Strength Challenge as a Process for Supervision

Strength challenge is described as a method of giving feedback that helps counselor trainees identify and use their strengths more fully.     

The Implications of the National Curriculum Orders for Art for GCSE and Beyond

This paper sets out to emphasise the importance of providing some aspects of the curriculum in which children can experience a true sense of ownership and in which the content and learning methodologies are appropriate to their own ideas, perceptions, values and needs. Taking the position that the national curriculum and GCSE are assessment-led, the types of assessment provided by them are compared in order to define the value of formative assessment within the learning process, and its potential role in avoiding the type of teaching that results in orthodoxies. The paper concludes by speculating on potential 14–18 routes into higher education involving accreditation and continuity.     

ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL AND SEQUENCE EFFECTS IN MULTIPLE-CHOICE ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

Certain testing authorities have implied that the proportion of examinees who answer an item correctly may be influenced by the difficulty of the immediately preceding item. If present, such a "sequence effect" would cause p (as an estimate of item difficulty level) to misrepresent an item's "true" level of difficulty. To investigate this hypothesis, a balanced Latin square design was used to rearrange examination items into various test forms. A unique analysis of variance procedure was used to analyze the resulting data. The alleged sequence effect was not found. Certain limitations preclude the generalization of this finding to all students or to all testing situations. However, the evidence provided by this investigation does suggest that comments relating to sequence effects should be qualified as compared with presently appearing statements.     

INTERACTION OF RACE AND TEST ON READING PERFORMANCE SCORES

This study examines the relationship between race and performance on two nationally standardized reading tests. The appropriate reading tests of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and Metropolitan Achievement Battery were administered to all fourth and sixth-grade students in all elementary schools of an urban school district near New York City. Although white pupils earned higher scores than nonwhite pupils on both tests, the Metropolitan produced significantly greater differences between the races than the Iowa, at both grade levels. Factorial analysis of variance confirmed the statistical significance of these differences. Implications of Race X Test (suggesting S.E.S. X Test) interaction effects for program evaluation and instruction are briefly discussed.     

The Role of Confidence in Lifelong Learning

The key objectives and targets of the Learning and Skills Council's (LSC, 2001) corporate plan concerned with increasing participation in education, enhancing workforce training, and raising the achievement of young people and adults are all dependent upon breaking down the barriers and obstacles that stand in the way of facilitating meaningful learning and progression. However, even after the well-documented 'situational' and 'institutional' barriers have been overcome, what McGivney (1993) calls the 'dispositional' obstacles--linked to learners' attitudes, perceptions and motivations--still need to be addressed by tutors and mentors. A crucial aspect of such dispositions in the learner's confidence and its role as an inhibitor or facilitator of learning. Although widely used--most recently in the DfES (2002) publicity about adult literacy gains--the concept of 'confidence' is, in the main, little understood and tends to be used imprecisely and rhetorically. This paper will seek--through the examination of a range of studies involving confidence and cognate concepts, in addition to original research on students learning to teach in the post-school sector--to offer some suggestions for enhancing the management and support of learning in this important sphere of work.     

Effects of Discrimination Training on Counselor Trainee Response Choice

The purpose of this study was to assess whether counselor trainees who received training in identifying and producing 10 response types as well as training that emphasized when to use the response types would be more effective in using responding skills than trainees who received only training in identifying and producing response types. Thirty-two master's level counselor trainees from a large midwestern university participated in a three-session training workshop and responded to three dependent measures developed to assess effectiveness in using response types along three dimensions: (a) identification, (b) performance, and (c) evaluation. Statistical analysis indicated significant differences between treatment groups. Treatment seemed to decrease the extent to which counselor trainees questioned the client and expressed their own opinions and values during counseling interviews and increase the extent to which trainees used action-oriented statements aimed at encouraging the client to work on problem solving. Trainees in the treatment group showed a tendency to try out complex response types and to use these more frequently and appropriately. Treatment differences were maintained over time.