Quantifying social skill deficits and strengths profiles in autistic youth

While social difficulties in autism are well-established, questions remain regarding whether these represent challenges in acquiring or performing such skills, reduced social strengths, or a unique distribution across these domains (i.e., social profile). This study empirically derived social profiles of 211 autistic and non-autistic youth (M_age = 13.50; Autistic N = 150; Male N = 151; 85.3% White). Assessments occurred between 2016 and 2020. Results showed that autistic youth exhibit significantly more social acquisition and performance deficits and fewer strengths than nonautistic youth (ds = −.44 to .65). Performance deficits were most—and acquisition deficits least—prominent within autistic profiles, potentially implicating longstanding theoretical models of social difficulties in autism, and supporting new, idiographic approaches for conceptualizing, assessing, and treating social challenges.     

Cloze procedure and comprehension: an exploratory study across three languages

This cross-cultural study of cloze procedure and comprehension involved samples of 10- to 11-year-old schoolchildren in Canada, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The aim of the study was to explore the nature of what might be called‘cloze comprehension’in relation to overall or‘global comprehension’of a passage; in particular to establish (a) whether cloze procedure measures the same facets of comprehension regardless of what language is being read; and (b) to what extent cloze procedure, in different linguistic areas, measures‘global comprehension', or comprehension of the general ideas contained in a passage, as distinct from literal comprehension. The results of the study indicate that cloze procedure is a valid and reliable measure of certain aspects of reading comprehension in all the linguistic and cultural areas sampled. Furthermore, comprehension as measured by cloze procedure seems to be a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for overall or global understanding of the meaning of a passage. The study also shows that the ability measured by cloze procedure is more generalized (i.e., less text specific) than the ability measured by our global comprehension task. One implication of this seems to be that the higher-order skills necessary for global understanding do not always develop automatically once children have mastered the skills necessary for literal comprehension of simple texts. On the contrary, the higher-order skills may have to be taught systematically at an appropriate stage in the children's reading development.     

Getting the Message Across: The problem of communicating assessment feedback

Current literature provides useful insights into the role of assessment feedback in student learning, yet fails to recognise its complexity as a unique form of communication. This article outlines ideas emerging from ongoing research into the meaning and impact of assessment feedback for students in higher education. We argue that new models of communication are required to understand students' responses to the language of tutors' comments, and that issues of discourse, identity, power, control and social relationships should be central to any understanding of assessment feedback as a communication process. Implications of adopting an alternative perspective for research and practice are identified and discussed.     

Learning from Coursework in English and Geography

As an element of high stakes assessment, coursework was originally intended to raise the validity of the assessment process and to enhance the learning of students. In recent years, this purpose has been distorted by the increasing requirements for educational institutions to demonstrate standards and to be accountable. This small, ESRC-funded study used in-depth qualitative approaches to explore the nature and processes of learning from coursework in national examinations undertaken by 16 year-old students. Among other things, it probed the extent to which qualities such as independent learning, critical thinking and creativity were developed through coursework. The research found that, while the practice underpinning coursework had the capacity to support deeper and more independent learning, the pressures of achieving good grades mediated against all pupils reaching the optimum level of higher order thinking.     

Personality Types,Learning Styles and Educational Goals

Attempts to broaden conceptions of learning styles to represent more adequately individual differences in motivation/emotion, as well as cognition, are limited by a paucity of relevant theory. Personality theories should, but do not, provide a satisfactory conceptual framework for this endeavour. In an attempt to remedy this situation, a new personality typology is outlined which, it is argued, provides a coherent system within which to construe and conduct research upon learning styles. The implications of the theory for educational goals, couched in terms of learning styles, also are discussed.     

A hierarchical approach to Students’ Assessments of Instruction

A teacher evaluation system can be threatening to faculty, especially if used for summative decisions. Therefore, it is important to obtain valid and pertinent information. Since students are extensively exposed to course elements, students’ evaluation of instruction should be one of several components in the teacher evaluation system. Since traditional methods, such as Cronbach’s alpha and ordinary least squares regression, do not address the hierarchical data of the classroom, the current study used the statistical techniques of confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical linear modelling in order to properly investigate the reliability and validity of the Students’ Assessment of Instruction (SAI) instrument. Use of hierarchical linear modelling to analyse teacher evaluation instruments could not be found in the literature, although it has been used in educational settings. This study will illustrate its usefulness in determining what measures are related, either as evidence of validity or as a bias, to instructional effectiveness. Student responses were also compared with faculty self-evaluations, one indicator of effective teaching, in order to determine if the SAI does measure instructional effectiveness. Overall, the SAI was found to have good reliability and validity with relatively few biases and could be used to extract five distinguishable traits of instructional effectiveness.