Sources of stress for Greek students with intellectual disabilities attending mainstream schools

Students with intellectual disabilities often experience school‐related stress. As a result, they are confronted with many difficulties in their daily school life. The goal of this study was to assess situations of school life that students attending Greek mainstream settings are likely to experience as stressful. Twenty students with mild intellectual disabilities were interviewed about their feelings and thoughts regarding possible stressful situations in school. Qualitative analysis of the interviews' data was conducted. As a result, five main sources of school‐related stress were mentioned: school achievement and classroom participation; peer interactions; student behaviour and risk of injury; parents' expectations; and teacher acceptance. The findings suggest that children with intellectual disabilities experience school‐related stress mainly to a normal degree. Concerning the stress factors that emerged as crucial, a basic conclusion can be drawn: mainstream schools should be changed into inclusive communities where student differences are fully respected, and wherein all children, with and without disabilities, are supported according to their individual abilities, potentials and needs.     

Easier Said Than Done: Rejoinder on Sijtsma and on Green and Yang

The main points of Sijtsma and Green and Yang in Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (34, 4) are that reliability, internal consistency, and unidimensionality are distinct and that Cronbach's alpha may be problematic. Neither of these assertions are at odds with Davenport, Davison, Liou, and Love in the same issue. However, many authors in the testing community mention these terms not only together, but sometimes as if they are synonymous. Moreover, Cronbach's coefficient alpha is very popular as an index of reliability. Thus, articles discussing alpha are not only appropriate, but necessary. Our concerns are the same as formed the genesis of prior (2009) articles by these same authors, Sijtsma and Green and Yang. This rejoinder also makes comments about item parcels when tests are multidimensional and about factor analytic approaches to assessing reliability.     

Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry‐based science curricula in the context of urban reform

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform that focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of a systemic reform effort in the Detroit Public Schools, and was centered on highly specified and developed project‐based inquiry science units supported by aligned professional development and learning technologies. Two cohorts of 7th and 8th graders that participated in the project units are compared with the remainder of the district population, using results from the high‐stakes state standardized test in science. Both the initial and scaled up cohorts show increases in science content understanding and process skills over their peers, and significantly higher pass rates on the statewide test. The relative gains occur up to a year and a half after participation in the curriculum, and show little attenuation with in the second cohort when scaling occurred and the number of teachers involved increased. The effect of participation in units at different grade levels is independent and cumulative, with higher levels of participation associated with similarly higher achievement scores. Examination of results by gender reveals that the curriculum effort succeeds in reducing the gender gap in achievement experienced by urban African‐American boys. These findings demonstrate that standards‐based, inquiry science curriculum can lead to standardized achievement test gains in historically underserved urban students, when the curriculum is highly specified, developed, and aligned with professional development and administrative support. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 922–939, 2008     

The pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness revisited: A cross‐validation in Hong Kong

This article addresses the cross‐cultural generalization of the pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness (Sternberg & Zhang, 1995) as well as differential expectations regarding excellence for girls versus boys. First, we used an instrument based on the pentagonal theory with a sample of in‐service and pre‐service teachers at the University of Hong Kong. Second, we administered a questionnaire designed to assess conceptions of “excellence,” one of the attributes for giftedness described in the pentagonal model, to a different sample of in‐service and pre‐service teachers at the same university. We found a good fit of the pentagonal model to the data collected, paralleling results obtained in the U.S. We also found, however, that in Hong Kong, however, unlike in the U.S., participants had higher expectations of excellence for boys than for girls. These outcomes have implications for identification, instruction, and programming for the gifted.