Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Education, Tests and Measurements|Education, Evaluation|Education, Policy“

Purpose – Against a backdrop of high-stakes assessment policies in the USA, this paper explores the challenges, promises and the “state of the art” with regard to designing standardized achievement tests and educational assessment systems that are instructionally useful. Authors deliberate on the consequences of using inappropriately designed tests, and in particular tests that are insensitive to instruction, for teacher and/or school evaluation purposes. Methodology/approach – The method used is a “moderated policy discussion”. The six invited commentaries represent voices of leading education scholars and measurement experts, juxtaposed against views of a prominent leader and nationally recognized teacher from two American education systems. The discussion is moderated with introductory and concluding remarks from the guest editor, and is excerpted from a recent blog published by Education Week. References and author biographies are presented at the end of the article. Findings – In the education assessment profession, there is a promising movement toward more research and development on standardized assessment systems that are instructionally sensitive and useful for classroom teaching. However, the distinctions among different types of tests vis-à-vis their purposes are often unclear to policymakers, educators and other test users, leading to test misuses. The authors underscore issues related to validity, ethics and consequences when inappropriately designed tests are used in high-stakes policy contexts, offering recommendations for the design of instructionally sensitive tests and more comprehensive assessment systems that can serve a broader set of educational evaluation needs. As instructionally informative tests are developed and formalized, their psychometric quality and utility in school and teacher evaluation models must also be evaluated. Originality/value – Featuring perspectives of scholars, measurement experts and educators “on the ground”, this article presents an open and balanced exchange of technical, applied and policy issues surrounding “instructionally sensitive” test design and use, along with other types of assessments needed to create comprehensive educational evaluation systems.

Since its inception in 2000, the international comparative survey of education qua­lity PISA has become a globally recognized powerful lever for improving national education systems, determining their state and development trends according to internationally agreed indicators based on measurements using internationally agreed tools (tests and questionnaires) and procedures for preparation, administration and evaluation of results. In 2015, the OECD launched the "Future of Education and Skills 2030" project, aimed at developing the foundations for an effective education system for the future, the first phase of which culminated in 2019 with the creation of the OECD Learning Compass 2030, a conceptual framework for future school curricula and studying in a learner context. At the second stage, it is planned to create the foundations of effective educating in the context of a teacher. These documents should play the role of the foundation for making the PISA program better by improving, first of all, the PISA subject frameworks in the main domains: reading, mathematics and natural sciences. For the effective improvement of Ukraine's education system, it is important not only to analyse its current state, in particular, its PISA-2018 results, but also to pursue a long-term educational policy aimed at developing an educational model that is based on national educational and cultural achievements and traditions, and is also consistent with the developments of the OECD project "The Future of Education and Skills 2030". The article analyzes the key ideas of the OECD Learning Compass 2030 and discusses some issues of their implementation in the educational practice of Ukraine.

Since 1978, the national evaluation and reporting system for Title I/Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has depended upon a norm-referenced evaluation system to determine the effectiveness of compensatory education programs funded under the act. For a decade, policy directives urged caution in interpreting local results and encouraged use of additional indicators. Since 1988, legislative amendments have required that the national evaluation system serve, without adjustment or interpretation, to identify individual school projects in need of improvement. In this article I argue that the system is technically unsuited for this purpose. Problems with regression and measurement error are illustrated with empirical data. Policy should encourage the use of multiple indicators of program quality at the local level, including applied performance tests and process indicators.

