Diagnostic use of the WISC-R and McCarthy Scales: A regression analysis approach to learning disabilities

Thirty learning disabled and 30 nonlearning disabled students were individually administered the WISC-R, McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, and the Wide Range Achievement Test. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the combination of scores from the WISC-R and McCarthy Scales that best predicted the achievement level of the subjects. In addition, the scores that best predicted group status (LD or nonLD) were determined. In general, the WISC-R Comprehension, Arithmetic, and Object Assembly, and the McCarthy Quantitative and Memory Indices were most sensitive to the LD students' achievement. Conversely, the WISC-R Similarities and Arithmetic and the McCarthy Verbal Index were most sensitive to the achievement of nonLD students. Finally, the McCarthy Perceptual-Performance Index and the WISC-R Vocabulary subtest best discriminated group status. The diagnostic implications of these results were discussed.     

A closer examination of the education for all handicapped children act: A guide for the 1980S

The United States Congress has mandated that state and educational agencies make available to all handicapped children a free appropriate education. The purpose of this legislation has been primarily to protect the rights of handicapped children and their parents. The present paper discusses identification and evaluation guidelines that have been promulgated under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Procedures for Individual Education Programs that are in accordance with federal legislation are delineated. To satisfy federal mandates concerning the placement of handicapped children, public school systems are required to utilize a least restrictive environment, whereby complete segregation of handicapped from nonhandicapped children is prohibited. In further accordance with this legislation, either the parent or public agency may initiate a hearing for the purpose of challenging the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child.     

西方政治文化理论的衰落与复兴

西方政治文化理论在经历了50年代至70年代初的初创和繁荣期后,因遭到来自理性选择理论和西方马克思主义等方面的批评而走向衰落.它被指责为片面、保守、僵化,低估了社会结构和权力结构的作用,不具有解释力和预见性等.然而自80年代中期起,由于发达工业社会文化因素的上升以及非西方国家多元文化模式的凸显,理性选择理论陷入窘境,西方马克思主义走向衰落,政治文化理论重又获得生机并走向新的繁荣.     

Predicting reading level in grades 1 to 6 from listening level and decoding level: Testing theory relevant to the simple view of reading

The relationships among pronunciation level (decoding), verbal level (listening), and accuracy level (reading) were investigated in grades 1 to 6, and for students who are in the advanced phase of decoding. The data collected were used to investigate the validity of the simple view of reading and the causal model of reading achievement which holds that pronunciation level (P_L) and verbal level (V_L) are the proximal causes of accuracy level (A_L). A total of 135 students in grades 1-6 were given measures of nonword decoding, real word decoding, listening, and reading. All of the reliable variation in an indicant of the level of reading ability, A_L, could be predicted from an indicant of the level of ability to decode real words, P_L, and an indicant of listening level, V_L. Furthermore, the strong relationship between pronunciation level, P_L, and accuracy level, A_L, did not evaporate for the students who had mastered basic decoding skills, as measured by nonword decoding tests. The correlations between pronunciation level, P_L, and accuracy level, A_L, were high even for students in grades 5 and 6, most of whom probably had progressed beyond the alphabetic phase (phonological recoding). Correlational support was found for the simple view of reading and the causal model which holds that A_L is equal to the square root of the product of V_L and P_L. The above theory and supporting data were interpreted as suggesting that the level of reading accuracy, A_L, of students can be improved the most throughout grades 1 to 6 by emphasizing instruction that will improve pronunciation level, or decoding, even for children who have progressed beyond the beginning to read phase which involves learning the alphabetic principal, or phonological recoding.     

FACULTY WORKLIFE: Establishing Benchmarks Across Groups

Pressures on colleges and universities have spawned numerous studies to improve our understanding of faculty and their worklives, including examinations of faculty satisfaction, morale, motivation and productivity, reward, and retention and turnover. In response to external pressures for improved accountability in higher education, institutional leaders seek to identify outcome measures and generate benchmarks that can be used to assess change over time. The purpose of this study is to propose a structural model of faculty worklife and to test its generalizability by examining possible differences in the model across three cross-sectional samples of probationary faculty at a major research university. Identified trends in faculty perceptions about their worklife over time can be used as benchmarks to aid institutions in retaining faculty by monitoring and improving aspects of their worklives.     

University knowledge in an age of supercomplexity

For various reasons, it is becoming felt that the knowledge function of the university is being undermined. Some, indeed, have come to suggest that we are witnessing 'the end of knowledge' in higher education. The 'end of knowledge' thesis takes three forms. Substantively, it is felt that the knowledge sustained by the university has no particular status: it simply takes its place and its chances amid the proliferating knowledges that society has now to offer. Ideologically, it is felt that the knowledge for which the university stands lacks legitimacy: it can simply be understood as a set of language games of a rather privileged set of occupational groups ('academics') that reflects their interests and marginal standing to the rest of society. Procedurally, it is implied that the university can now only secure its future by becoming entrepreneurial and by marketing its knowledge wares in forms of academic capitalism; in the process, its knowledge becomes performative in character and loses its power to enlighten. Much of this analysis is correct – even as the theses cut across each other – butthe conclusion is wrong. The modern world is supercomplex in character: it can be understood as a milieu for the proliferation of frameworks by which we might understand the world, frameworks that are often competing with each other. In such an age of supercomplexity, the university has new knowledge functions: to add to supercomplexity by offering completely new frames of understanding (so compounding supercomplexity); to help us comprehend and make sense of the resulting knowledge mayhem; and to enable us to live purposefully amid supercomplexity. Knowledge, as a pure, objective reading of the world does have to be adandoned. But the university is not, thereby, delegitimised. In an age of supercomplexity, a new epistemology for the university awaits, one that is open, bold, engaging, accessible, and conscious of its own insecurity. It is an epistemology for living amid uncertainty.     

A comparison of WISC and WISC-R results of urban educable mentally retarded students

Twenty urban EMR students' WISC-R scores were compared with their previously administered WISC scores. The average interval between administrations was approximately three years. Significant coefficients of correlation were obtained between five corresponding subtests and between Performance IQs and Full Scale IQs. Results from t tests for correlated data indicated that mean WISC-R Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQ scores were not significantly lower than their corresponding WISC scores. The results of this study indicated that WISC-R scores in comparison to WISC scores appeared to be more stable in the lower IQ ranges and less vulnerable to cultural bias.