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Academic Standards (academic + standards)
Selected AbstractsWriting the "Show,Me" Standards: Teacher Professionalism and Political Control in U.S. State Curriculum PolicyCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2002Margaret Placier This qualitative case study analyzes the process of writing academic standards in one U.S. state, Missouri. The researchers took a critical pragmatic approach, which entailed close examination of the intentions and interactions of various participants in the writing process (teachers, politicians, business leaders, the public), in order to understand the text that was finally produced. School reform legislation delegated responsibility for writing the standards to a teacher work group, but the teachers found that their "professional" status and their intention to write standards that reflected a "constructivist" view of knowledge would meet with opposition. Politicians, who held different assumptions about the audience, organization, and content of the standards, exercised their greater power to control the outcome of the process. As the researchers analyzed public records and documents generated during the writing process, they constructed a chronological narrative detailing points of tension among political actors. From the narrative, they identified four conflicts that significantly influenced the final wording of the standards. They argue that as a consequence of these conflicts, Missouri's standards are characterized by a dichotomous view of content and process; bland, seemingly value,neutral language; and lack of specificity. Such conflicts and outcomes are not limited to this context. A comparative, international perspective shows that they seem to occur when groups in societies marked by political conflicts over education attempt to codify what "all students should know." [source] Credits, Qualifications and the Fluttering StandardHIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001Paul H. Bridges The primary function of credit is to help assess the equivalence of learning and to facilitate student transfer within and between institutions. Recently, attention has focused on the role credit may have in defining the academic standards of qualifications. Some recently proposed qualifications frameworks are one-dimensional in that they have levels as the only measurable parameter. Such 'frameworks, are not true frameworks because there is no basis for differentiating the qualifications at each level. Other frameworks are two-dimensional, using credits and levels as the two parameters. Where the award of credit for a module reflects the satisfactory completion of all the designated learning outcomes at a specified level, there is a clear basis for relating credit to academic standards. In this situation, plotting the credit requirements for qualifications onto a framework that comprises levels and credits makes an important contribution towards understanding the relative standards of the qualifications. [source] Computer-assisted teaching and assessment of disabled students in higher education: the interface between academic standards and disability rightsJOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2007O. Konur Abstract, Computer-assisted teaching and assessment has become a regular feature across many areas of the curriculum in higher education courses around the world in recent years. This development has resulted in the ,digital divide' between disabled students and their nondisabled peers regarding their participation in computer-assisted courses. However, there has been a long-standing practice to ensure that disabled students could participate in these courses with a set of disability adjustments that are in line with their learning modalities under the headings of presentation format, response format, timing, and setting adjustments. Additionally, there has been a set of supporting antidiscriminatory disability laws around the world to avoid such divide between disabled students and their nondisabled peers. However, following a successful pre cedent in Davis v. Southeastern Community College (1979), the opponents of disability rights have consistently argued that making disability adjustments for disabled students to participate in computer-assisted courses would undermine academic and professional standards and these laws have resulted in a ,culture of fear' among the staff. This paper challenges such myths and argues, based on a systematic review of four major antidiscriminatory laws, that universities have full academic freedom to set the academic standards of their computer-assisted courses despite the introduction of such laws and that there has been no grounds for the perceived culture of fear about the consequences of the participation of disabled students in computer-assisted courses. [source] Interior Design in K-12 Curricula: asking the ExpertsJOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Issue 3 2007Stephanie A. Clemons Ph.D. ABSTRACT The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess how interior design content areas (subject matter) could be introduced and integrated into elementary and secondary (K-12) grade levels in support of national academic education standards. Although the minimum standards have been developed for entry level interior designers (Council for Interior Design Accreditation [CIDA] Standards, adopted 2002) and beyond (National Council for Interior Design Qualification [NCIDQ]), a gap exists in the interior design education continuum from "kindergarten to career." Between June 2001 to April 2002, in order to understand perceptions of experts in interior design and elementary and secondary education, focus group sessions and personal interviews were conducted with interior design educators and practitioners, K-12 teachers (elementary, junior high, and high school levels), national standards curriculum specialists (local and state levels), and school-to-career curriculum specialists. The goal of the study was to develop a framework that could guide the integration of interior design content into K-12 levels. This paper reports the findings from the focus groups and proposes a framework that could guide the national integration of interior design content into grades K-12, support national academic standards, and suggest possible channels of dissemination for developed interior design curriculum materials. [source] | ||||||||||