This article presents information on 2 international educational effectiveness studies, one completed and the other ongoing. The 2nd study is, to a large degree, a reaction to a methodological problem encountered in the 1st study, the lack of an internationally valid instrument measuring teacher effectiveness. This article presents 4 reasons for conducting the 2nd study (International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback (ISTOF)) and then details the overall work plan for ISTOF-I (2004 - 2006) and ISTOF-II (2006 - 2007). The sample of 20 fully participating country teams in ISTOF is very diverse with representatives from nearly all geographic areas of the world (North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia), many of which have never participated in teacher or school effectiveness research. This article summarizes progress made on the development of the ISTOF protocol, including the generation of components and indicators of teacher effectiveness. In many ways, the study is already a success, due to the diversity of the participating countries and their generation of major parts of the protocol during ISTOF-I. Nevertheless, this article concludes with a discussion of some of the major challenges that the research team will face as it begins ISTOF-II.
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Two hundred and ninety-six English majors at universities in Poland, Austria and Hong Kong were given a 50-item questionnaire designed to evaluate their knowledge of grammatical terminology. The main aim was to identify whether the three populations were subject to differing 'terminological cultures'. This was found to be substantially the case; for example, the term indefinite article was known by 95% of Polish students but only 29% of the Hong Kong ones, whereas imperative was known by 71% of the Austrians but only 5% of the Hong Kongers. Some differences were attributed to a lack of use of the related concept in teaching; others were explained by the use of a synonymous term (e.g. reported speech was preferred in Poland and Hong Kong but indirect speech in Austria). A significant correlation between terminological knowledge and language proficiency was found for the Hong Kong students. Qualitative findings included confusion between pairs of complementary terms and thosewith similar forms; unknown terms being treated as transparent with functional reference where possible; and the prototypical use ofwords as examples of grammatical categories (e.g. 'beautiful' for adjective). Implications for teachers, writers and researchers are discussed.
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