Measures used in assessing outcomes of school‐wide positive behaviour support

School‐Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is increasingly becoming a popular approach to managing challenging behaviour in schools. However, several issues still have to be addressed facilitate successful implementation of this approach in schools. One of these issues pertains to the appropriateness of the different measures used to determine the efficacy of the approach. Because many schools are using indirect measures to assess the effects of SWPBS implementation, determining which measures more accurately reflect the effectiveness of the SWPBS components may increase the effectiveness of school measurement systems. The purpose of this study was to examine the measures used in evaluating the efficacy of positive behaviour support. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of outcome measures regarding problem behaviour, prosocial behaviour, and implementation fidelity.     

Agile Project Management in Libraries: Creating Collaborative,Resilient, Responsive Organizations

Libraries must continually adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of users. Doing so requires the ability to be flexible and respond quickly. This is a case study of how The George Washington University Libraries rethought its approach to collection development using a cross-functional, team-based strategy that leveraged the benefits of Agile project management. Adopting an Agile approach to collection development maximized the impact of the library’s financial resources and enabled staff to develop new skills. This project underscores the value of collaboration, agility, and experimentation in libraries.     

The application of archival concepts to a data-intensive environment: working with scientists to understand data management and preservation needs

The collection, organization, and long-term preservation of resources are the raison d??être of archives and archivists. The archival community, however, has largely neglected science data, assuming they were outside the bounds of their professional concerns. Scientists, on the other hand, increasingly recognize that they lack the skills and expertise needed to meet the demands being placed on them with regard to data curation and are seeking the help of ??data archivists?? and ??data curators.?? This represents a significant opportunity for archivists and archival scholars but one that can only be realized if they better understand the scientific context.     

Contrasting the Effectiveness of Fluency Interventions for Students with or At Risk for Learning Disabilities: A Multilevel Random Coefficient Modeling Meta‐Analysis

This study had two purposes. First, we sought to compare the overall effectiveness of different types of fluency interventions for students with learning disabilities (LD). Second, we attempted to identify how individual‐ and class‐level characteristics moderated each intervention's effectiveness. We used multilevel random coefficient modeling to analyze results from 30 single‐subject studies involving 107 students with or at risk for LD. Doing so allowed us to assess the intervention's impact in terms of both intercept‐ (i.e., mean difference between study phases) and slope‐level (i.e., rate of growth) changes. Results indicated that two motivation‐focused interventions were significantly more effective than other types of interventions across gender, age, and placement. The least effective intervention was word recognition training; this finding was consistent across all levels of analyzed variables.     

A Comparative Demographic Study of Student Teachers from the North and South of Ireland

90.4% of the 1977 entrants to concurrent general Teacher Education courses in Ireland North and South responded to a demographic questionnaire. The results are analysed and the two regions contrasted with respect to personal, professional and geographical variables. These indicate that some interesting differences exist but that there are many overall similarities.     

Piecing together the puzzle: development of the Societal Attitudes towards Autism (SATA) scale

The rise in the prevalence of autism creates a need for a reliable and valid measure of attitudes towards autism. The current study describes the development of a brief 16‐ item measure of Societal Attitudes towards Autism (SATA) that exhibits sound psychometric properties and has a demonstrated ability to discriminate between expert and general college student samples. The final SATA was the result of pilot work on 75 items and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on a 45‐item version with 475 undergraduates. Knowledge and personal distance subscales yielded inconsistent reliability and validity outcomes. The SATA showed strong content and construct validity as evidenced by known groups discrimination, and predicted associations with an attitude towards disability measure, an autism preference item, and a measure of implicit attitudes towards disabilities.