As we enter the twenty-first century, the outcomes, consequences, and results of teacher education have become critical topics in nearly all of the state and national policy debates about teacher preparation and licensure as well as in the development of many of the privately and publicly funded research agendas related to teacher and student learning. In this article, I argue that teacher education reform over the last fifty years has been driven by a series of questions about policy and practice. The question that is currently driving reform and policy in teacher education is what I refer to as "the outcomes question." This question asks how we should conceptualize and define the outcomes of teacher education for teacher learning, professional practice, and student learning, as well as how, by whom, and for what purposes these outcomes should be documented, demonstrated, and/or measured. In this article, I suggest that the outcomes question in teacher education is being conceptualized and constructed in quite different ways depending on the policy, research, and practice contexts in which the question is posed as well as on the political and professional motives of the posers. The article begins with an overview of the policy context, including those reforms and initiatives that have most influenced how outcomes are currently being constructed, debated, and enacted in teacher education. Then I identify and analyze three major "takes" on the outcomes question in teacher education—outcomes as the long-term or general impacts of teacher education, outcomes as teacher candidates' scores on high stakes teacher tests, and outcomes as the professional performances of teacher candidates, particularly their demonstrated ability to influence student learning. For each of these approaches to outcomes, I examine underlying assumptions about teaching and schooling, the evidence and criteria used for evaluation, units of analysis, and consequences for the profession. I point out that how we construct outcomes in teacher education (including how we make the case that some outcomes matter more than others) legitimizes but also undermines particular points of view about the purposes of schooling, the nature of teaching and learning, and the role of teacher education in educational reform. In the second half of the article, I offer critique across the three constructions of outcomes, exploring the possibilities as well as the pitfalls involved in the outcomes debate. In this section, I focus on the tensions between professional consensus and critique, problems with the inputs-outputs metaphor, the need to get social justice onto the outcomes agenda, problems with the characterization of teachers as either saviors or culprits, and the connection of outcomes to educational reform strategies that are either democratic or market-driven.

Although educators are at the center of contentious high-stakes teacher accountability policies, we know very little about their attitudes toward these policies. This research gap is unfortunate because teachers are considered key actors in successful implementation of educational reforms. To what extent do the politics that accompany the introduction of high-stakes teacher accountability policies affect teachers’ support for the policies themselves? To address this gap, we used data from an experimental survey of teachers in New Jersey (n=444), where a new reform—Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for Children of New Jersey Act (TEACHNJ)—was signed into law in 2012 and implemented shortly after. The cornerstone of the reform is a new evaluation system that ties student performance on standardized tests to teachers’ evaluation. We found that the majority of teachers oppose the new evaluation system. Teachers’ attitudes were shaped by the politics of the key actors advocating for the policy, perceptions of implementation efforts, and beliefs in the potential outcome of the policy. Open-ended responses indicated that teachers question the validity of the evaluation system and are concerned about the negative intended and unintended consequences of the system. We conclude this paper by discussing the implications of these findings for policy studies and policymaking.

In this work, we analyzed the progress made in learning sustainability competencies by students belonging to the four Bachelor Education degrees at the University of Salamanca: Early Childhood Education Teacher, Primary Education Teacher, Pedagogy, and Social Education. To assess this progress, the instrument we used was the student questionnaire designed by the EDINSOST project. The questionnaire consisted of 18 questions related to the four sustainability competencies defined in 2011 by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities: (1) critical contextualization of knowledge, (2) sustainable use of resources, (3) participation in community processes, and (4) application of ethical principles. The students answered the questions using a four-point Likert scale. The analysis of the answers determined the students’ perception of their own learning related to sustainability competencies. A total of 230 first-year and 96 fourth-year students responded to the questionnaire. The comparison between the first- and fourth-year students’ answers to each question enabled an evaluation of the improvement perceived by the students in their sustainability competencies. We analyzed the results by using the Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis U tests. The results show that the students of the Bachelor Degree in Pedagogy are the only ones who achieve a significant improvement in their sustainability competencies. Bachelor Degree in Social Education and Bachelor Degree in Early Childhood Education Teacher students achieve an improvement, but it is not significant. Finally, Bachelor Degree in Primary Education Teacher students do not seem to achieve any improvement. From these data, it appears that the model used to introduce sustainability competencies in the Bachelor Degree in Pedagogy is the only one that achieves good results.

