning and growth.

Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School is an accessible, practical, and engaging methods textbook that introduces pre-service teachers to various instructional strategies and helps them to decide how and when to use these methods in the classroom. Classrooms are comprised of diverse learners, and aspiring teachers will face complex decisions about student assessment. This book offers practical suggestions for ways to integrate effective classroom management and valid assessment techniques with each instructional strategy. Key features include: Clear, step-by-step descriptions of six instructional techniques that pre-service teachers can realistically implement within the classroom setting and videos of these strategies being employed in actual middle-school classrooms; Practical suggestions for ways to integrate effective classroom management and valid assessment techniques with each instructional strategy; Concrete examples to illustrate each concept or teaching method described; Guidelines for deciding which instructional methods are most appropriate to different classroom situations and for diverse learners, including "Teaching with Technology" and "Teaching English Language Learners" features now included in every chapter. This book equips pre-service teachers with the methodological tools to promote understanding, conceptual awareness, and learning for every student. Updated and fully comprehensive online support materials, with both student and instructor resources, offer real-world applications of strategies, classroom assessment and management. Resources include videos, lesson templates, review questions, state standard assessments, and more.

Literacy Assessment and Instructional Strategies prepares literacy educators to conduct reading and writing assessments and develop appropriate corrective literacy strategies for use with their grade K–5 students. Connecting Common Core Literacy Learning Standards to effective strategies and creative activities, the book includes authentic literacy assessments and formal evaluations to support reading teaching in the elementary classroom. Initial chapters discuss literacy assessment and evaluation, data-driven instruction, high-stakes testing, and instructional shifts in teaching reading, while later chapters focus on the latest instructional and assessment shifts, including pre-assessing literacy knowledge bases, using informational texts for vocabulary development, and close reading of text. Written by reading practitioners and researchers, this book is a must-have for novices as well as for veteran classroom teachers who want to stay on top of changing literacy trends.

"In Curriculum-based Assessment for Instructional Design, Burns and Parker described a number of "authentic" (research-based) strategies and tools for assessing the student's prior knowledge, existing skill-level, and preferred mode of learning in order to maximize the instructional process. Indeed, in this book, Burns and Parker have developed a natural and practical extension of a conceptual format that was originally called, simply, curriculum-based assessment. The book provides much-needed clarification of the several terms that have been used over the past three decades, and it provides hands-on application of the instructional principles involved"--

Priniples of instructional design; Applications and illustrations.

This special issue focuses on mathematics for students with disabilities, particularly on the topic of division. The articles discuss a number of curricula and instructional practices that have direct and meaningful implications for the classroom. They also serve as a foundation for the development of research into effective intervention practices. As a whole this issue provides an opportunity to extract selected features of instruction from the articles found herein and to contrast the effectiveness of two distinct instructional approaches--constructivism and direct/explicit instruction.