An Experimental Study of the Internal Consistency of Judgments Made in Bookmark Standard Setting

Validating performance standards is challenging and complex. Because of the difficulties associated with collecting evidence related to external criteria, validity arguments rely heavily on evidence related to internal criteria—especially evidence that expert judgments are internally consistent. Given its importance, it is somewhat surprising that evidence of this kind has rarely been published in the context of the widely used bookmark standard‐setting procedure. In this article we examined the effect of ordered item booklet difficulty on content experts’ bookmark judgments. If panelists make internally consistent judgments, their resultant cut scores should be unaffected by the difficulty of their respective booklets. This internal consistency was not observed: the results suggest that substantial systematic differences in the resultant cut scores can arise when the difficulty of the ordered item booklets varies. These findings raise questions about the ability of content experts to make the judgments required by the bookmark procedure.     

Use and Evaluation of Web-based Professional Development Services Across Participant Levels of Support

When participating in a large-scale, web-based professional development program, to what degree do teachers participate? How useful do they find the program? To what degree do they feel supported in their efforts? What are the associations between participation, evaluation of services, and the level of service teachers receive? MyTeachingPartner provides several levels of support to teachers, and each participant’s involvement in the project varies in terms of assigned level, frequency of logging in to the site, and the time she spends on it. This paper compared key data sources, including web navigation logs and teacher survey responses, to describe the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of support, their specific project interactions, and the level of service they receive. We explored ways that a large-scale professional development project such as MTP can benefit from identifying and nurturing those elements that best foster teacher perceptions of support.     

Fathers' and mothers' involvements in sibling communication

The purpose of this study was to measure fathers' and mothers' linguistic involvements with the development of communication between young siblings. In a laboratory setting, 39 two-child mother-father families were videotaped in semistructured activities. The older sibling was from 18 to 26-months-old (M=22.4 months, SD=2.5 months) and the younger sibling was from 4 to 8-weeks-old (M=5 weeks, SD =1.5 weeks). Regardless of type of vocalization, when only one parent was present, utterances encouraging sibling interactions were more often aimed at girls than at boys. As a result, such utterances occurred more when both siblings were girls than for any other gender combination. Fathers were more active in issuing such utterances, especially to girls. When both parents were present, gender differences between parents disappeared, although the effects of children's gender did not. Overall, the results suggest that fathers very actively direct sibling interactions, especially those involving girls.     

Memory for duration in pigeons: Dissociation of choose-short and temporal-summation effects

Five groups of pigeons were trained in a symbolic choice-matching feast involving short (2-sec) and long (10-sec) durations of houselight as samples. Four groups also received training with a second set of samples: line orientations or 2- and 10-sec presentations of keylight. The type of sample-to-comparison mapping varied across groups. Although only two of the five groups demonstrated a choose-short effect (a tendency to choose the comparison associated with a short sample at longer delays), all groups demonstrated temporal summation (a tendency to respond on the basis of the combined duration of two successively presented samples). Moreover, the magnitude of temporal summation was equivalent in groups that did and did not-demonstrate a choose-short effect. The results suggest that the processes underlying the perception of sample duration remain invariant across different sample-to-comparison mapping arrangements, but that the memory code used to retain temporal information varies.     

Children's word structure knowledge: Implications for decoding and spelling instruction

Research has shown that not all children internalize the structure of English orthography as they learn to decode and spell. In fact, many children have difficulty mastering these two skills. In this paper, the relevance of word structure knowledge to decoding and spelling instruction and performance is discussed. It was anticipated that explicit, discussion oriented, and direct decoding instruction based on word origin and structure would result in improved reading and spelling performance. During the instruction, students compared and contrasted letter-sound correspondences, syllable patterns, and morpheme patterns in English words of Anglo-Saxon, Romance, and Greek origin. Upper elementary grade students receiving the decoding instruction made significant gains in word structure knowledge and in decoding and spelling achievement.     

Examining a motivational treatment and its impact on adolescents' reading comprehension and fluency

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to improve motivation indicated an increased focus on mastery goals and greater perceived control during a reading posttest. No differences were found with regard to four other aspects of motivation. Students in the treatment condition, including struggling readers more specifically, did not score better on the posttest measures of reading comprehension or fluency. Hence, results failed to replicate Zentall and Lee's (2012 Zentall, S. S., &; Lee, J. (2012). A reading motivation intervention with differential outcomes for students at risk for reading disabilities, ADHD, and typical comparisons: ‘Clever is and clever does’. Learning Disability Quarterly, 35, 248–259. doi:10.1177/0731948712438556[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) findings with younger readers. Findings are discussed with regard to the theoretical and practical implications for understanding reading motivation.     

Spelling errors of normal and disabled students on achievement levels one through four: Instructional implications

The errors of 72 disabled and 90 normal spellers were compared on the first through fourth levels of achievement using a featural system based on developmental spelling research. The mean age of the disabled subjects was two to three years higher on all levels (the differences were significant) but, of 24 error features on the four levels, F-tests showed that the groups differed only on Front Vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/), particularly the combination of in as in chin, with the normal group making more errors. Discriminant function analysis showed that the error features which significantly discriminated between the two groups at Level 1 were Consonant Digraphs, Affricates, and Front Vowels. On Level 2, the dominant variables contributing to the significant discriminant function were Front Vowels, consonant doubling and “e-drop” errors, and suffix errors. The normal group made more errors on all but the last. There were no significant differences on Levels 3 and 4. Discriminant analysis among the four levels for the normal group showed that the incidence of lower-level spelling features declined steadily as spelling achievement level increased. A similar trend but less significant variability was found among the disabled group levels. These results suggest that the strict phonetics-based instruction used with the disabled group contributes to their relative proficiency on the lower level spelling features but that the meaning, orthographic, and derivational conventions of more advanced spelling should be emphasized when designing instruction at achievement Level 2 and above.     

Early Histories of School‐Aged Children With Attention‐Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder

In a prospective study of developmental outcomes in relation to early‐life otitis media, behavioral, cognitive, and language measures were administered to a large, diverse sample of children at 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9–11 years of age (N = 741). At 9–11 years of age, 9% of the children were categorized as having attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based on parent report. Compared to the non‐ADHD group, the ADHD group had higher (i.e., less favorable) scores on parent and teacher versions of the Child Behavior Checklist at all ages. Children in the ADHD group also had lower scores on cognitive and receptive language measures in preschool. The findings support the concept that ADHD is a cognitive as well as a behavioral disorder.