One of the potential strengths of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act enacted in 2002 is that the law requires the production of an enormous amount of data, particularly from tests, which, if used properly, might help us improve education. As an economist and as someone who served 13 years on the School Committee1 in Brookline Massachusetts, until May 2009, I have been appalled by the limited ability of districts to analyze these data; I have been equally appalled by the cavalier manner in which economists use test scores and related measures in their analyses. The summary data currently provided are very hard to interpret, and policymakers, who typically lack statistical sophistication, cannot easily use them to assess progress. In some domains, most notably the use of average test scores to evaluate teachers or schools, the education community is aware of the biases and has sought better measures. The economics and statistics communities have both responded to and created this demand by developing value-added measures that carry a scientific aura. However, economists have largely failed to recognize many of the problems with such measures. These problems are sufficiently important that they should preclude any automatic link between these measures and rewards or sanctions. They do, however, contain information and can be used as a catalyst for more careful evaluation of teachers and schools, and as a lever to induce principals and other administrators to act on their knowledge.

Assessment and evaluation at all levels of educational systems have become policy priorities for many countries. Two common reasons for this are student learning expectations and accountability. Although much effort has been put into the creation and refinement of content standards, standardized tests, and methods for using testing results, there has been less attention paid to the development of performance standards (proficiency levels) that greatly affect policy decision making. The present study investigates the Objective Standard Setting Model (OSS) as an improved criterion-referenced method for setting multilevel performance standards. To demonstrate how OSS can be employed for performance standard setting, our study used data from preservice teachers completing an assessment literacy test in a pre- and posttest environment. Using OSS, performance standard levels of proficient and excellent were established with clear content-related descriptions of growth in student content mastery.

In the 10-year research program "Modelling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs)" that ran from 2011 until 2020, more than 100 theoretically sound models and corresponding tests were developed to analyze the level and development of students’ competencies. Using these newly developed assessments, generic and domain-specific competencies of more than 75,000 students at more than 350 German universities in numerous disciplines (e.g., economics, teacher education) were measured in 39 interdisciplinary collaborative KoKoHs projects. Method: In these measurements, a nationally and internationally unique database was created that contains information on the level, acquisition, and development of competencies, as well as corresponding personal and contextual influences, among students at different stages throughout their studies. A comprehensive meta-analysis of the students’ competencies as well as of the central factors influencing the acquisition of competencies in higher education had not been conducted so far. The existing KoKoHs data had only been analyzed in isolation within the individual KoKoHs projects until then. Accordingly, the obtained results related only to the individual project level. To address this research deficit, the meta-study presented in this paper conducted a research synthesis, i.e., a systematic and structured meta-analysis of the KoKoHs database. Results: The meta-study describes the acquisition of competencies in higher education across domains and provides empirical evidence on generalizable versus specific influencing factors and, thus, evidence-based practical knowledge for higher education practice and policy.

Purpose – This AERI-NEPC eBrief, the fourth in a series titled “Understanding validity issues around the world”, looks closely at issues surrounding the validity of test-based actions in educational accountability and school improvement contexts. The specific discussions here focus testing issues in the US. However, the general principles underlying appropriate and inappropriate test use in school reform and high stakes public accountability settings are applicable in both domestic and international settings. This paper aims to present the issues. Design/methodology/approach – This policy brief is based on a synthesis of conference proceedings and review of selected pieces of extant literature. It begins by summarizing perspectives of an invited expert panel on the topic. To that synthesis, the authors add their own analysis of key issues. They conclude by offering recommendations for test developers and test users. Findings – The authors conclude that recurring validity issues arise with tests used in school reform and public accountability contexts, because the external tests tend to be employed as policy instruments to drive reforms in schools, with unrealistic timelines and inadequate resources. To reconcile the validity issues with respect to educational assessment and forge a coherent understanding of validity among multiple public users with different agendas, the authors offer several recommendations, such as: adopt an integrated approach to develop content and standards of proficiency that represent a range of cognitive processes; support studies to examine validity of assessments and the effects of decisions taken with assessment data before results are fed into high stakes accountability-related actions that affect teachers, leaders or schools; align standards, curricula, instruction, assessment, and professional development efforts in schools to maximize success; increase capacity-building efforts to help teachers, administrators, policy makers, and other groups of test users learn more about assessments, particularly, about appropriate interpretation and use of assessment data and reports. Originality/value – Baker points out that in response to growing demands of reformers and policy-makers for more frequent and rigorous testing programs in US public education, results from a single test tend to get used to meet a variety of public education needs today (e.g. school accountability, school improvement, teacher evaluation, and measurement of student performance). While this may simply be a way to make things more cost-efficient and reduce the extent of student testing in schools, a consequence is inappropriate test use that threatens validity in practice settings. This policy brief confronts this recurring validity challenge and offers recommendations to address the issues.

International assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have exhibited United States students specifically in the fourth and eighth grades, are not performing well when compared to their international peers. Educational stakeholders including parents, teachers, politicians, and the business community are putting more pressure on schools to improve their student’s academic performance. The stakeholders want improved performance on not only American assessments but also on international tests. The purpose of the current qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of educators in the United States to investigate the possible use of alternative educational innovations as a means for bridging the achievement gap between learners. The qualitative research study involved investigating the perceptions of 52 educational professionals through an online web-based survey and analyzing the data using the three steps outlined by Merriam. Two themes emerged from the data and two subthemes were revealed. The themes were finances and training and professional development. The subthemes were funding allocation and teacher compensation.

The Student Growth Objectives are assessments created locally or by commercial educational organizations. The students’ scores from the Student Growth Objectives are included in teacher summative evaluation as one of the measures of teacher’s effectiveness. The Danielson Model for Teaching and Learning supports the idea that assessment literate teachers are highly effective. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to identify New Jersey teachers’ competence in student educational assessments. Prizovskaya measured teachers’ assessment literacy level between different groups based on subject taught, years of experience, school assignment and educational degree attained. The data collection occurred via e-mail. Seven hundred ninety eight teachers received an Assessment Literacy Inventory survey developed by Mertler and Campbell. Eighty-two teachers fully completed the survey (N=82). The inferential analysis included an independent-sample t test, One-Way Analyses of Variances test, a post hoc, Tukey test and Welch and Brown-Forsythe tests. The results of this study indicated teachers’ overall score of 51% on entire instrument. The highest overall score of 61% was for Standard 1, Choosing Appropriate Assessment Methods (M = 0.61, SD = 0.23). The lowest overall score of 39% (M = 0.39 and SD = 0.24) was for Standard 2, Developing Appropriate Assessment Methods. The conclusion of this study was that New Jersey teachers demonstrated a low level of competence in student educational assessments. In general, the teacher assessment literacy did not improve during the last two decades. Keywords: assessment literacy, teacher evaluation, student assessment, effective teaching

This study explored the relationship between a National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) College Readiness Program (CRP) Grant and student achievement outcomes in Advanced Placement (AP) courses and on AP Exams in four Alaska high schools. A logistic regression model returned the odds of students obtaining an A or B versus a C, D, or F in an AP course, and earning a passing score versus a failing score on the exam. The results indicate there are more frequent significant differences in exam scores than in course grades based on the independent variables in the regression model. Free-and-reduced lunch (FRL) status and a school’s location were the most frequent predictors, followed by gender, grant status, and ethnicity. The lack of difference in AP course grades suggests that non-White, female students receiving FRL, attending an urban high school with the grant may be able to achieve at levels comparable to their more advantaged peers. Furthermore, the percent growth in exam pass rate at the grant schools in the study was higher than the non-grant schools and similar to other state-level studies of the NMSI CRP grant. Beyond the consistent increases in exam pass rate at grant schools, enrollment also grew by 13% for underrepresented students at the urban grant school and by 6% at the suburban grant school. These results can be understood in context of Bioecological Systems Theory, which posits that individuals who experience interactions that underlie development in one environment, which they have not routinely experienced in other environments, will show greater development. In light of this study, this means underserved students may be able to close to the achievement gap to their more affluent peers if they have the necessary academic support. As a result, this study supports reducing barriers to advanced course enrollment, and creating systems to extend time for classroom instruction and teacher professional development.

