Introduction to Enhanced Protective Film Systems

An explosive blast mitigation alternative has increased the safety of structures by using "catcher" systems.These systems " catch" or repel the failure of the window or in-fill wall protecting life and property from ballistic shards or fragments.They can be designed to be standalone in new construction and structural retrofits or used to augment structural hardening techniques.Cables,fabrics,and thin gauge sheet steel are examples of catcher systems used in the past.A new and evolving category of catcher systems are based on polymeric materials that can be used for both wall and window upgrades.These products are a proven blast mitigation concept and K&C Protective Technologies Pte Ltd (KCPT) together with Sherwin-Williams(SW) use KCPT's blast engineering capacity and SW's material engineering principles to create engineered systems for even greater in-use performance.     

An Examination of Counselor Preparation Doctoral Program Goals

Doctoral counselor education programs nationwide were surveyed to determine their relative emphases on the professional roles of instruction, supervision, scholarship, clinical practice, and leadership, and how they carried it out.     

The Counselor's Role in Helping Teachers With Career Education Within an HRD System

The use by counselors of a Human Resources Development (HRD) model for preparing teachers to help in career education is discussed. In-service workshops for a counselor and a small group of teachers are proposed, and a step by step procedure for implementing the model is presented.     

VALIDITY OF APPROXIMATION TECHNIQUES FOR DETECTING ITEM BIAS

The purpose of this research was to recommend an item bias procedure when the number of minority examinees is too small to use preferred three-parameter IRT methods. The chi-square, Angoff delta-plot, andpseudo-IRT indices were compared with both real and simulated data. For the real test data a criterion of known bias had been established by cross-validated IRT-3 results. The findings from the Math Test and the simulated test were consistent. The pseudo-IRT approach was best (measured by both correlations and percent agreement) in delecting criterion bias. The chi-square was close in accuracy to the pseudo-IRT index. The Angoff delta-plot method was found to be inadequate on both heuristic and empirical grounds. In extreme cases it even identified items as biased against whites that were simulated to be biased against blacks. However, a modified Angoff index, where p-value differences were regressed on item point biserials (and the residualized values used as the index), was nearly as good as the chi-square in identifying known bias. A final caution was offered regarding the use of item bias techniques. The statistical flags should never be used mechanically to discard items; rather they should be used to inspect items for possible differences in meaning.     

Meeting the Global Challenge? Comparing Recent Initiatives in School Science and Technology

A comparison is made between two schemes in England and New Zealand--the technology colleges programme and the Science and Technology Teacher Fellowship scheme--designed to promote science and technology education in the two countries. Both schemes are placed within the context of recent developments in science and technology education in England and New Zealand and are evaluated as responses to the challenges posed for science and technology education by the forces of globalisation and the growing importance of the 'knowledge economy'.     

Professional Identification of Counselor Preparation Programs

A survey of 521 counselor preparation programs nationwide revealed that most programs with master's or both master's and doctoral degrees have a counseling professional orientation as opposed to psychological or other orientation.