Responsiveness to General Education Instruction as the First Gate to Learning Disabilities Identification

Most definitions of learning disabilities (LD) include a qualification that adequate general education instruction was received and the child with LD did not benefit. Rarely is this tenet assessed in either practice or research before a diagnosis is made. We review three studies that investigated children's responsiveness to general education reading instruction as an indicator of need for more intensive interventions. Adequacy of instruction was quantified by children's level and rate of progress, compared to classmates, as measured by curriculum‐based measures of oral reading fluency. We found that the response‐to‐instruction model tested was valid in that (1) children who differ from their peers on level and slope of performance (dual discrepancy) have more severe academic and behavioral problems than children who have IQ‐achievement discrepancies or low achievement; (2) children who demonstrate persistent nonresponsiveness over three years differ from other at‐risk children on reading, reading‐related, and behavioral measures; and (3) at‐risk children who participated in specially designed general education interventions had better outcomes than at‐risk children who did not participate. We conducted additional analyses to assess low achievement definitional variations and found that they lack sensitivity and coverage compared to a dual discrepancy definition.     

Shame, guilt, symptoms of depression, and reported history of psychological maltreatment

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the present study was to provide preliminary data extending earlier research on shame and guilt, examining their relationships both to symptoms of depression and to psychological maltreatment. Symptoms of depression were expected to correlate positively with shame, but not with guilt. Psychological maltreatment was also expected to correlate positively with shame. The relationship between psychological maltreatment and guilt was examined on an exploratory basis. METHOD: Two hundred and eighty participants from a public community college and a private university completed scales assessing shame, guilt, depression, and history of childhood psychological maltreatment. Pearson correlations were conducted with all data. RESULTS: Results indicated that symptoms of depression were positively correlated with both shame and guilt. Partial correlations were then conducted in which the linear effects of shame were removed from guilt. In this latter analysis, guilt was no longer positively correlated with symptoms of depression. Psychological maltreatment was also positively correlated with depression and with shame, but not with guilt. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the significance of psychological maltreatment in the relationship to the self-conscious emotions of guilt and shame. As in earlier studies, shame has been consistently correlated to poor psychological functioning, while guilt appears to be relatively unrelated to pathological functioning.     

IDENTIFICATION OF READING PROBLEMS IN FIRST GRADE WITHIN A RESPONSE-TO-INTERVENTION FRAMEWORK

Models of Response to Intervention (RTI) include parameters of assessment and instruction. This study focuses on assessment with the purpose of developing a screening battery that validly and efficiently identifies first-grade children at risk for reading problems. In an RTI model, these children would be candidates for early intervention. We examined accuracy, fluency, growth, and teacher rating measures as predictors of child status (at risk, not at risk) at the end of the school year based on an unselected sample of 243 children. The prediction model that best fit our selection criteria included 2-word fluency measures and a teacher rating of reading problems. Word-fluency growth was an equally plausible choice statistically, but, because the measure would require an additional data point, it was not the most efficient choice. The receiver-operator characteristic curve analysis yielded an area-under-the-curve index of .96, which indicates the selected 3-variable model is highly accurate.     

HPE in Aotearoa New Zealand: the reconfiguration of policy and pedagogic relations and privatisation of curriculum and pedagogy

This paper centres on research that investigated the contemporary policy, curriculum and pedagogical landscape of Health and Physical Education (HPE) in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the light of increasing impressions that provision was moving to an ‘open market’ situation. Publicly available information sourced via the Internet was used to examine the public and privately funded initiatives, programmes and resources targeted towards the provision of HPE across all phases of education. The data arising revealed an array of government and non-governmental agencies and organisations acting as producers of resources and deliverers of HPE-related programmes in schools. It also clearly pointed to structural convergence between government and non-government sectors. This paper locates the findings from the research amidst developments in policy relations and networks spanning education, health and sport, and presents a theoretically oriented critical re-examination of the structural reconfiguration of contemporary HPE in Aotearoa New Zealand. Analysis brings together insights from Ball and Junemann's work on policy networks and Bernstein's theorising of the social construction of discourse to explore linkages between policy and pedagogic relations, and the discourses and practices in HPE. Attention is directed to the significance of changes in the nature of both the Official Recontextualizing Field and Pedagogic Recontextualizing field, and the connections between the two fields. Changes in the recontextualizing fields are discussed in relation to official pedagogic discourse of HPE and the pedagogic discourse of reproduction. This analysis brings to the fore prospective curriculum and pedagogic implications of new policy networks and new networks of providers associated with provision of HPE in schools. Discussion acknowledges potentially varied readings of contemporary developments and addresses the opportunities and challenges for teachers and teacher educators in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.     

Different Minds and Common Problems: Geert Hofstede's Research on National Cultures1

This article discusses Geert Hofstede's work on national cultural differences. It explains how Hofstede's model of the dimensions of national culture might be of use to performance improvement professionals as they try to solve familiar, and perhaps not so familiar, problems in international settings. Hofstede's work, first published in 1980, argues that many management theories, such as those of Herzberr, Mausner, and Snyderman (1959), Maslow (1970), and McGregor (1960), are not valid worldwide be cause the authors are subject to cultural bias that is manifested in their own cultural makeup. Hofstede's research has shown that national cultures tend vary on four dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, power distance, and individualism. Understanding national cultural differences is important to organizations to expand beyond their own national boundaries and to attempt to win the loyalty and business of customers around the globe.     

Convergent validity of the BASC and SSRS: Implications for social skills assessment

The present study examined the psychometric relationship between two new rating scales, the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992) and the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990), for a sample (N = 53) of minority kindergarten children using both parent and teacher ratings. The similarities and differences between these instruments were investigated through correlational and content analyses. In general, the results provide preliminary convergent validity evidence for the BASC and SSRS. In regard to the Social Skills subscale of the BASC, convergent validity evidence was demonstrated for the parent form of this instrument, but not the teacher form, when the SSRS Social Skills scale was used as the criterion. In addition, the correlations between the various scales of the BASC and SSRS were in the expected direction. That is, the correlation between the BASC Adaptive Skills Composite and the SSRS Social Skills scale was moderate in the teacher group (r = .44) and high in the parent group (r = .54). Similarly, correlations between the BASC Hyperactivity, Aggression, and Externalizing scales and the SSRS Problem Behaviors scale ranged from .50 to .60 and .50 to .56 in the teacher and parent groups, respectively. Implications regarding the practical utility of the BASC and SSRS for assessing social skills functioning, in particular, were presented. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Out-of-print, out of mind? A case study of the decision to outsource out-of-print acquisitions

This study addresses the question: Can the specialized process of acquiring out-of-print books be outsourced successfully to private vendors? The study reports the results of a case study of the decision to outsource out-of-print acquisitions at LaGuardia Community College in the City University of New York. Data were collected and analyzed regarding acquisitions costs, fulfillment rate, condition of books received, and overall success of the venture. The study concludes that the benefits of outsourcing outweigh the additional expense of vendor handling charges and suggests that libraries can successfully outsource routine tasks while maintaining control over important acquisitions decisions.