Download or read book Measuring the Unmeasurable in Education written by Elaine Unterhalter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates around quality versus quantity in education can generate controversy about how quality is measured. Many question the drive to delineate and quantify precisely what works, suggesting that much value either cannot be measured or is distorted by measurement. This book explores how we can understand measurement in areas of education policy, planning, and practice that have not previously been considered measurable. The contributors ask four main questions: What do we measure and not measure when we try to measure the unmeasurable in education? When attempts have been made to measure the unmeasurable in education, what metrics have been adopted in which contexts, and with what outcomes? Why have measures been adopted as indicators of the unmeasurable, such as human rights? And how have particular organisations approached the problem of measuring the apparently unmeasurable in education, with what epistemological, normative, and conceptual resources, and consequences? The book draws on analyses from philosophy, history, sociology, and economics, with insights from national and international contexts. The contributions consider philosophical distinctions, historical experiences, and contemporary reflections on how to refine existing approaches to measurement of poverty, capability, rights, and the benefits of education. The discussion shows how measuring the unmeasurable takes account of the inequalities, complexities and uncertainties of work in education, thus suggesting a considerable deepening of the notion of education quality and measurement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Download or read book Measuring the Unmeasurable written by Robert D. Thompson and published by Llumina Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's competitive businesses thrive on actionable information--information that can easily be used as a guide to decision-making and organizational planning. When discussion moves to the multi-billion dollar business of corporate training, it becomes obvious that there is a serious gap between what is needed and what is provided. Over 75% of business leaders want information about what impact the training has on employee behavior, but less than 15% say they are getting it! If you are one of those charged with the responsibility of identifying and measuring behavioral change results from training and strategic business initiatives, you have your work cut out for you. The science that makes this information available is called "psychometrics." Most people have never heard of the science, let alone become comfortable with how it works. There is information out there, but most of it is written like a graduate school text in statistics. Not this one! Through the use of insightful, humorous analogies, the reader is gently led through the perils and pitfalls of psychology, statistics, and organizational behavior idiosyncrasies. Dr. Bob Thompson creates a roadmap, a working understanding, of how psychometrics can be applied to get actionable information, with an intriguing blend of humor, innovation, and common sense rarely seen in a breakthrough work of this type.

Download or read book The Seductions of Quantification written by Sally Engle Merry and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we reveal. With The Seductions of Quantification, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators on human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Although such numbers convey an aura of objective truth and scientific validity, Merry argues persuasively that measurement systems constitute a form of power by incorporating theories about social change in their design but rarely explicitly acknowledging them. For instance, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries in terms of their compliance with antitrafficking activities, assumes that prosecuting traffickers as criminals is an effective corrective strategy—overlooking cultures where women and children are frequently sold by their own families. As Merry shows, indicators are indeed seductive in their promise of providing concrete knowledge about how the world works, but they are implemented most successfully when paired with context-rich qualitative accounts grounded in local knowledge.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government written by Andreas Bågenholm and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research demonstrates that the quality of public institutions is crucial for a number of important environmental, social, economic, and political outcomes, and thereby human well-being. The Quality of Government (QoG) approach directs attention to issues such as impartiality in the exercise of public power, professionalism in public service delivery, effective measures against corruption, and meritocracy instead of patronage and nepotism. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this rapidly expanding research field and also identifies viable avenues for future research. The initial chapters focus on theoretical approaches and debates, and the central question of how QoG can be measured. A second set of chapters examines the wealth of empirical research on how QoG relates to democratization, social trust and cohesion, ethnic diversity, happiness and human wellbeing, democratic accountability, economic growth and inequality, political legitimacy, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and the outbreak of civil conflicts. The remaining chapters turn to the perennial issue of which contextual factors and policy approaches—national, local, and international—have proven successful (and not so successful) for increasing QoG. The Quality of Government approach both challenges and complements important strands of inquiry in the social sciences. For research about democratization, QoG adds the importance of taking state capacity into account. For economics, the QoG approach shows that in order to produce economic prosperity, markets need to be embedded in institutions with a certain set of qualities. For development studies, QoG emphasizes that issues relating to corruption are integral to understanding development writ large.

