Federal early childhood special education policy: a model for the improvement of services for children with disabilities.

Services in early childhood special education for children with disabilities, birth through 5 years, and their families have expanded and improved substantially in the past 25 years. The federal government, through legislation, regulation, and a variety of incentives, has played an integral role in this progress. The authors review the evolution of federal education policy in early childhood and the accomplishments achieved, including the development of the Handicapped Children's Early Education Program, the Early Childhood Research Institutes, and Public Law 99-457, the Handicapped Infant and Toddler Program (Part H). This history can serve as a model for federal involvement in the improvement of services for other groups of individuals with special needs.     

Enrollment projection models for institutional planning

This paper examines alternative techniques for projecting freshman enrollment in specific academic departments. Departmental enrollment projections provided by four different projection models are compared to actual departmental enrollments at a selected institution. Two of the models use only historical data, while the other two models are sensitized to current developments as indicated by the expressed major choices of prospective freshmen. The use of discriminant analysis to establish differential enrollment probabilities is also explored.Although different models do a better job for different curricular departments, the smallest mean squared error across all departments was obtained with the simplest projection technique. The use of the preliminary major choice of prospective freshmen did not improve departmental projections, and the student characteristics explored in this study did not differentiate enrolled from non-enrolled students adequately enough to improve enrollment projection accuracy.Based on the results obtained at this one institution, therefore, it would appear that simple and straightforward projection models can be as useful as complex and sophisticated models.This is an expanded version of an earlier paper read at the 1971 Association of Institutional Research Forum in Denver, Colorado.     

Native American Adolescent Career Development

Within the framework of Social Cognitive Career (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000), this study examined the associations among career interests, career efficacy expectations, gender, and perceived parent support among Native American and Caucasian middle school adolescents. Consistent with previous research, results indicated that Native American young people had greater interests in Realistic and Conventional occupations, and in occupations that typically require a high-school diploma, a trade school certificate, or 2 years of post high-school education. However, contrary to previous findings, they had as great a range of interests in and self-efficacy expectations for Investigative, Artistic, Social, and Enterprising occupations as Caucasian adolescents, and similarly high levels of interests, efficacy, and perceived parent support for careers typically requiring 4 or more years of post-high school education.     

Teaching seasons with hands-on models: model transformation

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using ‘hands-on’ models (HOMs) to teach the subject of seasons – a topic about which students often have misconceptions – on students’ expressed models. To this end, three different HOMs were developed. The study sample consisted of 80 seventh graders (ages 12–13). The study had a quasi-experimental design, and a model with a control group was used. The experimental group and the control group were assigned randomly. The study data were collected using an open-ended question form that was administered three times: pre-instruction, post-instruction and a long time after instruction (permanence). The collected data were analysed using the content analysis technique. Frequencies and percentages were used to analyse the changes in the students’ expressed models. The results of the analyses showed that using HOMs was an effective method for teaching the subject of seasons. It was concluded that whereas teaching with HOMs led the students to a ‘scientific’ model, the teaching method used in the control group led the students to a ‘synthesis’ model. In addition, the learning that occurred in the group taught with the HOMs was found to be more permanent than the learning that occurred in the control group. Based on these results, the use of HOMs to teach astronomy and the generalisation of these models has been recommended. Lastly, issues to consider when teaching the subject of seasons have been outlined.     

The Role of Instruction for Spelling Performance and Spelling Consciousness

This study examined the role of instruction for spelling performance and spelling consciousness in the Dutch language. Spelling consciousness is the ability to reflect on one's spelling and correct errors. A sample of 115 third-grade spellers was assigned to a strategy-instruction, strategic-monitoring, self-monitoring, or control condition representing different types of metacognitive aspects. The results showed that students in all three training conditions made more progress in both spelling performance and spelling consciousness than students in the control condition. With respect to spelling consciousness, only students in the strategy-instruction condition made significant improvement between pretest and posttest. Students made more progress in spelling performance on regular words than on loan words. Students in all four conditions became more accurate at assessing which words they could spell correctly. Students in the control condition more frequently overestimated their spelling ability.     

Chinese secondary school students’ conceptions of assessment and achievement emotions: endorsed purposes lead to positive and negative feelings

Student perceptions of the purposes of assessment have been shown to be significant predictors of self-regulated learning. Their relationship to achievement emotions is less well understood. This paper reports a survey study of Chinese middle and high school students (N = 1,393) self-reported conceptions of the purpose of assessment and their achievement emotions using inventories with previously developed Chinese versions. While pre-existing models were not replicated, exploratory techniques developed well-fitting measurement models for each inventory and a structural equation model showed that significant variance in achievement emotions was elicited by certain beliefs about assessment. Positive emotions of pride and enjoyment depended primarily on conceptions that assessment (1) contributed to student moral and skill development, (2) was accurate, and (3) was not for evaluating schools or teachers. Negative emotions of anger and shame depended primarily on conceptions that assessment was (1) for evaluating schools and teachers and (2) not for improving teaching and learning. Thus, student emotional responses to assessment in China logically depend on beliefs that assessment reliably relates to developing their own learning, skills, and moral character.     

Sustainable assessment for lifelong learning

This paper explores the alignment of assessment practices in universities and lifelong learning as a key process and outcome for expansive student development. It outlines Boud’s approach to assessment, operationalises this to analyse practices in two contrasting national contexts: the sociology departments of the Midlands University in the UK and Nam Du University in Vietnam, and reframes this framework as a guide to improving practices and better-supporting lifelong learning. The paper thus contributes to recent debates about sustainable assessment and how to change assessment to better support students for lifelong learning in different countries. The findings suggest that although more elements were found at Midlands University than Nam Du University, assessment in both cases was an imperfect realisation of this framework. Nonetheless, the paper argues that the framework can offer guidance for changes to align assessment practices with lifelong learning, but to do this it should be adapted to the education context and also expanded to include explicit social commitments to others for expansive lifelong learning.     

The elaboration theory of instruction: A model for sequencing and synthesizing instruction

This paper describes a novel instructional model for sequencing, syntheizing, and summarizing subject-matter content. The importance of such models is discussed, along with the need for a significant change in the role of subject-matter structure in instruction. A zoom-lens analogy is presented to facilitate an understanding of the elaboration model of instruction. Some basic concepts and principles upon which the model is based are described. The basic unvarying components of the elaboration model are described. And finally, some variations in the model for different kinds of goals are described. The elaboration model follows a general-to-detailed pattern of sequencing, as opposed to the hierarchically based sequences derived from Gagné-type task analyses.Many of the ideas described in this paper were developed under two projeets, one funded by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and the other by the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, California; however, the ideas expressed do not necessarily constitute the opinions of the funding institutions.     

Walsh Operational Matrices for Fractional Calculus and Their Application to Distributed Systems

The Walsh operational matrix for performing integration and solving state equations is generalized to fractional calculus for investigating distributed systems. A new set of orthogonal functions is derived from Walsh functions. By using the new functions, the generalized Walsh operational matrices corresponding to √s, √(s²+ 1), e^-s and e^-√s etc. are established. Several distributed parameter problems are solved by the new approach.