This quasi-experimental value-added study provided evidence for the predictive validity of the Massachusetts MTEL General Curriculum Mathematics Subtest by finding an association between the licensure test results of 130 teachers and the growth of their 2640 grade 4 and 5 students. The study took advantage of a natural experiment that arose due to a policy change made by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MADESE) in response to the initial administration of a new highly rigorous math-specific licensure subtest for elementary and special education teachers in March, 2008. The emergency amendment allowed test takers to conditionally pass the licensure test based upon a lower, temporary cut score, therefore providing a comparison group of teachers who received conditional licensure without fully passing the licensure test. The study sample used a cross-sectional data set acquired from MADESE for the 2010-11 school year, the first year for which data was available that linked individual teachers to their students. The dependent variable of students' mathematics Student Growth Percentile (SGP) score on the statewide test, the MCAS, incorporated prior achievement and was calculated by comparing each student to his or her academic peers. OLS regression analyses including student background variables, classroom variables, and teacher characteristic variables showed that teacher results on the MTEL math test were positively associated with student math SGP scores. The strength of the association found in this study was substantial relative to the research literature and comparable in magnitude with established factors such as student low-income status. The predictive power of the MTEL math test was strongest at the lower range of test scores, suggesting that policymakers should consider lowering the permanent cut score to the level set by the emergency amendment in order to avoid screening effective teachers out of the workforce and potentially decreasing student achievement.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)'s emphasis of reading, language arts, and mathematics (RLA&M) and its de-emphasis of science has been a source of great concern among educators. Through an objectivist and constructionist framework, this study explored the unforeseen effects of the NCLB on public science education among Title I (TI) and non-Title I (NTI) students. The research questions focused on the effects of NCLB on Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) scores in the high-stakes subjects of reading, language arts, mathematics and the low stakes subject of science among TI and NTI 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students in a north Georgia County during the 2010/2011 school year. This study also compared instructional time TI and NTI teachers dedicated to science. A causal-comparative quantitative methodology was used to analyze Georgia's public domain CRCT scores. Three independent-samples t tests showed that TI schools exhibited significantly lower Science CRCT scores than did NTI students at all grade levels (p < 0.0001). The data also showed CRCT scores in high-stakes subjects between TI and NTI students converging but science CRCT scores between TI and NTI students diverging. The self-report survey indicated no significant differences between TI and NTI teachers' instructional science time (t (107) = 1.49, p = 0.137). A teacher development project was designed to focus on improving teacher science content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge through a formal introduction to the nature of science. With increasing global science competition, science is more relevant than ever, and communities need students with strong science foundations. Further study is recommended to analyze the factors associated with this science gap between TI and NTI students.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, School of Education, 2005.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-12, Section: A, page: 4279. Adviser: Cary Buzzelli. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 11, 2006).

Growth modeling in education has focused on student characteristics in multilevel growth accountability models and has rarely included financial variables. In this dissertation, relations of several demographic and financial characteristics of Oregon school districts to the reading and mathematics growth of students receiving special education services in Grades 3-8 were explored after accounting for student level demographic characteristics. Previous research indicated that three variables were potentially related to student growth: district level aggregated student demographics, district geography (e.g., location in a remote area), and district funding. Three sources of data were used to investigate these relationships: institutional data reported by the Oregon Department of Education, the Common Core of Data gathered by the National Center for Education Statistics, and Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test data collected as part of the National Center on Assessment and Accountability in Special Education.

Multi-level models of student growth across Grades 3-8 were constructed for reading and mathematics, with time (level-1) nested within students (level-2) and districts (level-3). Results demonstrated that although student-level demographic factors account for the majority of meaningful differences in student growth, both district demographic characteristics and financial investment in students were related to growth for students who received special education services.

This quantitative study of summer learning for Maine students in grades three through grades eight analyzed changes in academic achievement level in mathematics and reading that occurred during the summer recess of 2009.

For mathematics, it appeared that when school was not in session, students showed a cumulative loss of nearly 11 percent of a standard deviation. Although small, the change in performance over the summer was not uniform across all grades studied. For the youngest students in this study, the summer recess represented a time where children collectively lost nearly 40 percent of a standard deviation in mathematics. While gender did not show a statistically significant affect on a child’s mathematics achievement over the summer, a child’s socioeconomic status (SES) did. Taken cumulatively over the course of this study, high-SES children made a cumulative gain of just over one third of a performance level in mathematics as compared to their low-SES classmates.

