Research problem �A problem is an interrogative sentence or statement that asks what relation

exists between two or more variables. – Kerlinger � “A situation for which we have no ready
and successful response by instinct or by previously acquired habit. We must find out what to do
‘ i. e the solution can be found out only after an investigation” -R. S. Woodworth. Gap, piece of
work in the whole body of knowledge, never investigated before.

Research: Research is a systematic, formal, rigorous, and precise process employed to gain
solutions to problems or to discover and interpret new facts and relationships.

Research is investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of

facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application
of such new or revised theories or laws.

Research is a collection of methods and methodologies that researchers apply systematically

to produce scientifically based knowledge about the social world. (Neumann).

Jean Piaget (1896-1980): Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and genetic epistemologist.
He is most famously known for his theory of cognitive development that looked at how
children develop intellectually throughout the course of childhood.

Operational Definitions: Operational definitions define an object, event, variable, concept, or

construct in terms of the specific processes, tests, and measurements used to determine its
presence or quantity. Operational definitions transform theoretical definitions into observable
events.

Data obtained from interviews were analyzed with the help of the content analysis method. The
aim of the content analysis method is to reach themes and patterns which can explain data
collected to reveal meanings and main contexts in the qualitative data (Patton, 2002).

Variable: A characteristic, quantity, or anything of interest that can have different values.
Example: the amount of money, stock prices, package designs, weight, monthly sales, gender,
salaries, etc.

According to Karlinger, it is the symbol to which values are assigned. According to Best, a
variable is a condition or characteristic that the researcher controls, manipulates and observes.

The dependent variable is the variable a researcher is interested in. The changes to the
dependent variable are what the researcher is trying to measure with all their fancy techniques.
The dependent variables are the conditions or characteristics that appear, disappear or change as
the researcher introduces, removes, or changes independent variables. In educational research, the
dependent variables may be test scores, the no of errors, or measured speed in performing a task.

An independent variable is a variable believed to affect the dependent variable. This is the
variable that you, the researcher, will manipulate to see if it makes the dependent variable change.
These are the conditions or characteristics that the researcher controls, manipulates and observes
in an attempt to determine their relation/ influence to the observed phenomenon. In education, an
independent variable may be a particular teaching method, teaching material, a reward, or level of
intelligence.
Criterion variable- the variable to be predicted/ outcome/result. Could be called the dependent
variable.
Predictor variable- the variables(s) that are believed to predict the outcome. Could be called an
independent variable.Is the level of education(P)related to family income(C).Do people who eat
more eggs(P) have higher cholesterol levels(C)?

In many cases, the relationship between the independent and dependent variable is not a simple
one of stimulus to response. Certain variables cannot be controlled or measured directly and may
have an important effect on the outcome. These modifying variables intervene between the cause
and the effect. In a language class experiment, a researcher is interested in determining the effect
of immediate reinforcement upon learning the parts of speech. Anxiety, fatigue, and motivation
for example may be intervening variables.
Intervening variables are hypothetical constructs like personality, intelligence or attitude. As
they are not “real” variables, one major limitation is that they cannot be measured. It is therefore
impossible to quantify how much of the experimental results are due to the independent variables,
and how much are due to each of the intervening variables.

Direct instruction is a teaching strategy

Interviews were conducted between July and September in the academic year 2015

-
2016. All interviews were carried
out with the help of audio
-
recordings; for this, permis
sions from participants were provided.

Teachers who are privy to student discussions and able to making ongoing
observations are in the best position to assess many of the educational goals
including areas such as inquiry. Therefore, teachers need to become more
involved in summative assessments for purposes beyond reporting on student
progress and achievement to others in the system. Practices within the United
States and in other countries provide us with possibilities of how to better tap
into teachers ' summative assessments to augment or complement external
exams.

Black and Wiliam (1998) provide an extensive review of more than 250 books
and articles presenting research evidence on the effects of classroom assessment.
They conclude that ongoing assessment by teachers, combined with appropriate
feedback to students, can have powerful and positive effects on achievement.
They also report, however, that the characteristics of high-quality formative
assessment are not well understood by teachers and Guiding the committee’s
work were the premises that (1) something important should be learned from
every assessment situation, and (2) the information gained should ultimately
help improve learning. The power of classroom assessment resides in its close
connections to instruction and teachers’ knowledge of their students’
instructional histories. Large-scale, standardized assessments can communicate
across time and place, but by so
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Suggested Citation:"6 Assessment in Practice." National Research Council.

2001. Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational
Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi:
10.17226/10019.

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constraining the content and timeliness of the message that they often have
limited utility in the classroom. Thus the contrast between classroom and large-
scale assessments arises from the different purposes they serve and contexts in
which they are used. Certain trade-offs are an inescapable aspect of assessment
design.

