Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Pre-Literacy Behaviors In Infants And Toddlers: Psychometric Evaluation Of The Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (Itla-3), Barbara J. Jackson, Christine Marvin, Amy J. Encinger, Nicole Buchholz, Becky Zessin

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Assessment of emerging literacy in young children is generally limited to either skill development in children over 3 years of age or the quality and context of young children’s early literacy experiences. Although there has been promotion of their early literacy experiences, assessment of emerging pre-literacy behaviors in children younger than 3 years has yet to be organized into a single tool.

Preliminary work on the Infant Toddler Literacy Assessment (ITLA) has progressed through initial steps of scale development and shown promise as a criterionbased, standardized assessment for tracking children’s pre-literacy behaviors and guiding practitioners in supporting development of those …

Assessments And Accommodations For English Language Learners: A Literature Review, Heidi Jo Bartlett

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

While research in how English language learners (ELLs) use assessment accommodations is lacking, there are some general conclusions that one can draw. First, teachers must know their students’ abilities. This includes knowledge of their English proficiency, knowledge of their first language skills, especially as it pertains to literacy skills, and knowledge of their content area understanding. If teachers are aware of areas of weakness in students’ assessments, they should work to compensate for them by either changing their instruction or providing assessment accommodations. Second, it is important for teachers to recognize the various types of assessment accommodations that are available …

Estimating School-Level Achievement In Belize, Betty Jean Usher-Tate

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation consists of five chapters: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and discussion with final thoughts. The research design of this dissertation study attended to structures, cultures, and characteristics associated with, and specific to, the Belize education system. The processes for data collection and types of analyses were appropriate, yielded meaningful results, and served as a segue for national application. The Belize Educator Survey was developed to capture the educators’ voices and illuminate their relationship to educational achievement in Belize. The Belize Educator Survey was piloted and revised with direct input from educators and experts who work in the Belize …

Teac 413m: Teaching Multilingual Learners In Content Areas – A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The purpose of this benchmark portfolio was to trace the process of designing, teaching and assessing TEAC 413M: Teaching Multilingual Learners in Content Areas, a required course for the B.Ed secondary education major. My objectives for this portfolio are to: a) document the impacts of different instructional strategies employed in TEAC 413M, and to b) reflect on the course success and shortcomings and develop pathways for the future course design and development. A secondary goal was to examine translation of course content into students’ own teaching and planning for their students through a variety of activities and assessments throughout the …

Program Monitoring Practices For Teachers Of The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing In Early Intervention, Anne E. Thomas, Christine Marvin

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Program monitoring is an important and necessary assessment practice within the field of early childhood deaf education. Effective program monitoring requires a focus on both the consistent implementation of intervention strategies (fidelity) and the assessment of children’s ongoing progress in response to interventions (progress monitoring). Teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing (TODs) who provide early intervention services need to conduct regular program monitoring to evaluate the merit of their efforts. However, progress monitoring is a practice often overlooked by practitioners within the field of early intervention. It is recommended that TODs monitor children’s progress “regularly,” but evidence of …

Children, Mathematics, And Videotape: Using Multimodal Analysis To Bring Bodies Into Early Childhood Assessment Interviews, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite the increased use of video for data collection, most research using assessment interviews in early childhood education relies solely upon the analysis of linguistic data, ignoring children’s bodies. This trend is particularly troubling in studies of marginalized children because transcripts limited to language can make it difficult to analyze embodied power relations between majority researchers and minority children. This article responds to this problem by outlining a theoretical position on power and bodies, describing multimodal analysis strategies, and using these strategies to analyze the subject positions available during a mathematical assessment interview for three African American preschool child-participants and …

Using Art To Assess Environmental Education Outcomes, Ami G. Flowers, John P. Carroll, Gary T. Green, Lincoln R. Larson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Construction of developmentally appropriate tools for assessing the environmental attitudes and awareness of young learners has proven to be challenging. Art-based assessments that encourage creativity and accommodate different modes of expression may be a particularly useful complement to conventional tools (e.g. surveys), but their efficacy and feasibility across diverse contexts has not been adequately explored. To examine the potential utility of integrating art into evaluations of environmental education outcomes, we adapted an existing drawing prompt and corresponding grading rubric to assess the environmental attitudes and awareness of children (ages 6–12) at summer camps in Athens, GA, USA (n = …

Equitable Written Assessments For English Language Learners: How Scaffolding Helps, Marcelle A. Siegel, Deepika Menon, Somnath Sinha, Nattida Promyod, Cathy Wissehr, Kristy L. Halvorson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the effects of the use of scaffolds in written classroom assessments through the voices of both native English speakers and English language learners from two middle schools. Students responded to assessment tasks in writing, by speaking aloud using think aloud protocols, and by reflecting in a post-assessment interview. The classroom assessment tasks were designed to engage students in scientific sense making and multifaceted language use, as recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards. Data analyses showed that both groups benefited from the use of scaffolds. The findings revealed specific ways that modifications were supportive in helping students …

The Impact Of Interface Design During An Initial High-Technology Aac Experience: A Collective Case Study Of People With Aphasia, Aimee R. Dietz, Kristy S.E. Weissling, Julie Griffith, Miechelle L. Mckelvey, Devan Macke

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this collective case study was to describe the communication behaviors of five people with chronic aphasia when they retold personal narratives to an unfamiliar communication partner using four variants of a visual scene display (VSD) interface. The results revealed that spoken language comprised roughly 70% of expressive modality units; variable patterns of use for other modalities emerged. Although inconsistent across participants, several people with aphasia experienced no trouble sources during the retells using VSDs with personally relevant photographs and text boxes. Overall, participants perceived the personally relevant photographs and the text as helpful during the retells. These …

Promoting Vocabulary Learning For English Learners, Stephanie Wessels

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Vocabulary knowledge, which is key to the reading comprehension of English learners (ELs), must be a focus for every teacher in today’s increasingly diverse schools, including those in the mainstream classroom. This article strives to increase awareness of the five characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction as well as demonstrate how such characteristics can be variously emphasized in the before-, during-, and after-reading phases of the instructional process. Research-based strategies can provide teachers and ELs with a gateway to increased vocabulary learning. One such strategy, the Vocabulary Quilt, is explored in depth to illustrate how teachers can use a single strategy …

“Re-Culturing” Teacher Education: Inquiry, Evidence, And Action, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College Evidence Team

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Currently the press to make policy and practice decisions on the basis of evidence is being coupled with recognition that real change requires shifts in organizational culture. Consequently, there are now many efforts to “re-culture” organizations by making evidence central to decision making. In this article, the authors problematize the notion of a “culture of evidence” in teacher education. Then the article identifies four key aspects involved in efforts to create a culture of evidence at one institution over a five-year period: (1) development of a portfolio of studies about processes and outcomes; (2) recognition that teacher education always poses …

A Nonword Repetition Task For Speakers With Misarticulations: The Syllable Repetition Task (Srt), Lawrence D. Shriberg, Heather L. Lohmeier, Thomas F. Campbell, Christine A. Dollaghan, Jordan R. Green, Christopher A. Moore

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose. Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. We describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT) that eliminates this confound and report findings from three validity studies.
Method. Ninety-five preschool children with Speech Delay and 63 with Typical Speech, completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT: Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) and the SRT. SRT stimuli include only four of the earliest occurring consonants and …

Transitioning From Analog To Digital Audio Recording In Childhood Speech Sound Disorders, Lawrence D. Shriberg, Jane L. Mcsweeny, Bruce E. Anderson, Thomas F. Campbell, Michael R. Chial, Jordan R. Green, Katherina K. Hauner, Christopher A. Moore, Heather L. Rusiewicz, David L. Wilson

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Few empirical findings or technical guidelines are available on the current transition from analog to digital audio recording in childhood speech sound disorders. Of particular concern in the present context was whether a transition from analog- to digital-based transcription and coding of prosody and voice features might require re-standardizing a reference database for research in childhood speech sound disorders. Two research transcribers with different levels of experience glossed, transcribed, and prosody-voice coded conversational speech samples from eight children with mild to severe speech disorders of unknown origin. The samples were recorded, stored, and played back using representative analog and digital …