A COMPARISON OF THREE METHODS FOR ESTABLISHING MINIMUM STANDARDS ON THE NATIONAL TEACHER EXAMINATIONS

Minimum standards were established for the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) area examinations in mathematics and in elementary education by independent panels of teacher educators who had been instructed in the use of either the Angoff, Nedelsky, or Jaeger procedures. Of these three procedures, only the Jaeger method requires that normative data be provided to the judges when evaluating the items. However, it was of interest to study the effect such information would have upon the standards obtained using the other two methods. Therefore, the design incorporated three sequential review sessions with the level of normative information different for each. A three-factor ANOVA revealed significant main effects for methods and sessions but not for subject area. None of the interactions was significant. The anticipated failure rates, the psychometric characteristics of the ratings, and other factors suggest that the Angoff procedure, as modified during the second session of this study, yields the most defensible standards for the NTE area examinations.     

GSR Feedback as an Aid in Developing Counselor Empathy

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) feedback as an aid in developing empathy in novice counselors. Counseling psychology graduate students were matched and randomly assigned to either an experimental group that received a display of client skin conductance level during counseling sessions or a control group that did not receive physiological feedback. The communicative aspect of empathy was measured by the Counselor Verbal Response Scale (CVRS), and the perceptual aspect was measured by the Affective Sensitivity Scale (ASS). An analysis of gain scores suggested that training with biofeedback is associated with more affective responding by the counselor. This procedure did not facilitate counselor communication of understanding of the clients' specific concerns, nor was a pervasive increase in perceptual sensitivity observed. Qualitative evidence gathered from a postexperimental inquiry augmented the statistical findings.