Looking Beyond the Overall Scores of NAEP Assessments: Applications of Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling for Exploring Value-Added Item Difficulty Effects

The central idea of differential item functioning (DIF) is to examine differences between two groups at the item level while controlling for overall proficiency. This approach is useful for examining hypotheses at a finer-grain level than are permitted by a total test score. The methodology proposed in this paper is also aimed at estimating differences at the item rather than the overall score level, yet with the innovation where item-level differences for many groups simultaneously are the focus. This is a straightforward generalization of DIF as variance rather than one or several group differences; conceptually, this can be referred to as item difficulty variation (IDV). When instruction is of interest, and "groups" is a unit at which instruction is determined or delivered, then IDV signals value-added effects that can be influenced by either demographic or instructional variables.     

Validating test score meaning and defending test score use: different aims,different methods

Advances in validity theory and alacrity in validation practice have suffered because the term validity has been used to refer to two incompatible concerns: (1) the degree of support for specified interpretations of test scores (i.e. intended score meaning) and (2) the degree of support for specified applications (i.e. intended test uses). This article provides a brief summary of current validity theory, explication of a critical flaw in the current conceptualisation of validity, and a framework that both accommodates and differentiates validation of test score inferences and justification of test use.     

Patterns of Change in Early Childhood Aggressive-Disruptive Behavior: Gender Differences in Predictions from Early Coercive and Affectionate Mother-Child Interactions

The present study focused on mother-child interaction predictors of initial levels and change in child aggressive and disruptive behavior at school from kindergarten to third grade. Aggression-disruption was measured via annual reports from teachers and peers. Ordinary least-squares regression was used to identify 8 separate child aggression trajectories, 4 for each gender: high initial levels with increases in aggression, high initial levels with decreases in aggression, low initial levels with increases in aggression, and low initial levels with decreases in aggression. Mother-child interaction measures of coercion and nonaffection collected prior to kindergarten were predictive of initial levels of aggression-disruption in kindergarten in both boys and girls. However, boys and girls differed in how coercion and nonaffection predicted change in aggression-disruption across elementary school years. For boys, high coercion and nonaffection were particularly associated with the high-increasing-aggression trajectory, but for girls, high levels of coercion and nonaffection were associated with the high-decreasing-aggression trajectory. This difference is discussed in the context of Patterson et al.'s coercion training theory, and the need for gender-specific theories of aggressive development is noted.     

Multi-user Motion JPEG2000 over wireless LAN: run-time performance-energy optimization with application-aware cross-layer scheduling

This paper introduces a video application-aware cross-layer framework for joint performance-energy optimization, considering the scenario of multiple users upstreaming real-time Motion JPEG2000 video streams to the access point of a WiFi wireless local area network and extends the PHY-MAC run-time cross-layer scheduling strategy that we introduced in (Mang-haram et al., 2005; Pollin el al., 2005) to also consider congested network situations where video packets have to be dropped. We show that an optimal solution at PHY-MAC level can be highly suboptimal at application level, and then show that making the cross-layer framework application-aware through a prioritized dropping policy capitalizing on the inherent scalability of Motion JPEG2000 video streams leads to drastic average video quality improvements and inter-user quality variation reductions of as much as 10 dB PSNR, without affecting the overall energy consumption requirements.     

Using an Existential Psychotherapy Framework to Assist Students in Mindful Internet Use

The use of the mobile Internet continues to play an increasing role in all of our lives and particularly in the lives of college and university students. Questions have been raised about the impact of the Internet on adolescents’ and college students’ fulfillment of traditional developmental tasks and more broadly their mental health. The present article posits potentially negative values associated with Internet use and shows how existential psychotherapy promotes corrective values that can help students navigate their Internet use. The existential psychotherapy framework brings mindfulness and conscious choice into students’ decision-making process. This approach intentionally focuses on universal aspects of being human such as dealing with death, making decisions, confronting isolation, and creating meaning. The article will conclude with a case vignette on applying an existential psychotherapy framework to working with a college student.     

Child abuse in nineteenth century Queensland

Various forms of the social and medical dilemma now referred to as child abuse occurred in 19th century Queensland. Incidents ranging from parental carelessness and neglect to deliberate injury and murder were reported in the lay and medical press. This paper investigates abuse of infants in Queensland in the latter half of the 19th century in the context of socioeconomic conditions, family stress, concepts of morality and prevailing social mores. Identifiable incidents include infanticide, injury, deliberate neglect, neglect due to ignorance and poverty, and accidents or poisonings where abuse appears to have been a factor. Child abuse stimulated the medical profession, religious bodies, groups of concerned citizens, and eventually the state to intervene to protect and care for endangered children. These initiatives and the social and moral attitudes they reflected are also examined. Legal definitions and records of court proceedings are evaluated as well so that changes in official as well as social attitudes can be better understood.     