Students will learn more if instruction and assessment are integrally related. In
the classroom, providing students with information about particular qualities of
their work and about what they can do to improve is crucial for maximizing
learning. It is in the context of classroom assessment that theories of cognition
and learning can be particularly helpful by providing a picture of intermediary
states of student understanding on the pathway from novice to competent
performer in a subject domain.

Findings from cognitive research cannot always be translated directly or easily into
classroom practice. Most effective are programs that interpret the findings from
cognitive research in ways that are useful for teachers. Teachers need theoretical
training, as well as practical training and assessment tools, to be able to
implement formative assessment effectively in their classrooms.

Large-scale assessments are further removed from instruction, but can still benefit
learning if well designed and properly used. Substantially more valid and useful
inferences could be drawn from such assessments if the principles set forth in
this report were applied during the design process.

Large-scale assessments not only serve as a means for reporting on student

achievement, but also reflect aspects of academic competence societies consider
worthy of recognition and reward. Thus large-scale assessments can provide
worthwhile targets for educators and students to pursue. Whereas teaching
directly to the items on a test is not desirable, teaching to the theory of cognition
and learning that underlies an assessment can provide positive direction for
instruction.

To derive real benefits from the merger of cognitive and measurement theory in
large-scale assessment, it will be necessary to devise ways of covering a broad
range of competencies and capturing rich information about the nature of
student understanding. Indeed, to fully capitalize on the new foundations
described in this report will require substantial changes in the way large-scale
assessment is approached and relaxation of some of the constraints that currently
drive large-scale assessment practices.Alternatives to on-demand, census testing
are available. If individual student scores are needed, broader sampling of the
domain can be achieved by extracting evidence of student performance from
classroom work produced during the course of instruction. If the primary
purpose of the assessment is program evaluation, the constraint of having to
produce reliable individual student scores can be relaxed, and population
sampling can be useful.

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Suggested Citation:"6 Assessment in Practice." National Research Council.

2001. Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational
Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi:
10.17226/10019.

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Cancel

For classroom or large-scale assessment to be effective, students must understand

and share the goals for learning. Students learn more when they understand (and
even participate in developing) the criteria by which their work will be
evaluated, and when they engage in peer and self-assessment during which they
apply those criteria. These practices develop students’ metacognitive abilities,
which, as emphasized above, are necessary for effective learning.

The current educational assessment environment in the United States assigns

much greater value and credibility to external, large-scale assessments of
individuals and programs than to classroom assessment designed to assist
learning. The investment of money, instructional time, research, and
development for large-scale testing far outweighs that for effective classroom
assessment. More of the research, development, and training investment must be
shifted toward the classroom, where teaching and learning occur.
A vision for the future is that assessments at all levels—from classroom to state—
will work together in a system that is comprehensive, coherent, and continuous. In
such a system, assessments would provide a variety of evidence to support
educational decision making. Assessment at all levels would be linked back to the
same underlying model of student learning and would provide indications of
student growth over time.

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Suggested Citation:"6 Assessment in Practice." National Research Council.

2001. Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational 

The data obtained from the focus groups revealed

similar results. The qualitative data confirmed the idea that all

The integrated curriculum is receiving much attention in Malaysia even though it is not
necessarily anew way of looking at teaching and learning. The expanding body of
knowledge, concerns aboutcurriculum relevancy, lack of connection among subjects and the
need for future workers to have theability to draw from many fields in solving problems has

been cited as reasons for a moving towards anintegrated curriculum.

In conclusion, teachers in elementary and high school are not directly involved in the selection
ofsubject-matter because there are already lesson plans made by the Department of Education. All
theyhave to do is to follow it. However, they can also customize the lessons if their department
heads or principals allow them.,,,

Particularly encouraging signs were that a variety of types of homework were

suggested, and the focus of homework assignment was toward meaningful, creative,
and high-level thinking endeavors... and away from tedious busy work and drill

Assessments can be a vital component in our efforts to improve education. But as long as we use
them only as a means to rank schools and students, we will miss their most powerful benefits. We
must focus instead on helping teachers change the way they use assessment results, improve the
quality of their classroom assessments, and align their assessments with valued learning goals and
state or district standards. When teachers' classroom assessments become an integral part of the
instructional process and a central ingredient in their efforts to help students learn, the benefits of
assessment for both students and teachers will be boundless.
The problem of generalization in research The public problem of generalization in
educational research, and throughout the social sciences, is that researchers are expected by
policy-makers, practitioners and the public at large to make scientific generalizations, but
cannot because they cannot identify, define and measure all of the variables that affect the
generalization. Problem is of making generalization in research design, that is to generate
knowledge that applies to all elements of a unit (population) while studying only a subset of
these elements (sample). Commonly applied criteria for generalizing focus on experimental
design or representativeness of samples of the population of units. The criteria tend to neglect
population diversity and targeted uses of knowledge generated from the
generalization.Findings can only be generalized to the population from which the sample was
selected. It needs be wary of over-generalizing in terms of locality,Time, historical events and
cohort effects. Also results may no longer be relevant and so require updating (replication).

