A PILGRIM TALE

Evaluation of adult religious education as provided by faith communities is seldom discussed in the literature and even more rarely implemented in practice. The purpose of this article is to underscore the importance of evaluation for the improvement of adult religious education, to provide an overview of evaluation in this context, and to urge that more intentional efforts be directed to expanding the body of literature in this field and to implementing evaluation in the practice of adult religious education.

Four components of evaluation are defined: evidence, criteria, judgment, and improvement. An overview is provided by answering the questions: what? who? when? and how? in relation to evaluation. Four barriers to evaluation in adult religious education are discussed along with suggestions for overcoming those barriers.     

Dear Radio Broadcaster: Fan Mail as a Form of Perceived Interactivity

In an attempt to learn more about perceived interactivity, this study explores the perceptions of radio listeners during the 1920s and 1930s. Radio provides an interesting case for exploring interactivity because, although the medium lacked interactive technological features, millions of listeners perceived that the opportunity to “interact” with radio existed through fan mail. The study finds that fan mail reflects several dimensions of interactivity often associated with the technological features of a medium: user input and feedback, medium responsiveness, two-way communication, and system monitoring. The results suggest that interactivity may be dependent on media content rather than media technology.     

Computerised screening for dyslexia in adults

Identifying dyslexia in adulthood presents particular challenges because of complicating factors such as acquisition of compensatory strategies, differing degrees of intervention and the problem of distinguishing dyslexic adults from those whose literacy difficulties have non‐cognitive causes. One of the implications is that conventional literacy measures, per se, do not provide a satisfactory basis for screening for dyslexia in adulthood as some dyslexic adults have above‐average literacy skills and some non‐dyslexic adults have very poor literacy skills. This study examined an alternative approach to dyslexia screening, using three tests that depend heavily on phonological processing, lexical access and working memory, but which are not conventional measures of literacy. Using these tests, which are computer delivered, 70 dyslexic adults from three different types of educational institution were compared with 69 non‐dyslexic adults from the same institutions. The results showed that the dyslexic and non‐dyslexic groups were significantly different on all three computer‐based tests, with an average effect size of 1.55. Adaptive versions of these tests were then created to reduce overall administration time for the suite to about 15 minutes. Analysis showed that the combined scaled scores from the adaptive versions of the three tests significantly discriminated the dyslexic from the non‐dyslexic group with an increased effect size of 2.07 and with a sensitivity rate of 90.6% and a specificity rate of 90.0%. It was concluded that this approach is a valid and useful method of identifying dyslexia in adulthood, which, given the ease of administration to large numbers of adults, has noted advantages for education and employment.     

Examining the Effectiveness of a Multicomponent Reading Comprehension Intervention in Middle Schools: A Focus on Treatment Fidelity

In this experimental study, we examined the effects of a multicomponent reading comprehension intervention in sixth- to eighth-grade English language arts classes with a focus on factors to enhance treatment implementation. We tested the contribution of a theoretically derived fidelity framework that included adherence, quality, dosage, program differentiation, and student responsiveness. The study was conducted in three schools, involving 14 teachers and 859 students. English language arts classes were randomly assigned to the Comprehension Circuit Training intervention (n?=?30) or typical practice comparison (n?=?31) conditions, and all teachers taught in both conditions. Findings indicated that there was no reliable difference between the intervention and typical practice groups on standardized or researcher-developed proximal measures. To investigate the relationship between fidelity and student outcomes, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to determine the relation of the indicators to a latent fidelity factor. Results of the CFA revealed a single fidelity factor composed of the adherence, quality, dosage, student responsiveness, and program differentiation variables. The fidelity factor was statistically significantly related to outcomes on a standardized comprehension measure (γ?=?.86, p?γ?=?.52, p?相似文献