Download or read book Assessing Personal and Social Development written by Sally Inman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social and personal development of pupils is an area of growing interest. However, while much has been done in relation to provision for development, there is little available on how teachers might assess the development of pupils, be it spiritual, moral, social or cultural. The contributors also examine how we might accredit such development. With provision for development on the national agenda, this title looks at the repercussions and examines the difficult issues raised by assessment and accreditation - and the problems with which teachers will inevitably be faced.

Download or read book Sustainability Indicators written by Simon Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the first edition: 'This book should be of interest to anyone interested in sustainable development, and especially sustainability indicators. Bell and Morse easily succeed in exposing the fundamental paradoxes of these concepts and, more importantly, they offer us a way forward. Readers ... will find their practical recommendations for those attempting to do sustainability analysis in the field most welcome, which is also the book's greatest strength.' Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 'This book makes a valuable contribution to the theory and practice of using indicators for sustainability. It introduces systems ideas and a range of tools and techniques that have the potential to broaden and deepen our understanding of a whole range of complex situations. Well worth a closer look.' Christine Blackmore, Open University 'This is a book that explores new ways of thinking about how to measure sustainability... It offers stimulating food for thought for environmental educators and researchers.' Environmental Education Research 'This book tells me, as an SI 'practitioner', where I have been and why, and more importantly how I should be thinking in order to effectively present to and empower the local community in the years ahead.' David Ellis, Principal Pollution Monitoring Officer, Norwich City Council 'A practical guide to the development of sustainability indicators which offers a systemic and participative way to use them at local scale. Our preliminary results are highly positive and the approach is applicable in many contexts.' Elisabeth Coudert, Programme Officer Prospective and Regional Development, Blue Plan The groundbreaking first edition of Sustainability Indicators reviewed the development and value of sustainability indicators and discussed the advantage of taking a holistic and qualitative approach rather than focusing on strictly quantitative measures. In the new edition the authors bring the literature up to date and show that the basic requirement for a systemic approach is now well grounded in the evidence. They examine the origins and development of Systemic Sustainability Analysis (SSA) as a theoretical approach to sustainability which has been developed in practice in a number of countries on an array of projects since the first edition. They look at how SSA has evolved into the practical approaches of Systemic Prospective Sustainability Analysis (SPSA) and IMAGINE, and, in particular, how a wide range of participatory methodologies have been adopted over the years. They also provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of projects that undertake work in the general field of sustainable development.

Download or read book Assessing Children s Personal And Social Development written by MARTIN BUCK and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social and personal development of pupils is an area of growing interest. However, while much has been done in relation to provision for development, there is little available on how teachers might assess the development of pupils, be it spiritual, moral, social or cultural. The contributors also examine how we might accredit such development. With provision for development on the national agenda, this title looks at the repercussions and examines the difficult issues raised by assessment and accreditation - and the problems with which teachers will inevitably be faced.

Download or read book Assessing Personal and Social Development written by Sally Inman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social and personal development of pupils is an area of growing interest. However, while much has been done in relation to provision for development, there is little available on how teachers might assess the development of pupils, be it spiritual, moral, social or cultural. The contributors also examine how we might accredit such development. With provision for development on the national agenda, this title looks at the repercussions and examines the difficult issues raised by assessment and accreditation - and the problems with which teachers will inevitably be faced.

Download or read book How to Measure Anything written by Douglas W. Hubbard and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book Why They Can t Write written by John Warner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing. There seems to be widespread agreement that—when it comes to the writing skills of college students—we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong. Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules—such as the five-paragraph essay—designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments. In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Download or read book An Introduction to Measure Theory written by Terence Tao and published by American Mathematical Soc.. This book was released on 2021-09-03 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a graduate text introducing the fundamentals of measure theory and integration theory, which is the foundation of modern real analysis. The text focuses first on the concrete setting of Lebesgue measure and the Lebesgue integral (which in turn is motivated by the more classical concepts of Jordan measure and the Riemann integral), before moving on to abstract measure and integration theory, including the standard convergence theorems, Fubini's theorem, and the Carathéodory extension theorem. Classical differentiation theorems, such as the Lebesgue and Rademacher differentiation theorems, are also covered, as are connections with probability theory. The material is intended to cover a quarter or semester's worth of material for a first graduate course in real analysis. There is an emphasis in the text on tying together the abstract and the concrete sides of the subject, using the latter to illustrate and motivate the former. The central role of key principles (such as Littlewood's three principles) as providing guiding intuition to the subject is also emphasized. There are a large number of exercises throughout that develop key aspects of the theory, and are thus an integral component of the text. As a supplementary section, a discussion of general problem-solving strategies in analysis is also given. The last three sections discuss optional topics related to the main matter of the book.

