Improving Narrative Writing Skills of Secondary Students with Disabilities Using Strategy Instruction

Writing standards and objectives outline complex skills for narrative essay writing at the secondary level. Students with disabilities often produce disorganized narratives with fewer narrative elements than their peers without disabilities. A multiple-probe design was used to examine effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development for the Pick my genre then idea, Organize my notes, Write (POW) + Setting, Tension, rising Action, Climax, Solution (STACS) strategy on narrative essay-writing skills for 6 secondary students with disabilities. Results indicated students improved the quality of their narratives and included a greater number of strategy-specific and story grammar elements following instruction. Students were also able to transfer skills across a history or social studies setting and could more accurately differentiate narrative writing prompts from expository and persuasive writing prompts. Treatment acceptability results indicated students found instruction beneficial.     

Developing Embedded Signature Assessments for Continuous Improvement in Teacher Education

The development and use of assessment systems to measure the performance and progress of teacher candidates and inform the continuous improvement of teacher education programs has been a longstanding priority in teacher education for the past 30 years. Teacher educators in the School of Education at a small public midwestern university revised and improved their assessment system by developing seven Embedded Signature Assessments (ESAs). ESAs are formative performance assessments that are implemented in professional education courses to measure a teacher candidate’s performance prior to student teaching and readiness for student teaching. This article describes the development and implementation of ESAs at one university, with attention to the benefits and challenges.     

Word Train Puzzle: Adjectives

Instructions:Read the clues (information that helps you to find the answers) and write the answers in the boxes.Each answer starts with the last letter of the word before it.The last word finishes with the first letter of the first word.     

The changing quality of business education

There is a pervasive perspective that both students and college courses are not what they used to be. A utility maximization model exhibits why students prefer easier courses to those that provide more challenge, and presumably more knowledge. The model also demonstrates why faculty members accommodate these students with less stringent courses. Survey data from professors in various disciplines in colleges of business across the United States verify the perception of declining quality in many of 18 different categories.     

Using person response functions to investigate areas of person misfit related to item characteristics

Individual person fit analyses provide important information regarding the validity of test score inferences for an individual test taker. In this study, we use data from an undergraduate statistics test (N = 1135) to illustrate a two-step method that researchers and practitioners can use to examine individual person fit. First, person fit is examined numerically with several indices based on the Rasch model (i.e., Infit, Outfit, and Between-Subset statistics). Second, person misfit is presented graphically with person response functions, and these person response functions are interpreted using a heuristic. Individual person fit analysis holds promise for improving score interpretation in that it may detect potential threats to validity of score inferences for some test takers. Individual person fit analysis may also highlight particular subsets of items (on which a test taker performs unexpectedly) that can be used to further contextualize her or his test performance.     

External knowledge sourcing in different national settings: a comparison of electronics establishments in Britain and France

In a detailed comparison of matched samples of electronics establishments in Britain and France, this paper finds that the two samples of establishments were operating in distinctively different national labour markets for engineers and scientists, reflecting structural differences in national higher education systems and a far higher level of individual mobility between enterprises in Britain than is found in France. These differences were found to have very little effect on quantitative measures of establishments’ external research interactions which tended to reflect other national-institutional differences such as continued government support for public laboratories in France of a kind which have now been largely privatised in Britain. However, qualitative evidence pointed to a faster rate of development of new external knowledge sourcing and relationship building in Britain which was partly stimulated by the greater mobility of individual engineers and scientists between enterprises and other organisations bringing new personal networks of external contacts with them. These tendencies contrasted with a marked stability in external research linkages in France. The paper suggests that the greater openness of British R&D networks to new ideas and knowledge may be particularly advantageous in fast-changing high-tech industries such as electronics.     

Learning and Study Strategies among First-Year Students at a South African University: A Mixed Methods Study

South African higher education is plagued by low academic success rates. Academic development and support units can play an important role in addressing low academic success rates by assisting students in developing appropriate learning and study strategies. Limited information is available on students’ learning and study strategy profiles and their needs regarding intervention programmes. This article reports on a mixed methods study that investigated learning and study strategies among a sample of first-year students enrolled at a South African university. Quantitative data, collected using the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) from a sample of first-year students, pointed to an urgent need for learning and study strategy intervention programmes to be provided. The qualitative data offered a more in-depth understanding of participants’ needs regarding learning and study strategy intervention programmes. Implications for practice and avenues for further research are discussed.     

Publications in the doctoral thesis: challenges for doctoral candidates,supervisors, examiners and administrators

Encouraging doctoral students to publish during their candidature is becoming more widely accepted and practised, both in Australia and internationally, although it is still less common in some fields. Almost all universities in Australia now offer candidates an option to include publications in their doctoral thesis. This paradigm shift has occurred over several decades as the role of doctoral education has been debated, but guidelines for students, supervisors and examiners have yet to catch up. While various benefits, challenges and criticisms have been discussed by established academics, the voices of the candidates themselves are limited. Using a narrative inquiry approach, this study helps to fill that void by reporting the personal experiences of the author, who recently completed a thesis with publications (TWP) in education. As such, this paper not only illuminates the potential challenges for doctoral candidates but it also offers possible ways in which universities, supervisors, examiners and candidates themselves can make the path to completing a doctoral TWP easier to navigate.