For reading achievement, it appeared that when school was not in session, students showed a slight gain in reading of just about 2 percent of a standard deviation. Again the change was not uniform: children in the youngest grades of the study appeared to gain in achievement level during the summer, while the oldest children in this study lost nearly 32 percent of a standard deviation. Both gender and SES had a statistically significant impact on a child’s summer learning. Over the five grade spans of this study, high-SES children gained nearly 25 percent of a performance level over their low-SES classmates while female students gained nearly 40 percent of an achievement level over their male classmates.

The patterns of learning exposed in this study for different categories of students during the summertime have meaningful implications for policymakers attempting to close the achievement gap. First, it suggests that efforts to close the achievement gap must include efforts to address out-of-school learning factors. Second, by including the summer learning in their calculations accountability measures that use an annual assessment to measure the effectiveness of teachers and schools at closing the achievement gap contain a substantial error.

This study describes the achievements of a program that provides technology education about low-level radiation to develop practical core engineers. An education program starting at an early age and continuous and consistent educational agendas through seven years of college has been constructed in collaboration with regional organizations. Subjects relating to atomic energy or nuclear engineering were regrouped as “Subjects Related to Atomic Power Education” for most grades in each department. These subjects were included in the syllabus and the student guide book to emphasize a continuous and consistent policy throughout the seven-year period of college study, comprising the five-year system and the additional two-year advanced course. Furthermore, the content of lectures, experiments, and internships was enriched and realigned in collaboration with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Okayama University, and Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc. Additional educational materials were developed from inspection visits by teaching staff to atomic energy facilities were also used in the classes. Two student experiment textbooks were developed to promote two of the subjects related to atomic energy: “Cloud Chamber Experiment” and “A Test of γ-ray Inverse Square Law.” In addition to the expansion and rearrangement of atomic power education, research on atomic power conducted for graduation thesis projects was undertaken to enhance educational and research activities. Some examples are as follows: “Study on the Relation between γ Dose Rate and Rainfall in Northern Okayama Area,” “Remote Sensing of Radiation Dose Rate by Customizing an Autonomous Robot,” and “Nuclear Reaction Analysis for Composition Measurement of BN Thin Films.” It should be noted that an atomic-energy-related education working group has been in place officially to continue the above activities in the college since 2011. In consequence, although government subsidy has been decreasing, both human and material resources have been enhanced, and many students with a satisfactory understanding of atomic energy are being developed. This program was partially funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan.

[The final form of this paper was published in the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology.] This paper will shed light on the lack of the development of appropriate monitoring systems in the field of education. Test banks can be easily purchased. Smart phones can take and share pictures of exams. A video of an exam given through Blackboard can easily be made. A survey to determine the extent of cheating using technology was given to several university students. Evidence is provided that shows security is lacking as evidenced by the number of students who have made use of technological advances to cheat on exams. The findings and conclusion may serve as evidence for administrators and policy makers to re-assess efforts being made to increase security in online testing.

A university campus is comprised of Schools and Faculties attended by students whose primary intention is to learn and ultimately graduate with their desired qualification. From the moment students apply to a university and thereafter gain acceptance and attend the campus they create a unique digital footprint of themselves within the university IT systems. Students’ digital footprints are a source of data that is of interest to groups including teachers, analysts, administrators and policy makers in the education, sociology, and pedagogy domains. Learning analytics can offer tools to mine such data producing actionable knowledge for purposes of improving student retention, curriculum enhancement, student progress and feedback, and administrative evolution. In this paper, we summarise three ongoing Learning Analytics projects from an Irish university, demonstrating the potential that exists to enhance Higher Education pedagogical approaches. First year students often struggle with making the transition into University as they adapt to life and study at a Higher Education Institution. The research projects in the area of Learning Analytics at our institution focus on: improving test performance using analytics from a general-purpose VLE like Moodle, identifying studying groups and the performance peer effect using on-campus geolocation data, and detecting lower-performing or at-risk students on programming modules.

Health begins at home and in community where people live and work, in fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being’. Experts and professionals, of all sectors and specialities, need to take account the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in all aspects of their working lives. Mainstreaming OSH into education concerns integrating one policy area – OSH – into another – education. This study started from a first analysis of an international and national OSH training offer, in which some critical aspects emerged: there are mostly sectoral training courses, qualifying some prevention actor roles, most linked to traditional risks, and primarily focused on the safety aspects rather than the health ones. The current study is related to an innovative format and experience for an integrated management of OSH in the evolution of the world of work. The concept was born from the need to train new professionals figures when the rapid demographic changes and technological innovation are changing the working world and therefore also the required skills to prevention actors. A first test has been conducted on 26 students who attended the first edition of this innovative training.

