Responsibilities,preparedness, and job satisfaction of paraprofessionals: working with young children with disabilities

To support teachers with their classroom responsibilities, schools have increasingly turned to paraprofessionals for assistance, with the largest numbers of paraprofessionals employed in the field of special education. Owing to this important role that paraprofessionals now perform in the education of children with disabilities in the USA, we set out to investigate the responsibilities that paraprofessionals working with young children with disabilities had. We were also interested in identifying how paraprofessionals and the teachers with whom they work alongside perceived the paraprofessionals' level of preparedness for their roles and their job satisfaction. Fifty‐two paraprofessionals and 59 teachers of young children with disabilities participated in the study. Overall, both paraprofessionals and teachers indicated that paraprofessionals were generally well prepared for activities they frequently engaged in and both viewed themselves as collaborative members of an educational team.     

Adaptive and effortful control and academic self-efficacy beliefs on achievement: A longitudinal study of 1st through 3rd graders

The linkages between self-regulatory processes and achievement were examined across 3 years in 733 children beginning at 1st grade (M = 6.57 years, S.D. = .39 at 1st grade) who were identified as lower achieving in literacy. Accounting for consistencies in measures (from 1 year prior) and for influences of child's age, gender, IQ, ethnicity and economic adversity on achievement, results indicate that adaptive/effortful control at 1st grade contributed to both academic self-efficacy beliefs at 2nd grade, and reading (but not math) achievement at 3rd grade. Although academic self-efficacy did not partially mediate the linkage between adaptive/effortful control and achievement, academic self-efficacy beliefs were positively correlated with reading and math. Results support the notion that early efforts to promote children's self-regulatory skills would enhance future academic self-beliefs and achievement, particularly in literacy.     

A word identification strategy for adolescents with learning disabilities

Students with learning disabilities frequently experience difficulty on reading tasks. This difficulty is heightened for adolescents with learning disabilities who are responsible for reading and understanding materials written at several grade levels above their reading ability. Word identification becomes an increasingly important skill for these students, especially when confronted with unfamiliar, polysyllabic words. The present study investigated the effects of training 12 adolescents with learning disabilities in a word identification strategy, DISSECT. The results indicated that the strategy was effective in reducing reading errors for all subjects. However, it was found that increases in word identification differentially affected reading comprehension and indicate the need for separate and/or simultaneous attention to comprehension processes.     

Sharing results of federal R&D: A look at the department of energy's system for managing scientific and technical information

The Department of Energy's (DOE) scientific and technical information system, operational since the mid-1940s, is described as an example of the manner by which a large Federal R&D agency organizes, manages, and disseminates the information produced by its laboratories and contractor organizations. The role of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) within the DOE R&D cycle and its place in the DOE information infrastructure are outlined. OSTI's activities, products, and services are described under the following headings: management and dissemination of DOE research results; access to worldwide information on energy R&D; information management and accountability systems; and information consulting and specialized services.     

Rural Libraries Services for Older Adults: A Nationwide Survey

The author examined the survey results from 721 rural libraries throughout the United States and Canada to learn more about how they are serving older adults (defined here as anyone 65 years and older). The following areas of library service in particular were studied: funding sources, collections, strategic planning, staffing, technology use, partnerships, outreach efforts, and building design and accessibility. Results of this study were compared to those found in recent studies of services provided to older adults in suburban and capital city public libraries.     

THE INFLUENCE OF A DESIRABILITY HALO EFFECT ON RATINGS OF INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

A rationale is provided for hypothesizing that a counterpart of the social desirability variable influences environmental ratings based on student perceptions, and a test is made of the hypothesis. The High School Characteristics Index was administered to 2819 high school seniors from 11 high schools. Social desirability scale values for the 300 items and 30 scale scores of the HSCI were obtained from 85 students in Education, and these values were correlated with the endorsement percentages and average scale scores for the students in each of the 11 high schools. Results indicated an appreciable "desirability halo" effect for some student bodies, with wide differences among student bodies with respect to the strength and direction of that effect. The results are interpreted as a serious challenge to the validity and discriminative capability of environmental assessment techniques based on student perceptions.