Richard J. Shavelson – författare

Research on education has come into the political spotlight as the demand grows for reliable and credible information for the guidance of policy and practice in the education reform environment. Many debates among the education research community feature questions concerning the nature of evidence and these questions have also appeared in broader policy and practice arenas. Inquiry has generally, over the past years, created bodies of scientific knowledge that have profound implications for education. Dramatic advances in understanding how people learn, how young children acquire early reading skills, and how to design and evaluate educational and psychological measurements is a good example of this. However, the highly contextualized nature of education and the wide range of disciplinary perspectives that rely on it have made the identification of reducible, generalizable principles difficult and slow to achieve.

Due to this, the U.S. Department of Education''s National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board (NERPPB) has asked the NRC to establish a study committee to consider the scientific underpinnings of research in education. The committee consists of members with expertise in statistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy of science, history of education, economics, chemistry, biology, and education practice. The committee worked with the three questions in mind: What are the principles of scientific quality in education research?, How can research-based knowledge in education cumulate?, and How can a federal research agency promote and protect scientific quality in the education research it supports?.

A workshop was held on March 7-8, 2001 that was organized into three main sessions: Supporting Scientific Quality at the Federal level, The Interface of Research and Practice in Education, and Evidence and Inference. Science, Evidence, and Inference in Education: Report of a Workshop summarizes this workshop through these three ideas. The report also includes what the committee plans to do next, the workshop agenda, and information on the workshop''s participants and speakers.

Research on education has come into the political spotlight as the demand grows for reliable and credible information for the guidance of policy and practice in the education reform environment. Many debates among the education research community feature questions concerning the nature of evidence and these questions have also appeared in broader policy and practice arenas. Inquiry has generally, over the past years, created bodies of scientific knowledge that have profound implications for education. Dramatic advances in understanding how people learn, how young children acquire early reading skills, and how to design and evaluate educational and psychological measurements is a good example of this. However, the highly contextualized nature of education and the wide range of disciplinary perspectives that rely on it have made the identification of reducible, generalizable principles difficult and slow to achieve.

Due to this, the U.S. Department of Education''s National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board (NERPPB) has asked the NRC to establish a study committee to consider the scientific underpinnings of research in education. The committee consists of members with expertise in statistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy of science, history of education, economics, chemistry, biology, and education practice. The committee worked with the three questions in mind: What are the principles of scientific quality in education research?, How can research-based knowledge in education cumulate?, and How can a federal research agency promote and protect scientific quality in the education research it supports?.

A workshop was held on March 7-8, 2001 that was organized into three main sessions: Supporting Scientific Quality at the Federal level, The Interface of Research and Practice in Education, and Evidence and Inference. Science, Evidence, and Inference in Education: Report of a Workshop summarizes this workshop through these three ideas. The report also includes what the committee plans to do next, the workshop agenda, and information on the workshop''s participants and speakers.

Accessible to any professional or researcher who has a basic understanding of analysis of variance, Shavelson and Webb offer an intuitive development of generalizability theory, a technique for estimating the relative magnitudes of various components of error variation and for indicating the most efficient strategy for achieving desired measurement precision. Covering a variety of topics such as generalizability studies with nested facets and with fixed facets, measurement error and generalizability coefficients, and decision studies with same and with different designs, the text includes exercises so the reader may practice the application of each chapter's material. By using detailed illustrations and examples, Shavelson and Webb clearly describe the logic underlying major concepts in generalizability theory to enable readers to apply these methods when investigating the consistency of their own measurements.

"A must for teachers doing hands-on science! Straightforward and user-friendly for even the beginning teacher." Debby West, Science Teacher, Medea Middle School Oak Park, California

"I wish I'd had this book when I started teaching 12 years ago." Dave Jelinek, Researcher Ph.D. Candidate

If you want to make sure your students are learning, you must somehow measure their progress. But how can you do that in a science program where the students "construct knowledge" for themselves instead of memorizing facts? Brown and Shavelson show you exactly what to do in this useful guide to science performance assessment. This book helps you answer these questions:

Find out which kinds of assessments and scoring systems work best for your classroom. You'll learn how to measure precisely what your students know and understand about the science they're learning. The step-by-step instructions here will help you choose assessment methods that provide reliable, valid, measurable evaluations of your students' performance. The authors give you samples of completed score forms to help you assess your own classroom findings. They also include model assessments that look and feel so much like regular, hands-on science curricula that your students won't even realize they're being tested! If you teach hands-on science, or if you plan to start, this book has practical information you can use right now.

Two of the most interesting conceptual turns in Richard E. Snow''s thinking called for: a broadening of the concept of aptitude to include not only cognitive processes, but also affective and cognative processes as essential for understanding academic performance and learning; and an exploration of the possibility that individual differences in learning and achievement emerge from dynamic person-situation transactions that unfold over time. The articles in this special issue address these "big ideas" through the lens of a study of high school students'' achievement in science.

Two of the most interesting conceptual turns in Richard E. Snow''s thinking called for: a broadening of the concept of aptitude to include not only cognitive processes, but also affective and cognative processes as essential for understanding academic performance and learning; and an exploration of the possibility that individual differences in learning and achievement emerge from dynamic person-situation transactions that unfold over time. The articles in this special issue address these "big ideas" through the lens of a study of high school students'' achievement in science.