Architecture education routinely manifests deity-like figures. They are placed on pedestals and their work, whether theoretical or actualized, acquires a holistic reverence. Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, etc. are architectural prophets that influence history, theory and practice. Explicitly or implicitly, their texts show clear bigotry and privilege. Jacobs states, “In some city areas-older public housing projects and streets with very high population turnover are often conspicuous examples—the keeping of public sidewalk law and order is left almost entirely to the police and special guards. Such places are jungles”.

The acquisition of requisite reading skills plays a crucial role in scaffolding learning and more so when children start their education. These reading skills form an important pivot around which most learning revolves. Nevertheless, studies globally indicate that majority of school-age pupils are not being taught the relevant reading skills at an appropriate age and grade hence most of them attain the age of eleven years before acquiring these skills. The integral role played by the teacher in enabling learners to acquire reading skills cannot be over-emphasized. They are, in fact, an important axis around which all educational processes revolve including the success in the acquisition of the children’s literacy skills. The purpose of this study was to find out the impact of teacher interpersonal characteristics on the acquisition of reading skills among grade three pupils in public primary schools in Bungoma County, Kenya. Vygotsky’s (1978) theory was fundamental to this study. A descriptive survey research was adopted in the study focusing on grade three pupils, their class teacher and the headteachers in Bumula Sub-County. Simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the study sample of 32%. Data was collected using questionnaires, interview schedules and reading tests for grade three pupils to determine their level of reading skills. The researcher designed a pupil test to determine the levels of reading across the Grade III Learners. The study found out that teachers’ interpersonal characteristics had an impact on the acquisition of reading skills among the grade III learners. The study further established that Grade III pupils in Bungoma County have overall poor reading skills as manifested by their dismal sound recognition, comprehension, word recognition, and reading fluency. Furthermore, the study established that Grade III teachers are neither aware nor apply their interpersonal skills, but rely on their skills to help Grade III learners acquire reading skills. The study recommended that Bungoma County’s Ministry of Education should use these findings for policy implementation as a way or improving teacher interpersonal relationships, through modification of the curriculum of teacher training colleges. Keywords: Acquisition, Impact, Interpersonal characteristics, Reading skills

The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between natural resources revenue, fiscal policy and economic growth for 35 selected Sub-Saharan African countries. The panel data covering the periods of 1986-2014 was analyzed by using the fixed/random effect model estimation and the panel causality test. We also performed the panel unit root test in order to insure that our variables are stationary. The empirical results indicate that there is insignificant negative effect of natural resources revenue and bad fiscal policy on the economic growth. However, there is significant positive effect of capital formation on economic growth. We also found a bidirectional causality relationship between Natural resources rents and economic growth. There is also unidirectional causality link from government final consumption expenditure to Natural resources revenue and from Natural resources revenue to capital formation. These empirical results mean that Sub-Saharan African countries apply bad fiscal policy to improve the natural resource sector which does not efficiently contribute to the economic growth. This study suggests that countries of Sub-Saharan Africa must apply improved fiscal policy in order to add tax revenue to their total revenue; and they must also use the natural resources revenue in order to invest in other sectors such as education, manufacturing and agriculture.

Heirs of future and potential tourists, students face with various difficulties during university period. The very primary step of physiological needs, eating habits and constraints, of such a wide audience who are supposed to be at the top of self-realization is an issue that is carefully be focused on. The aim of this study which tries to investigate Bartın Vocational School students’ tendency and constraints on nutrition is to search and identify daily main meals and snacks of students; to determine body-mass index on age basis;; and to evaluate the arguments whether interdependent variables such as economic level, place of residence and gender which are allegedly affect nutritional care have influence on food choice. This study is considered important because it assesses dietary habits and tendencies of consumers with different levels of opportunity and limited incomes. In this context, secondary data have been given in theoretical framework. Primary data, on the other hand, have been obtained through a questionnaire that is compiled from various sources. Research problem and hypotheses have been tested by parametric test Independent-Samples T Test and frequency analysis. As results of the research, the findings that students do not have adequate nutrition awareness though their body-mass index is in normal range; that they consume fast food particularly during the day; and that this situation leads to the so-called morbid obesity health problems have been discussed. In addition, policy recommendations and suggestions have been made in this regard.

There are recognized in Latvia the lack of locally based coastal socio-ecological research knowledge and its interpretation into municipal safety and development planning from one side as well as also only land-side oriented and separate sectorial development interests based coastal municipalities’ governance/planning practice from other side. Coastal governance practice development problems solution at the local level are to be seen at both ends of governance cycle – coastal situation evaluation (e.g. science) and policy design and implementation. Overall objective is to create, apply/test and use applicable interface system for integrated coastal science transfer into integrated coastal management (ICM), and so altogether developing whole and flexible integrated coastal governance (ICG) cycle, esp. at the local municipal level, but also coping with vertical integration with other national and international governance levels, as well as horizontal integration with other municipal development sectors. ICG complex interface system has been started to develop step-wise during realization of various research and development projects and particularly by designing and testing both complementary thematical and territorial approaches based municipal indicator systems (IS). Approaches were applied as different cross-sectorial municipal IS (coastal, climate change governance, coastal risk etc.) and, interrelatedly, eventual whole municipal development IS. There was designed and implemented Sustainable development governance IS proposal for Saulkrasti municipality, being used now for supervision of mandatory municipal long term planning document – Sustainable Development Strategy. Further proposals for coastal indicators observatory system for sealand border area administrative territories has to be developed, respecting all types of coastal components as for highly specific socio-ecological systems in the Baltic Sea region area.

The article explores the key vocabulary of 2020 in the network space of Ukraine. Texts of journalistic, official-business style, analytical publications of well-known journalists on current topics are analyzed. Extralinguistic factors of new word formation, their adaptation to the sphere of special and socio-political vocabulary of the Ukrainian language are determined. Examples show modern impressions in the media, their stylistic use and impact on public opinion in a pandemic. New meanings of foreign expressions, media terminology, peculiarities of translation of neologisms from English into Ukrainian have been clarified. According to the materials of the online media, a «dictionary of the coronavirus era» is provided. The journalistic text functions in the media on the basis of logical judgments, credible arguments, impressive language. Its purpose is to show the socio-political problem, to sharpen its significance for society and to propose solutions through convincing considerations. Most researchers emphasize the influential role of journalistic style, which through the media shapes public opinion on issues of politics, economics, education, health care, war, the future of the country. To cover such a wide range of topics, socio-political vocabulary is used first of all – neutral and emotionally-evaluative, rhetorical questions and imperatives, special terminology, foreign words. There is an ongoing discussion in online publications about the use of the new foreign token «lockdown» instead of the word «quarantine», which has long been learned in the Ukrainian language. Research on this topic has shown that at the initial stage of the pandemic, the word «lockdown» prevailed in the colloquial language of politicians, media personalities and part of society did not quite understand its meaning. Lockdown, in its current interpretation, is a restrictive measure to protect people from a dangerous virus that has spread to many countries; isolation of the population («stay in place») in case of risk of spreading Covid-19. In English, US citizens are told what a lockdown is: «A lockdown is a restriction policy for people or communities to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks to themselves or to others if they can move and interact freely. The term «stay-at-home» or «shelter-in-place» is often used for lockdowns that affect an area, rather than specific locations». Content analysis of online texts leads to the conclusion that in 2020 a special vocabulary was actively functioning, with the appropriate definitions, which the media described as a «dictionary of coronavirus vocabulary». Media broadcasting is the deepest and pulsating source of creative texts with new meanings, phrases, expressiveness. The influential power of the word finds its unconditional embodiment in the media. Journalists, bloggers, experts, politicians, analyzing current events, produce concepts of a new reality. The world is changing and the language of the media is responding to these changes. It manifests itself most vividly and emotionally in the network sphere, in various genres and styles.