Search results

This chapter, completed in 1999, provides an overview and critical analysis of the validity research agenda undertaken by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) for its assessment to certify accomplished teachers at the end of its first decade of assessment development and implementation. The review is presented in three major sections: (a) an overview of the validity criteria underlying the review; (b) a description of the National Board's research agenda presented in its own terms, focusing first on the studies that were routinely carried out for each certificate and second on the “special studies” that were not part of the routine agenda; and (c) a series of six critical observations and explanations based on the validity issues described in the first section.

Most universities have relied on student evaluations as a source of evidence in their assessment of teaching performance. However, a complete evaluation of all dimensions of a faculty member's teaching requires multiple sources of evidence. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the sources of evidence that accounting chairs report they currently use to assess teaching. Calderon and Green first examined this issue in their 1997 study. However, their results may be outdated due to changes in accreditation requirements, teaching delivery methods, and the continued evolution of assessment tools. Responding department chairs report that peer observation followed by course syllabus, exams given in class, and instructor course notes are the most frequently used evidence types, with an average of 3.16 sources beyond student evaluations. The source and quantity of evidence vary across different types of institutions. While Calderon and Green reported that most schools use ad hoc and subjective sources of evidence, respondents in this study focus more on instructor-supplied materials and direct evidence from inside the classroom.

This chapter examines whether professional auditors’ affect toward client management influences fraud likelihood judgments and whether accountability and experience with fraud risk judgments moderate this effect. This research also explores the process by which affect influences fraud judgments by examining affect’s influence on the evaluation of fraud evidence cues. Results indicate that more positive affect toward the client results in lower fraud likelihood judgments. Accountability is found to moderate this effect, but only for experienced auditors. These findings have implications for fraud brainstorming sessions where all staff levels provide input into fraud risk assessments and because client characteristics are especially salient during these assessments. Importantly, results also support the proposition that affect impacts inexperienced auditors’ fraud assessments through errant attribution of client likability to evidence cues that refer to management, rather than biasing all client-related evaluations. Together, these findings suggest that education and training can be improved to better differentiate relevant and irrelevant cues in fraud judgment.

The humanitarian principle of impartiality requires that assistance be based on need alone. In order to ascertain needs, and later to assess whether assistance has been effective in meeting those needs, we need to gather evidence. In humanitarian crises this is generally done through assessments, monitoring and evaluation, and it generally involves seeking information from those we seek to assist. In the fast-paced environment of humanitarian crises, the question of whether the collection of this information is ethical is frequently overlooked. For research participants, the consequences can be extremely severe.

This chapter examines the ethics of research, primarily in the form of assessments, monitoring and evaluation, in humanitarian crises. The chapter first considers the question of what constitutes research in humanitarian crises, and why it is needed. It then examines the general principles of ethical research (respect, beneficence, research merit and integrity, and justice), and highlights three key considerations that require particular attention in humanitarian crises: the justificatory threshold, the vulnerability of research participants, and safety and security. The chapter also examines key components of the research process that are particularly important (and frequently overlooked) in humanitarian crises, including the privacy and confidentiality of research participants, informed consent and feedback to research participants. It concludes with the suggestion that basic instruction in the principles of ethical research should be included in the orientation and training provided to humanitarian practitioners, including to emergency response teams who are commonly involved in carrying out assessments in the early stages of a humanitarian response.

The experimental parliamentary subsidy on knights' fees and freehold incomes from lands and rents of 1431 was the only English direct lay tax of the Middle Ages which broke down. As such, this subsidy has a clear historiographical significance, yet previous scholars have tended to overlook it on the grounds that parliament's annulment act of 1432 mandated the destruction of all fiscal administrative evidence. Many county assessments from 1431–1432 do, however, survive and are examined for the first time in this article as part of a detailed assessment of the fiscal and administrative context of the knights' fees and incomes tax. This impost constituted a royal response to excess expenditures associated with Henry VI's “Coronation Expedition” of 1429–1431, the scale of which marked a decisive break from the fiscal-military strategy of the 1420s. Widespread confusion regarding whether taxpayers ought to pay the feudal or the non-feudal component of the 1431 subsidy characterized its botched administration. Industrial scale under-assessment, moreover, emerged as a serious problem. Officials' attempts to provide a measure of fiscal compensation by unlawfully double-assessing many taxpayers served to increase administrative confusion and resulted in parliament's annulment act of 1432. This had serious consequences for the crown's finances, since the regime was saddled with budgetary and debt problems which would ultimately undermine the solvency of the Lancastrian state.

