Exemplars show what rubrics tell about assessment criteria. When exemplars complement rubrics, a proven tool for describing expectations, students are able to appreciate writing standards in a more concrete way.--back cover.

This monograph is both an intellectual summation as well as a philosophical advancement of key themes of the work of Keith Lehrer on several key topics--including knowledge, self-trust, autonomy, and consciousness. He here attempts to integrate these themes and develop an intellectual system that can constructively solve philosophical problems. The system is indebted to the modern work of Sellars, Quine, and Chisholm, as well as historically to Hume and Reid. At the core of this system lies Lehrer's theory of knowledge, which he previously called a coherence theory of knowledge but now calls a defensibility theory. Lehrer argues that knowledge requires the capacity to justify or defend the target claim of knowledge in terms of a background system. Defensibility is an internal capacity supplied by that system to meet objections to the claim. This theory however leaves open the problem of "experience"--noted by other philosophers--i.e. how to explain the special role of experience in a background system even granted we are fallible in describing it. Lehrer offers a solution to the problem of experience, arguing that reflection on experience converts the experience itself into an exemplar, something like a sample that becomes a vehicle or term of representation. The exemplar represents itself and extends to represent the external world. It exhibits something about evidence and truth concerning experience that, as Wittgenstein noted, cannot be fully described but can only be shown. Exemplar representation is the missing link of a background system to truth about the world.

Machine Learning is one of the oldest and most intriguing areas of Ar tificial Intelligence. From the moment that computer visionaries first began to conceive the potential for general-purpose symbolic computa tion, the concept of a machine that could learn by itself has been an ever present goal. Today, although there have been many implemented com puter programs that can be said to learn, we are still far from achieving the lofty visions of self-organizing automata that spring to mind when we think of machine learning. We have established some base camps and scaled some of the foothills of this epic intellectual adventure, but we are still far from the lofty peaks that the imagination conjures up. Nevertheless, a solid foundation of theory and technique has begun to develop around a variety of specialized learning tasks. Such tasks in clude discovery of optimal or effective parameter settings for controlling processes, automatic acquisition or refinement of rules for controlling behavior in rule-driven systems, and automatic classification and di agnosis of items on the basis of their features. Contributions include algorithms for optimal parameter estimation, feedback and adaptation algorithms, strategies for credit/blame assignment, techniques for rule and category acquisition, theoretical results dealing with learnability of various classes by formal automata, and empirical investigations of the abilities of many different learning algorithms in a diversity of applica tion areas.

"What was the function of the four characters from Jewish history and tradition in the Letter of James? Robert J. Foster analyses James' use of these characters and argues that despite each of them being tested to the extreme they all remained wholly-committed to God"--

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book crosses the divide between theoreticians and practitioners by demonstrating how curriculum theories and models are applied in classrooms today. It ties together broad educational theories such as progressivism, essentialism, perennialism, etc.; curriculum models, characterized as learner-centered, society-centered or knowledge-centered; and exemplars of curriculum theories and models, such as Reggio Emilia, Core Knowledge, the International Baccalaureate, etc.

Co-published with “While assessment may feel to constituents like an activity of accountability simply for accreditors, it is most appropriate to approach assessment as an activity of accountability for students. Assessment results that improve institutional effectiveness, heighten student learning, and better align resources serve to make institutions stronger for the benefit of their students, and those results also serve the institution or program well during the holistic evaluation required through accreditation.” – from the foreword by Heather Perfetti, President of the Middle States Commission on Higher EducationColleges and universities struggle to understand precisely what is being asked for by accreditors, and this book answers that question by sharing examples of success reported by schools specifically recommended by accreditors. This compendium gathers examples of assessment practice in twenty-four higher education institutions: twenty-three in the U.S. and one in Australia. All institutions represented in this book were suggested by their accreditor as having an effective assessment approach in one or more of the following assessment focused areas: assessment in the disciplines, co-curricular, course/program/institutional assessment, equity and inclusion, general education, online learning, program review, scholarship of teaching and learning, student learning, or technology. These examples recommended by accrediting agencies makes this a unique contribution to the assessment literature.The book is organized in four parts. Part One is focused on student learning and assessment and includes ten chapters. The primary focus for Part Two is student learning assessment from a disciplinary perspective and includes four chapters. Part Three has a faculty engagement and assessment focus, and Part Four includes four chapters on institutional effectiveness and assessment, with a focus on strategic planning.This book is a publication of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning.

Responding to evaluator and instructor demand, this book presents a diverse set of high-quality developmental evaluation (DE) case studies. Twelve insightful exemplars illustrate how DE is used to evaluate innovative initiatives in complex, dynamic environments, including a range of fields and international settings. Written by leading practitioners, chapters offer a rare window into what it takes to do DE, what roles must be fulfilled, and what results can be expected. Each case opens with an incisive introduction by the editors. The book also addresses frequently asked questions about DE, synthesizes key themes and lessons learned from the exemplars, and identifies eight essential principles of DE. See also Michael Quinn Patton's Developmental Evaluation, the authoritative presentation of DE.

It's not just about what students know. What can they do with their knowledge? Author Susan M. Brookhart shares her expertise, bringing together practical, research-based information to deepen educators' understanding of what performance assessment is, what purposes it serves, and how to use performance tasks and rubrics to support formative and summative assessment.

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the Analects. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows whom he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him and the Analects' authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way why pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation.