Enhancing Communication and Language Development in Young Children With Developmental Delays and Disorders

Research concerning the determinants affecting access to postsecondary education has primarily been conducted in two spheres: academic preparation and financial aid. Although these two strands of literature are often treated as oppositional hypotheses, they need not be. This article fuses the two bodies of research while discussing the relatively untreated role of information concerning both academic preparation and financial aid as an important determinant in a student's probability of accessing postsecondary education. The evolution of empirical models regarding important determinants in postsecondary access are presented with the proposition of next steps, including the role of information, that will allow for a more fully specified model in studying what variables affect whether a student continues her education after high school graduation.     

Preparing Students for College: The Implementation and Impact of the Early College High School Model

As implemented in North Carolina, Early College High Schools are small, autonomous schools designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and are prepared for postsecondary education. Targeted at students who are underrepresented in college, these schools are most frequently located on college campuses and are intended to provide students with 2 years of college credit upon graduation from high school. This article reports on preliminary 9th-grade results from 285 students in 2 sites participating in a longitudinal experimental study of the impact of the model. These early results show that significantly more Early College High School students are enrolling and progressing in a college preparatory course of study. This expanded access, however, is associated with somewhat lower pass rates for some courses, suggesting the need for strong academic support to accompany increased enrollment in more rigorous courses. Implementation data collected on one school indicate that it is successfully implementing the model's components.     

Recognizing the Variety of Rural Schools

The purpose of this article is to help education practitioners and researchers understand that research about rural education is complicated not only by issues of defining “rural,” but also by the often dramatic ways that rural schools differ from each other. We briefly address issues in defining rural and describe rural classification systems that two federal agencies use to identify rural places. Our main emphasis, though, is on showing the differences among rural schools and districts as identified under the standard U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) definition of rural. Students in rural schools nearest to towns and cities have distinctly different demographics from those in more distant and remote settings. Researchers in rural education should consider explicitly whether or not to use the standard US DOE definition of rural schools and districts, a modified version, or an alternative. Whichever definition is used, researchers should consider how the demographics of their selected group of schools or districts compare in race/ethnicity, family income, enrollment trends, and other characteristics to all schools or to other categorizations of rural schools.     

Behaviour and adjustment problems of young developmentally delayed children

ABSTRACT

As part of an ongoing longitudinal study of developmental delay (DD), 35 six‐year‐old children with delays of unknown aetiology were assessed with measures of cognitive, language and educational competence. Their parents provided detailed information about their self‐help and personal‐social competencies, behaviour problems and temperament. As a group, the DD children evidenced high rates of behaviour problems, but there was considerable within‐group variability in intensity and pattern of problems. Low relationships were found between the intensity of behaviour problems and children's chronological age (CA), IQ, language level and self‐help competencies. The child variable most strongly associated with behaviour problems was temperament, or behavioural style.     

An Investigation of Examinee Test-Taking Effort on a Large-Scale Assessment

Assessment results collected under low-stakes testing situations are subject to effects of low examinee effort. The use of computer-based testing allows researchers to develop new ways of measuring examinee effort, particularly using response times. At the item level, responses can be classified as exhibiting either rapid-guessing behavior or solution behavior based on the item response time. Most previous research involving the study of response times has been conducted using locally developed instruments. The purpose of the current study was to examine the amount of rapid-guessing behavior within a commercially available, low-stakes instrument. Results indicate that smaller amounts of rapid-guessing behavior exist within the data compared to published results using other instruments. Additionally, rapid-guessing behavior varied by item and was significantly related to item length, item position, and presence of ancillary reading material. The amount of rapid-guessing behavior was consistently very low among various demographic subpopulations. On average, rapid-guessing behavior was observed on only 1% of item responses. Also found was that a small amount of rapid-guessing behavior can impact institutional rankings.     

Exploring the Effect of Video Used to Enhance the Retrospective Verbal Protocol Analysis: A Multiple Case Study

This study was a multiple case study used to explore how video enhanced the use of the retrospective verbal protocol analysis (RVPA) within the cognitive task analysis (CTA). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from phenomenological and structured interviews taken from six commercial driver's license driver trainers performing truck driver road tests during a RVPA. The mixed‐methods data collected were used to answer the research question, which asked how the video improved the quality, time, and cost of performing a CTA. Additionally the content collected was used to create curriculum designed to increase hiring managers' skill when performing road tests. The research suggests that video improved the quality to perform a CTA, but did not improve the time and cost to complete the CTA. Although time and cost experienced no improvement in terms of savings to the stakeholder, the findings when presented to the stakeholder provided a discussion for how acquisition of the high‐quality content outweighs time and cost when examining the return on investment. Therefore, taking the time and expending resources to acquire extensive content from experts through use of video as a reflective tool within a CTA during a job analysis can represent a significant return on investment to the organization. The return on investment might encourage stakeholders to approve time and resources necessary to create a training course improving hiring managers' skill when performing road tests.     

An Information-Based Approach to Identifying Rapid-Guessing Thresholds

ABSTRACT

The identification of rapid guessing is important to promote the validity of achievement test scores, particularly with low-stakes tests. Effective methods for identifying rapid guesses require reliable threshold methods that are also aligned with test taker behavior. Although several common threshold methods are based on rapid guessing response accuracy or visual inspection of response time distributions, this paper describes a new information-based approach to setting thresholds that does not share the limitations of other methods. A pair of information-based methods are introduced, and an empirical comparison study found the new methods to more reliably set thresholds than methods based on response accuracy or visual inspection.     

In Pursuit of Validity: A comprehensive review of science attitude instruments 1935–2005

The purpose of this review is to present a comprehensive evaluation of science attitude instruments based on published psychometric evidence. A multitude of instruments have been used through the years and some have been linked to career choice and school performance. Substantiating such associations is of paramount importance if researchers wish to influence educational policy. However, associations are reduced, or hard to discover, if instruments have weak psychometric properties. Several databases were searched for peer‐reviewed articles that discussed the development and use of science attitude instruments. Instruments were grouped into the following categories: attitudes toward science, scientific attitudes, nature of science, scientific career interests, and other. A data abstraction and scoring rubric was used to summarize and evaluate 150 published articles that spanned 66 instruments. Most instruments had single study usage and showed an absence of psychometric evidence. This review demonstrated that there are few instruments available with the necessary psychometric data to merit recommendation. The review quantifies the current state of the research regarding the measurement of science attitude in students; the results should elicit further discussion and encourage more rigorous analyses of instruments. The findings may assist other researchers to select an instrument and alert them to its strengths and weaknesses. This review points the way forward for research in this field. Instruments already in existence should be used in repeat studies, and reliability and validity evidence should be collected and shared.     

Linking Physical and Numerical Modelling in Hydrogeology using Sand Tank Experiments and COMSOL Multiphysics

Visualising subsurface processes in hydrogeology and building intuition for how these processes are controlled by changes in forcing is hard for many undergraduate students. While numerical modelling is one way to help undergraduate students explore outcomes of multiple scenarios, many codes are not user‐friendly with respect to defining domains, boundary conditions, and coupling processes, and numerical modelling exercises are also often disconnected from systems that the students understand, limiting their ability to extrapolate what they have learned for other situations. Here, we test the hypothesis that hydrogeology students will better estimate rates of groundwater flow and contaminant transport and the magnitudes of the parameters that control flow and transport by linking physical and numerical models. We present an exercise that links physical and numerical modelling of fluid flow and solute transport using 2‐D ‘ant farm’ sand tanks with parallel models in COMSOL Multiphysics. The sand tank exercises provide students with a way to visualise subsurface flow and transport processes, while COMSOL allows them to explicitly pull apart the mathematics associated with these systems and build intuition for their solutions. Given coupled experimentation and numerical exercises, we find that students will connect processes that they see in the laboratory with the outcomes of numerical models, and the post‐exercise tests indicate that they have an improved understanding of: (1) the magnitude and importance of properties and parameters that control flow and transport and (2) the simplifications made in numerical models of physical systems.     

Classroom research into good learning behaviours

This article examines the work conducted by two teacher-researchers involved in a study of their students' learning behaviours in their science classes. The teacher-researchers were strongly influenced by the PEEL project (Project to Enhance Effective Learning) and became members of the PAVOT project (Perspective and Voice of the Teacher) through which the research reported in this article was conducted. The teacher-researchers studied their students' approaches to learning and then introduced new teaching strategies (drawn from the PEEL literature) designed to positively influence their students' learning behaviours. In implementing new teaching strategies and exploring how their students' learning behaviours altered, these teacher-researchers suggest a number of important issues about the teaching and learning environment. The article also illustrates the importance of teacher-researchers being able to find ways of communicating their professional knowledge to the larger education community.