A test-retest analysis of the Vanderbilt Assessment for Leadership in Education in the USA

The Vanderbilt Assessment for Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) is a 360-degree learning-centered behaviors principal evaluation tool that includes ratings from the principal, supervisors, and teachers. The current study assesses the test-retest reliability of the VAL-ED for a sample of seven school districts as part of multiple validity and reliability assessments based on various samples of real users of the VAL-ED. We administered the VAL-ED twice and examined the correlations and mean differences between time 1 and time 2. We find that the principal and teacher ratings from time 1 and time 2 have large, positive, and significant correlations. Additionally, for both time points, principals are rated as being at least satisfactorily effective. Principals rate themselves slightly higher at time 2, while teachers rate principals slightly higher at time 1.     

Promotion of Pretend Play for Children with High-Functioning Autism Through the Use of Circumscribed Interests

The purpose of this paper is to describe effective methods of developing pretend play that is intrinsically motivating for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using the topic of circumscribed interests. Children with ASD often develop very specialized interests, known as Circumscribed Interests (CI). However, their limited and intense interests are often perceived by others, especially by parents, as interfering with their learning and social interactions with others. This paper reports how one parent fostered pretend play in her preschool child with autism based on his CI in “trains.” Four steps for promoting pretend play for preschool children with autism using their topic of interest are presented. These include (1) Creating a web, (2) Modeling pretend play through use of divergent materials, (3) Modeling verbal interaction in pretend play, and (4) Providing theme boxes and field trips/excursions. The author concludes that the four steps are useful for not only fostering their active involvement in pretend play, but also in helping their topic of special interest expand into a wide range of pretend play. In addition, creating webs based on CI may enable caregivers or teachers to intentionally provide meaningful experience with specific outcomes in mind for children with autism.     

The Quality of Content Analyses of State Student Achievement Tests and Content Standards

This article examines the reliability of content analyses of state student achievement tests and state content standards. We use data from two states in three grades in mathematics and English language arts and reading to explore differences by state, content area, grade level, and document type. Using a generalizability framework, we find that reliabilities for four coders are generally greater than .80. For the two problematic reliabilities, they are partly explained by an odd rater out. We conclude that the content analysis procedures, when used with at least five raters, provide reliable information to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners about the content of assessments and standards.     

Visually handicapped students in higher education: the position in eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

This article is based on findings made by members of the Student Support Service of the Royal National Institute for the Blind during study visits to Hungary, Poland and Czecho‐Slovakia in June and September 1991 and during attendance at a conference in Prague in November 1991. All these visits were funded by the EC under the Tempus scheme ‐ Trans European Mobility Programme for University Students. The present position of students who have a significant visual disability was assessed against a background of the services available to such students in Britain and Ireland. Information was sought on students’ studies, the support services available from universities, local societies for the blind and other sources. Interviews showed that a significant number of visually handicapped students were studying in higher education, aided generally by supportive friends and staff. However, a considerable lack of specialist material and equipment was revealed and, in certain cases also, a lack of awareness of special needs. There appeared to be little knowledge of the numbers of students with high partial sight, or of their particular requirements. Recommendations for change are made and discussed in relation to personal, financial, vocational and technical requirements, in the short‐, medium‐ and long‐term, bearing in mind economic constraints within the countries concerned.     

The recontextualisation of ‘quality’ in Australian higher education

In the education policy arena, the notion of ‘quality'as a mechanism for increasing accountability to stakeholders has risen to prominence in the 1990s, as part of the micro‐economic reform agenda of many national governments. This study analyses the way in which policy makers in Australian higher education have recontextualised the notions of quality adopted in other countries to reconstruct a uniquely Australian version. Further, the study analyses how this recontextualisation continues from the ministerial level, through the Higher Education Council (HEC), and then the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE), to the site of intended policy effect ‐‐ individual universities. A theoretical framework, in part offered by Stephen Ball's policy trajectory studies, is employed to examine the negotiation, resistance and even transformation of the original ministerial quality policy of 1991. A central contention is that the operation of the subsequent 3‐year cycle of quality reviews between 1993 and 1995 provides an example par excellence of a government strategy of ‘steering at a distance’.