Latino expectations of communicative competence: A focus group interview study

Drawing on Martin, Hammer, and Bradford's (1994) work on intercultural communicative competence, this investigation explored Latino expectations of communicative competence using focus group interviews. Like the Martin et al. (1994) study, communicative competence was examined in four contexts — intracultural‐social, intracultural‐task, intercultural‐social, and intercultural‐task. Results indicated overall support for seven of Martin et al.’s (1994) eight behavioral categories. Data from focus group interviews in this study suggested an additional competence category specific to task contexts as well as some emic behaviors not identified in the Martin et al. (1994) investigation.     

The hypothetical: a new training resource for adult educators

The “hypothetical”, a panel game developed and popularised by Geoffrey Robertson on Granada Television in the U.K. and on Channel 9 (initially) and ABC Television (finally) in Australia, has proved to be readily adaptable into a technique for the training of adult educators.

In the television version, participants play themselves in an imaginary scenario invoked by a compere whose role is to provoke them into making decisions about key social dilemmas of contemporary public concern, such as drug trafficking, marriage breakdown, AIDS, police corruption.

In the training adaptation described here, the dilemmas are constructed around issues of concern in daily professional practice. The primary goal changes to the professional development of participants and (if present) of an audience who are also professionals, rather than the goal of mass entertainment or general audience edification as in the television version.

This paper describes the adaptation of this popular 1980's television production into a training tool of considerable power, and gives an account of how it has been developed and used in one institution. It argues that, whereas the hypothetical is clearly a close relative of a number of familiar experiential training techniques, it makes its own unique contribution to the catalogue of training strategies available.     

How do we know research and development projects in vocational education and training are cost‐effective?

This article reviews a recent U.K. study which sought to identify the steps that have to be taken to improve the efficacy of research and development (R&D) projects in Vocational Education and Training (VET). The review is facilitated by making reference to the approach and findings of a parallel study in Switzerland.

The review seeks to highlight the importance of more rigorously establishing what really happens to the results of R&D projects after they are completed. In particular, it seeks to identify what is necessary to ensure that each R&D project has a positive impact on practice. It does this in order to ensure that the now substantial investment in R&D for VET is cost effective. On the basis of the review the article proposes an agenda for an effective and coordinated approach to action and research in the area.     

An Approach for Evaluating the Technical Quality of Interim Assessments

Increasing numbers of schools and districts have expressed interest in interim assessment systems to prepare for summative assessments and to improve teaching and learning. However, with so many commercial interim assessments available, schools and districts are struggling to determine which interim assessment is most appropriate to their needs. Unfortunately, there is little research-based guidance to help schools and districts to make the right choice about how to spend their money. Because we realize the urgency of developing criteria that can describe or evaluate the quality of interim assessments, this article presents the results of an initial attempt to create an instrument that school and district educators could use to evaluate the quality and usefulness of the interim assessment. The instrument is designed for use by state and district leaders to help them select an appropriate interim assessment system for their needs, but it could also be used by test vendors looking to evaluate and improve their own systems and by researchers engaged in studies of interim assessment use.     

The Centralizing Role of Terminology: A Consideration of Achievement Gap,NCLB, and School Turnaround

American educational policies over the last 40 years have represented an uninterrupted movement toward centralization. This article analyzes three terms that have become critical to the centralization of American education. More specifically, this article reviews the development, language, and source of the thematic terms and associated language of achievement gap, NCLB, and school turnaround. The author contends that the level of each term's entrenchment in American education varies but that their impacts have all grown from a top-down initiative, and although the terms represent separate concepts, they have been linked in meaningful ways to drive centralization.     

Determinants of organisational climate for academia

Being aware of the factors that develop a positive organisational climate is especially important in universities, where the academic members of staff are, in large measure, self-motivated. To identify the determinants of organisational climate for university academia, the validity and reliability of the first-order constructs of autonomy, cohesion and pressure were examined. These three constructs were found to have inadequate validity in this environment. The remaining five valid constructs indicated a second-order organisational climate construct organisational climate was influenced by support, followed by trust and fairness, and then by recognition and innovation. The findings of our study will assist university managers to identify areas to focus upon when developing their academic staff in the pursuit of improving the organisational climate.     

Using Appleworks in the Geography Class:

This study investigated whether using multimedia-based instructional material in a problem-based social studies simulation enhances student learning about world issues, increases interest in social studies, and generates positive attitudes toward the instruction. The GlobalEd Project, a Web-based international negotiation simulation embedded in the middle school social studies curriculum, was used in this investigation. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with a multimedia group (MG) and a text group (TG). A total of 190 students participated in the study. Results indicated that students in the MG had marginally larger gains in knowledge and interest than their counterparts in the TG. In addition, students in the MG used the Web site more extensively than students in the TG. Directions for future research and multimedia developers are discussed.     

Weighing the difference: the validity of multiplicative and subtractive approaches to item weights in an instrument assessing college choice decisions

The Admitted Student Questionnaire Plus (ASQ⁺) is a standardised measure that provides an analysis of the student's college selection process. Among other things, the instrument inquires about the importance of 16 college characteristics, followed by quality ratings of specific colleges that the student considered on these same characteristics. This study investigated the utility of importance weights in the assessment of college choice, examining how much the importance rating would improve one's ability to predict the student's actual college choice over and above what is possible with just the quality ratings. Another purpose of the study was to determine if importance ratings and quality ratings were independent of each other or associated in some way. Two types of weights were studied: (1) standardised weights created by averaging the importance ratings of the entire sample; and (2) subjective weights unique to each respondent. The weights were combined with quality ratings by either: (1) multiplying the quality rating by the importance rating; or by (2) subtracting the quality rating from the importance rating (gap score). Standardised weights did not improve prediction at all, and subjective weights only improved the predictability of college choice by a very miniscule amount (about 1%). Importance and quality ratings were found to be associated, especially in the ratings of the college that the student decided to attend. Some correlations were linear in nature, but many were non-linear, such that characteristics rated high or low were perceived as more important than characteristics assigned mid-range quality ratings. It was concluded that importance weights do not enhance prediction of college choice, but they may be useful for administrators in prioritising interventions.     

Item Position and Item Difficulty Change in an IRT-Based Common Item Equating Design

In operational testing programs using item response theory (IRT), item parameter invariance is threatened when an item appears in a different location on the live test than it did when it was field tested. This study utilizes data from a large state's assessments to model change in Rasch item difficulty (RID) as a function of item position change, test level, test content, and item format. As a follow-up to the real data analysis, a simulation study was performed to assess the effect of item position change on equating. Results from this study indicate that item position change significantly affects change in RID. In addition, although the test construction procedures used in the investigated state seem to somewhat mitigate the impact of item position change, equating results might be impacted in testing programs where other test construction practices or equating methods are utilized.