Tablet devices, as assistive and instructional technologies, can be highly effectual pedagogical tools with multifaceted benefits, such as the ability to integrate multimedia and the ability to track student progress over time. The unique value of particular assistive and instructional technologies explains, in part, why they are more widely used to teach struggling learners, as well as learners in general who demonstrate a spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. Given the centrality of reading and the cultivation of attendant skills as a prerequisite for learning all subjects, assessing the quality of literacy-based applications for tablet use is important. No such evaluative tool currently exists, necessitating the creation of a systematic tool, for use by both parents and educators, to select appropriate applications for their children or students who are struggling readers. To address this need, this article distills the effective instructional components for reading and provides a comprehensive rubric for reading applications. Suggestions from practitioners informed this process and were also implemented to enhance the usability of the rubric for educational reading applications. Descriptions of each rubric item and examples based on the sample reading application are provided.

The student teaching experience is cited as one of the most critical facets of teachers' professional development. However, teachers' beliefs about pedagogical practices and disciplinary procedures, as well as their perceptions of students, also influence the approaches they use in the classroom. This study uses a humanistic and custodial orientation theoretical framework to compare the beliefs of pre-service teachers immediately after having completed their core didactic courseworkbut prior to the student teaching experiencewith their beliefs immediately after the student teaching experience. Findings from this study reveal that upon completion of their didactic coursework, pre-service-teachers' espouse humanistic beliefs, in contrast to a custodial orientation. Furthermore, although the use of external rewards to shape student behavior as well as other specific management and pedagogical practices were more highly prioritized after immersion in the field, student teaching did not appear to alter pre-service teachers' core beliefs.

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This study analyzes the reliability of approximately 800,000 college grades from three higher educational institutions that vary in type and size. Comparisons of intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) reveal patterns among institutions and academic disciplines. Results from this study suggest that there are styles of grading associated with academic disciplines. Individual grade assignment ICC is comparable to rubric-derived learning assessments at one institution, and both are arguably too low to be used for decision making at that level. A reliability lift calculation suggests that grade averages over eight (or so) courses per student have enough reliability to be used as outcome measures. We discuss how grade statistics can complement efforts to assess program fairness, rigor, and comparability, as well as assessing the complexity of a curriculum. The R code and statistical notes are included to facilitate use by assessment and institutional research offices.