Copy of `NCREL - Education Terms`

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NCREL - Education Terms Category: Education > Glossary of Education Terms and Acronyms Date & country: 23/10/2008, USA Words: 119

Restructuring
See systemic reform.

Rubrics
Specific criteria or guidelines used to evaluate student work.

Scaffolding
An instructional technique in which the teacher breaks a complex task into smaller tasks, models the desired learning strategy or task, provides support as students learn to do the task, and then gradually shifts responsibility to the students. In this manner, a teacher enables students to accomplish as much of a task as possible without adult assistance.

Scale
The range of scores possible for the student to achieve on a test or an assessment. Performance assessments typically use a 4- to 6-point scale, compared to a scale of 100 or more with traditional multiple-choice tests.

scientific knowledge
Knowledge that provides people with the conceptual and technological tools to explain and describe how the world works.

scoring guide
A set of guidelines for rating student work. A scoring guide describes what is being assessed, provides a scoring scale, and helps the teacher or rater correctly place work on the scale. (See rubrics.)

SEA
state education agency (e.g., state department of education)

SEDL
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory

standardized tests
Assessments that are administered and scored in exactly the same way for all students. Traditional standardized tests are typically mass-produced and machine-scored; they are designed to measure skills and knowledge that are thought to be taught to all students in a fairly standardized way. Performance assessments also can be standardized if they are administered and scored in the same way for all...

Standards
Statements of what students should know and be able to demonstrate. Various standards have been developed by national organizations, state departments of education, districts, and schools.

student assistance program
A school-based program, modeled on employee assistance programs, that focuses on addressing students' behavior and performance at school and includes a referral process to help students address identified problems.

systemic reform
Change that occurs in all aspects and levels of the educational process and that impacts all stakeholders within the process—students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members—with implications for all components, including curriculum, assessment, professional development, instruction, and compensation

teaching for understanding
A teaching method that focuses on the process of understanding as the goal of learning rather than simply the development of specific skills. It focuses on forming connections and seeing relationships among facts, procedures, concepts, and principles, and between prior and new knowledge.

Technology
In education, a branch of knowledge based on the development and implementation of computers, software, and other technical tools, and the assessment and evaluation of students' educational outcomes resulting from their use of technology tools.

TECSCU
Teacher Education Council of State Colleges and Universities

traditional assessment
An assessment in which students select responses from a multiple-choice list, a true/false list, or a matching list. (Compare to alternative assessment.)

validity
An indication that an assessment instrument consistently measures what it is designed to measure, excluding extraneous features from such measurement.

WestEd
The Regional Educational Laboratory serving Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.

zone of proximal development
A level or range in which a student can perform a task with help.