Triangulation facilitates validation of data through cross verification

from more than two sources. 

Teaching machines were originally mechanical devices that presented educational

materials and taught students. They were first invented by Sidney L. Pressey in the
mid-1920s.
Ten Roles for Teacher Leaders 1. Resource Provider 2. Instructional Specialist 3. Curriculum
Specialist 4. Classroom Supporter 5. Learning Facilitator 6. Mentor 7. School Leader 8. Data Coach 9.
Catalyst for Change 10. Learner
School The term school, it is argued, originated from the Greek word ‘Skhole’, meaning leisure. The
concept of leisure was associated with ‘school’ mainly because in ancient Greece, general education
was not available to all members of the society. It was the privilege of the ‘rich’ and ‘highest class’ of
the society. W.M.Ryburn: School is a co-operative society or a society where co-operation is sought.
4. School organisation Organisation is directly concerned with planning and efforts made by the
people. It is a medium through which goals and objectives envisaged by the administration are
realised. Organisation stands for a structure, framework, system or an organised body. It is
concerned with the process of rules and regulations, form, calendars, schedules, material
equipment, human equipment, workshops, laboratories, infrastructure facilities etc. ‘School
organization means looking after the internal and external affairs of the school, the proper use of
the recourses available and taking proper cared of the resources so that teaching and learning
can take place in a better way.’ Schools organisation mean the act of organising all available
physical and human resources in an organised manner to attain the objectives of education.
School management School management is the operational side of the principle for the
realisation of the objectives. PAUL MOUNRE – School management, as a body of educational
doctrine comprises a number of principles and precepts relating primarily to the techniques of
classroom procedure and derived largely from the practice of successful teachers. school
management Is to forecast to plain, to organise, to command, to coordinate, to motivate and
complement school.
The perceived impact of the internet on family and social relations in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia Objectives To achieve this there are 3 main objectives relating to Saudi society
which will be explored and identified: 1. To explore types and amount of the internet use as
reported by participants in a questionnaire survey of young people. 2. To explore the perceived
influence of the internet on Saudi family and society in term of social norms, traditions and
customs. 3. To explore the impact of internet use on Saudi women’s cultural and social
opportunities as perceived by younger and older Saudi women.
 Data screening is very important to make sure you’ve met all your assumptions, outliers, and
error problems. Each type of analysis will have different types of data screening. Hypothesis
testing: Traditionally we use p <.05 (so you want values less than.05 because that’s what you are
trying to find … statistically significant).
BIG IMPORTANT RULE Data screening: We want to use p <.001 because we want to make
sure things are really crazy before we fix/delete/etc. If the scores are less than.1% then it’s really,
really different/skewed/what have you, so you would want to fix it.
Outliers:
A population is the collection of all the possible information that characterizes a
phenomenon.
The population that makes up the basis of the sample can be subdivided into different units
called sample units. A good sample is a representative subset of a population that reflects the
essential characteristics of the population from which it was obtained.
Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994) was an American educator who worked in the field of assessment
and evaluation.

Distance education: This approach involves a model in which students are physically
separated from the university or training college. Students usually communicate with the
institution through emails, online learning support systems or occasional face-to-face tutorials.
e-learning( electronic learning) is a term covering a wide set of applications and processes, such
as web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms, and digital collaboration. It
includes the delivery of content mainly via Internet, but also can be intranet/ extranet (LAN,
WAN), audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast, interactive TV, CD-ROM, and more.  

Intervening variables: Sometimes referred to as control variables/ mediator variable, an

intervening variable lies between an independent and dependent variable. It is a theoretical
variable the researcher uses to explain a cause or connection between other study
variables—usually dependent and independent ones. They are associations instead of
observations.A change in the intervening variable must be “caused” by the independent
variable, this change then “cause” the change in the dependent variable. “Prevailing
misconceptions make learners undisciplined, which makes teaching difficult and tedious.”
Stress cause physical illness, which causes absenteesium, physical illness is the intervening
variable.

Extraneous variable: Independent variables that are not related tonthe purpose of the study,
but may affect the dependent variable. Example; The researcher wants to find out the
relationship between student’s gain in social studies and self- concept.

Difference between intervening and extraneous variables: In an experiment, an extraneous

variable is any variable that you’re not investigating that can potentially affect the outcomes of
your research study. If left uncontrolled, extraneous variables can lead to inaccurate conclusions
about the relationship between independent and dependent variables.