Conceptualisation,Development and Validation of an Instrument for Investigating the Metacognitive Orientation of Science Classroom Learning Environments: The Metacognitive Orientation Learning Environment Scale – Science (MOLES-S)

Metacognition refers to an individual's knowledge, control and awareness of his/her learning processes. An important goal of education is to develop students as metacognitive, life-long learners. However, developing students' metacognition and evaluating whether classrooms are oriented to the development of students' metacognition are difficult and often time-consuming tasks. Further, no instruments that measure key dimensions related to classroom factors that specifically influence the development of students' metacognition have been available. This article describes the conceptualisation, design, and validation of an instrument for evaluating the metacognitive orientation of science classroom learning environments. The metacognitive orientation of a learning environment is the extent to which that environment supports the development and enhancement of students' metacognition. Social constructivism was the guiding referent informing the instrument's orientation and development. This instrument measures students' perceptions of the extent to which certain psychosocial dimensions, evident in learning environments where interventions have resulted in enhanced student metacognition, are evident in their science classrooms. Findings from the use of this instrument complement what is already known from research studies to be generally the case in relation to science classrooms' metacognitive orientation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Accountability and control in American schools*

Abstract

One of the most controversial and significant of contemporary education reforms has been the teacher accountability movement. From this perspective, low-quality teachers and teaching are a major factor behind inadequate school performance, and a lack of accountability and control in schools is a major factor behind the problem of low-quality teachers and teaching. In turn, to advocates of this reform movement, the solution is to centralize control of schools and hold teachers more accountable. Utilizing a sociology of organizations, occupations and work perspective, the objective of this article was to offer a critique of the teacher accountability perspective and movement. This article draws from, and summarizes, the results of a series of empirical research projects on the levels, distribution and effects of accountability and control in American schools. The argument of the article is that the teacher accountability perspective overlooks some of the most important sources and forms of organizational accountability and control that exist in schools and overlooks the ways schools themselves, and in particular the ways they are managed and organized, contribute to the teacher quality problem. As a result, teacher accountability reforms often do not succeed and can have a negative impact on teacher quality and school performance.     

Student conceptions of international experience in the study abroad context

While much of recent study abroad research has focused on identifying and measuring different learning outcomes in terms of specific skills, competencies, perspectives and attributes acquired during study abroad opportunities, less research has considered how students’ deeper conceptions and understandings of international experience may change and develop during such educational encounters. This paper presents a phenomenographical research study that explored how students conceive of and make meaning out of their international education experience in a study abroad context. The data are based on detailed semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 28 undergraduate students at an American university who engaged in a variety of different study abroad opportunities. Guided by Variation Theory of Learning, the analysis of the data resulted in a typology of student conceptions of international experience (SCIE) that identified four distinct categories of conceptions of international experience (observing, interacting, participating and embracing) described across three constitutive features (being in the other culture, relating to the other culture and learning in the other culture). Hierarchically related through nine critical aspects of variation, the typology provides a unique and useful framework against which to map the “messiness” of students’ complex, often complicated understandings of their experience. It offers study abroad programmers opportunities to better understand and design student learning experiences and assessment instruments that go beyond competencies, skills and other learning outcomes.     

Ex Corde Ecclesiae and American Catholic Higher Education: The Calm Before the Storm or Dead in the Water?

Amid the struggle that Catholic colleges and universities, especially those in the United States, face as they seek to preserve their religious identities, Rome formally entered the fray on August 15, 1990, when Pope John Paul II promulgated the Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Ex Corde) (literally, “from the heart of the Church”). John Paul II wrote Ex Corde in an attempt to reinvigorate the debate over how Catholic colleges and universities can remain true to their religious missions while being viable institutions of higher learning wherein faculty members are free to work as researchers and teachers who can meet the same objective performance evaluation criteria as their professional colleagues in the world of academics. In reviewing the status of Ex Corde over the more than 5 years that expired since the controversy over the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines designed to implement Ex Corde began, this article is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the basic elements of Ex Corde while the second examines both the events surrounding the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines along with their subsequent (non)implementation in the United States. The third part of the article reflects on the current status of Ex Corde in American Catholic colleges and universities, revealing that its critics have little to fear for academic freedom and/or job safety unless its terms are expressly included in employment contracts—a prospect that is not even remotely on the horizon.