Download or read book The Public School Advantage written by Christopher A. Lubienski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.

Download or read book Assimilation written by Catherine S. Ramírez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a hundred years, the story of assimilation has animated the nation-building project of the United States. And still today, the dream or demand of a cultural "melting pot" circulates through academia, policy institutions, and mainstream media outlets. Noting society’s many exclusions and erasures, scholars in the second half of the twentieth century persuasively argued that only some social groups assimilate. Others, they pointed out, are subject to racialization. In this bold, discipline-traversing cultural history, Catherine Ramírez develops an entirely different account of assimilation. Weaving together the legacies of US settler colonialism, slavery, and border control, Ramírez challenges the assumption that racialization and assimilation are separate and incompatible processes. In fascinating chapters with subjects that range from nineteenth century boarding schools to the contemporary artwork of undocumented immigrants, this book decouples immigration and assimilation and probes the gap between assimilation and citizenship. It shows that assimilation is not just a process of absorption and becoming more alike. Rather, assimilation is a process of racialization and subordination and of power and inequality.

Download or read book Productivity in Higher Education written by Caroline M. Hoxby and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the benefits of higher education compare with its costs, and how does this comparison vary across individuals and institutions? These questions are fundamental to quantifying the productivity of the education sector. The studies in Productivity in Higher Education use rich and novel administrative data, modern econometric methods, and careful institutional analysis to explore productivity issues. The authors examine the returns to undergraduate education, differences in costs by major, the productivity of for-profit schools, the productivity of various types of faculty and of outcomes, the effects of online education on the higher education market, and the ways in which the productivity of different institutions responds to market forces. The analyses recognize five key challenges to assessing productivity in higher education: the potential for multiple student outcomes in terms of skills, earnings, invention, and employment; the fact that colleges and universities are “multiproduct” firms that conduct varied activities across many domains; the fact that students select which school to attend based in part on their aptitude; the difficulty of attributing outcomes to individual institutions when students attend more than one; and the possibility that some of the benefits of higher education may arise from the system as a whole rather than from a single institution. The findings and the approaches illustrated can facilitate decision-making processes in higher education.

Download or read book The Tyranny of Metrics written by Jerry Z. Muller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

Download or read book Education and International Development written by Tristan McCowan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education and International Development provides an introduction to the debates on education and international development, giving an overview of the history, influential theories, key concepts, areas of achievement and emerging trends in policy and practice. Written by leading academics from Canada, India, Netherlands, South Africa, UK, USA, and New Zealand, this second edition has been fully updated in light of recent changes in the field, such as the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals and the increased focus on environmental sustainability and equality. The book includes three new chapters on private providers, decolonisation and learning outcomes as well as a range of pedagogical features including key concept boxes, biographies of influential thinkers and practitioners, further reading lists, questions for reflection and debate, and case studies from around the developing world.

Download or read book Measuring What We Do in Schools written by Victoria L. Bernhardt and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a true learning organization, and how can your school become one? To excel, schools must embrace continuous school improvement and evaluation, as well as systems thinking. In Measuring What We Do in Schools, author Victoria L. Bernhardt details the critical role program evaluation serves in school success and how to implement meaningful evaluations that make a difference. She provides a roadmap of how to conduct comprehensive, systemwide evaluations of programs and processes; the tools needed to obtain usable, pertinent information; and how to use these data to expand teachers’ and administrators’ data-informed decision-making focus. Educators will learn how to Assess what is working and not working for students Determine which processes need to change Use data to improve practices on an ongoing basis Although challenging for many schools, program evaluation and data analysis can begin with a single program or process, over time building on the expanded knowledge of the school’s processes and the results they produce. An effective tool—The Program Evaluation Tool—enables schools to easily identify the purpose and intended outcomes of any school program, along with whom it serves, and how it should be implemented, monitored, and evaluated. These data can then be used to improve every aspect of a school’s programs and processes and the outcomes achieved. Filled with practical strategies and featuring an in-depth case study, this book is designed to help educators see that evaluation work is logical and easy to do. They’ll gain the confidence to do this work on a regular basis—working together to become a true learning organization.