This book makes a unique contribution to classroom assessment literature, linking teacher-friendly examples to scholarly work and current research in the field, and providing comprehensive, hands-on information on core concepts in accessible terms. Examples of real activities and questions for reflection and discussion aim to enrich understanding.

The mathematical sciences are part of everyday life. Modern communication, transportation, science, engineering, technology, medicine, manufacturing, security, and finance all depend on the mathematical sciences. Fueling Innovation and Discovery describes recent advances in the mathematical sciences and advances enabled by mathematical sciences research. It is geared toward general readers who would like to know more about ongoing advances in the mathematical sciences and how these advances are changing our understanding of the world, creating new technologies, and transforming industries. Although the mathematical sciences are pervasive, they are often invoked without an explicit awareness of their presence. Prepared as part of the study on the Mathematical Sciences in 2025, a broad assessment of the current state of the mathematical sciences in the United States, Fueling Innovation and Discovery presents mathematical sciences advances in an engaging way. The report describes the contributions that mathematical sciences research has made to advance our understanding of the universe and the human genome. It also explores how the mathematical sciences are contributing to healthcare and national security, and the importance of mathematical knowledge and training to a range of industries, such as information technology and entertainment. Fueling Innovation and Discovery will be of use to policy makers, researchers, business leaders, students, and others interested in learning more about the deep connections between the mathematical sciences and every other aspect of the modern world. To function well in a technologically advanced society, every educated person should be familiar with multiple aspects of the mathematical sciences.

Washback refers to the influence of language testing on teaching and learning. This volume, at the important intersection of language testing and teaching practices, presents theoretical, methodological, and practical guidance for current and future washback studies. In the field of language testing, researchers' major interest has traditionally been focused on issues and solving problems inherent in tests in order to increase their reliability and validity. However, the washback effect goes well beyond the test itself to include factors, such as curriculum, teacher and learner behaviors inside and outside the classroom, their perceptions of the test, and how test scores are used. Only recently have researchers started to empirically investigate the phenomenon of washback. This volume of such research serves two essential purposes by: *providing an overview of the complexity of washback and the various contextual factors entangled within testing, teaching, and learning; and *presenting empirical studies from around the world that offer insights into the effects of washback in specific educational contexts and models of research on which future studies can be based. The extensive use of test scores for various educational and social purposes in society nowadays makes the washback effect a high-interest phenomenon in the day-to-day educational activities of teachers, researchers, program coordinators/directors, policymakers, and others in the field of education. Washback in Language Testing: Research Contexts and Methods is a valuable resource for those who are interested in the application of findings to actual teaching and learning situations or conduct washback research in their own contexts, including educational and psychological testing experts, as well as alternative assessment people in all fields, and for policy- and decision-makers in educational and testing organizations.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The city and its regulations: Unexpected margins -- Part I Space and state regulation: The urban interstices -- 2 Markets and marginality in Beirut -- 3 The tremendous making and unmaking of the peripheries in current Istanbul -- 4 Resilient forms of urbanity on the margins? Al-Kherba: A vivid market in a damaged section of the medina of Tunis -- 5 Whose margins? Marginality, poverty and the moral geography of pre-Soviet Bukhara -- 6 On the margins of the city: Izmir Prison in the late Ottoman Empire -- Part II Diversity and moral policing: Making claims through marginalisation -- 7 'Texas': An off-centre district at the heart of nightlife in Odienné -- 8 The Manyema in colonial Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) between urban margins and regional connections -- 9 On the margins: Suburban space and religious deviancy in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur -- 10 Ethnic differentiation and conflict dynamics: Uzbeks' marginalisation and non-marginalisation in southern Kyrgyzstan -- Index

There has been growing interest in recent years in the influence of tests on teaching and learning - a phenomenon commonly referred to as 'washback'. Despite persistent assertions about its nature and scope, empirical studies investigating test washback are still limited in number, and few of these make use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in washback research. This volume presents a study of how the introduction of the 1996 Hong Kong Certificate of Education in English - a high stakes public examination - impacted on classroom teaching and learning in Hong Kong secondary schools. The washback effect was observed initially at the larger 'macro' level, among different stakeholder groups within the Hong Kong educational context; and also at the more local 'micro' level, in terms of teachers' attitudes, teaching content and classroom interactions. This study: provides a theoretical background to the washback concept, discusses the need for empirical investigation of washback, describes the use of a mixed methodology approach in washback research, offers insights into the role of tests as agents of innovation and change in the classroom and broader educational context. This volume will be of particular relevance to language test developers and researchers interested in the consequential validity of tests; it will also be of interest to teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers and others in education concerned with the interface between language testing and teaching practices/programs. Book jacket.

In the wrong hands, math can be deadly. Even the simplest numbers can become powerful forces when manipulated by politicians or the media, but in the case of the law, your liberty -- and your life -- can depend on the right calculation. In Math on Trial, mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez describe ten trials spanning from the nineteenth century to today, in which mathematical arguments were used -- and disastrously misused -- as evidence. They tell the stories of Sally Clark, who was accused of murdering her children by a doctor with a faulty sense of calculation; of nineteenth-century tycoon Hetty Green, whose dispute over her aunt's will became a signal case in the forensic use of mathematics; and of the case of Amanda Knox, in which a judge's misunderstanding of probability led him to discount critical evidence -- which might have kept her in jail. Offering a fresh angle on cases from the nineteenth-century Dreyfus affair to the murder trial of Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk, Schneps and Colmez show how the improper application of mathematical concepts can mean the difference between walking free and life in prison. A colorful narrative of mathematical abuse, Math on Trial blends courtroom drama, history, and math to show that legal expertise isn't't always enough to prove a person innocent.