Attitudes Toward Services of State Departments of Education,

The structure of attitudes toward services rendered by state departments was studied in six southeaste states with a 70-item scale. Development procedures are described. The scale was administered to randoml chosen samples of superintendents (N = 671), central office personnel (N = 404), principals (N = 627) teacher, (N = 3, 684), and other local personnel (N = 373). Data from each group were factored and studied for dimensic ality. The two factors common to all groups consisted, respectively, of positively and negatively worded item despite the fact that the instrument was developed in a way intended to minimize response set factors. A thire factor dealt with university-state relationships.     

COUNTERMEASURES TO IMPROVE THE DRIVING PERFORMANCE OF OLDER DRIVERS

A 2‐year study of the problems of older drivers (N = 105) was conducted by a team of researchers from the disciplines of traffic engineering, gerontology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and driver education. The objective of the research was to develop and evaluate countermeasures to improve the safety of older drivers. During the first year, the problems of older drivers were examined and the following countermeasures designed: (a) physical therapy, (b) perceptual therapy, (c) driver education, and (d) traffic engineering improvements. In the second year, the effects of these countermeasures on the driving performance of older drivers were evaluated. All of the countermeasures improved the older adults’ performance. Combining driver education with physical or perceptual therapy tended to increase the improvement in driving performance, but none of the increases were statistically significant (s > .015). The countermeasures provided an average improvement in driving performance of 7.9%. Analysis indicated that traffic engineering improvements would be most cost‐effective on high‐volume roadways and the other countermeasures would be most cost‐effective on low‐volume roadways.     

Improving Academic Program Assessment: A Mixed Methods Study

Starting with the premise that better assessment leads to more informed decisions about student learning, we investigated the factors that lead to assessment improvement. We used “meta-assessment” (i.e., evaluating the assessment process) to identify academic programs in which the assessment process had improved over a two-year period. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods allowed us to understand the factors leading to assessment improvement better. Through these efforts, we discovered that a program’s assessment environment and use of resources were the predominant factors leading to improvement. One resource in particular, assessment consultation, was the most cited reason for improved assessment.     

The Consequences of Verbal Aggression in the Workplace: An Application of the Investment Model

The purpose of the current study was to improve our theoretical and practical understanding by examining the influence of a supervisor's verbal aggression on his or her employees’ job satisfaction and commitment, accounting for investment size and the quality of alternatives. And to account for reasons why organizations fail to fully realize the benefits associated with employee retention. A structural equation model was developed to emulate the investment model to determine the veracity of the model in the work setting and to answer the question as to why employees remained in communicatively hostile work environments. The findings shed light on the dynamics that take place within a work environment in which employees are targets of verbal aggression by their supervisors. The findings also indicated that the data fit the structural equation model and confirmed the applicability of the investment model in the workplace.     

Networked professional development: Issues and strategies in current practice

The Computer Based Collaborative Group Work (CBCGW) Project is an institutional Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) Project based in the Department of Educational Studies. The Project aims to support those within and beyond institutional boundaries in the exploration and uptake of collaborative work in a networked environment. This paper reviews examples of current practices in online professional development from around the world and considers some of the issues for providers of academic support. This will in turn be used to contextualize the response to these needs being developed by the Project.     

Differences in Child Care Quality for Children With and Without Disabilities

Research Findings: Federal, state, and local agencies legislate and support inclusive settings for the education of young children with disabilities. Recommended practices outline critical elements for meeting the educational and developmental needs of children with and without disabilities in inclusive settings, and minimal and essential quality characteristics have been articulated. Research has suggested that inclusive and non-inclusive settings may offer different levels of care as measured against best practices and essential quality characteristics. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine program quality in inclusive and non-inclusive preschool classrooms using observational, interview, and survey data. Results showed that inclusive classrooms earned higher scores on an observational measure of global quality and higher scores on an observational measure of language and literacy. Results also suggested that teachers with higher levels of education tend to have classrooms of higher quality. Practice or Policy: Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Residential Mobility,Inhibitory Control,and Academic Achievement in Preschool

Research Findings: The present study investigated the direct effects of residential mobility on children's inhibitory control and academic achievement during the preschool year. It also explored fall inhibitory control and academic skills as mediators linking residential mobility and spring achievement. Participants included 359 preschool children (49% female) studied in the fall and spring of the preschool year (73% were enrolled in Head Start). Residential mobility was significantly and negatively associated with fall inhibitory control and fall math and literacy. Significant indirect effects of mobility were found for spring math and literacy through inhibitory control and fall achievement. Specifically, the negative relation between mobility and spring math and literacy was partially explained by lower scores on fall inhibitory control and academic skills. Practice or Policy: The current study contributes to the existing literature by specifying pathways linking frequent moves and achievement for young children. Policy implications are discussed.     

Toward Stewardship of Democratic Ideals: Using students' perspectives to improve school‐university collaboration and model democratic practice

A healthy democracy values and depends on diverse perspectives to maintain flexibility and to make ongoing improvements that better serve its various groups. Our analysis of qualitative data from interviews conducted with students in two professional development school settings (school-university partnerships) showed that students were not regularly asked to provide their views of schooling or of school renewal efforts. The analysis further showed that students in this study, both young children and maturing adolescents alike, held personal knowledge that could contribute to adults' understandings of their work. The article is organized into five sections. First, we describe the innovation that provided the impetus for the study. Second, we describe the study's design. The third and fourth parts—students' perspectives on their schools and on the changes they were experiencing—represent the heart of the article. We conclude by placing the students' perspectives in the larger context of schooling for democracy—the theoretical framework for the study.     

Instructional Sensitivity of a State's Standards-Based Assessment

Abstract

The accuracy of achievement test score inferences largely depends on the sensitivity of scores to instruction focused on tested objectives. Sensitivity requirements are particularly challenging for standards-based assessments because a variety of plausible instructional differences across classrooms must be detected. For this study, we developed a new method for capturing the alignment between how teachers bring standards to life in their classrooms and how the standards are defined on a test. Teachers were asked to report the degree to which they emphasized the state's academic standards, and to describe how they taught certain objectives from the standards. Two curriculum experts judged the alignment between how teachers brought the objectives to life in their classrooms and how the objectives were operationalized on the state test. Emphasis alone did not account for achievement differences among classrooms. The best predictors of classroom achievement were the match between how the standards were taught and tested, and the interaction between emphasis and match, indicating that test scores were sensitive to instruction of the standards, but in a narrow sense.