The quality of teaching across the world is often defined by students’ academic achievement. Yet, teaching and learning is a complex phenomenon. Standards and policy documents, internationally and within India, specify knowledge and skills for teachers. A variety of evaluation tools exist to measure teaching performance. The authors describe a Teacher Performance Review Process (TPRP) using a diagnostic tool internationally benchmarked and contextualized for India. Initially, 408 teachers from 10 schools completed the TPRP, with 95 teachers from 3 schools completing two cycles of TPRP. The TPRP incorporated multiple sources of evidence for rating each teacher on 27 performance indicators using a four-point scale. Rating frequencies were analyzed and results reported for an initial and second cycle of TPRP. Feedback from teachers and school leaders indicated this process supported improving the quality of teaching. TPRP, implemented as a cyclical process capturing evidence from multiple sources over time, potentially provides comprehensive documentation of the complex phenomenon of teaching performance, and supports teachers in continuous improvement.

For more than a decade, there has been an increased focus on the need for accountability and transparency about the value that United States and international higher education institutions add to students' knowledge and skills to help increase their economic productivity and career opportunities. This focus on accountability and transparency within the U.S. dates to 2005 when former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to develop a national strategy for higher education reform. This led to an increased focus on measuring value added within higher education institutions and using value-added scores to make institutional comparisons. This chapter presents a brief history of value added within the United States and presents high-level summaries of initiatives, assessments used to measure value added, and a review of how value added is measured. We also present challenges around methodology and interpretation of results. Lastly, we discuss some of the future directions in evaluating value added in higher education and areas for future research.

A key role of the external examiner is to review student work submitted for assessment plus the feedback and grading undertaken on that work by academic staff. The aim of this is to ensure equitability between the assessments of individual students’ achievement and consistency and comparability across courses throughout the program and with commensurate study levels and programs at other institutions, whilst safeguarding academic standards. The variety of assessment-types that an external examiner may review can be diverse. When the primary focus of the work being assessed is tangible, such as with written examinations or assignments, external examiners are able to view student achievements and assessor actions through a lens comparable to that of the original assessors. However, this process cannot adequately capture assessment-types where the only evidence is proxies to the original achievement. In this chapter, the authors explore the concept of authentic assessments, the benefits of incorporating them within study programs, identify challenges pertaining to their presence to holistic quality assurance (QA) processes in general, and the role of the external examiner in particular. The authors will demonstrate how adopting non-intrusive technologies for recording and verifying authentic assessment practices can strengthen the QA process for the benefit of all stakeholders. For illustration, a case study is employed to demonstrate how these challenges have been tackled regarding performance-based authentic assessments at an institution in Norway. The chapter concludes with a summary plus a call to arms for further research into how quality and consistency can be assured when authentic assessments are employed.

Since its first appearance in policy, the diagnostic construct of learning disability (LD) has struggled to demonstrate its validity. Any diagnostic construct requires the operationalization of a “true positive” diagnosis to permit strong analyses of diagnostic accuracy and associated intervention outcomes. Because there is no “true positive” definition for LD, diagnostic accuracy and outcome research are disparate and difficult to translate into meaningful actions for diagnosticians and intervention teams in schools. In this chapter, a new framework of decision making centered on consequential validity, evidence-based education, and shared decision making is proposed for evaluating the relative costs and benefits of alternative actions when making decisions about whether to conduct assessment or intervention, and what assessments or interventions to implement.