Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

A Study Of The Effect Of Desktop Publishing In Writing Instruction Versus Traditional Pencil And Paper On The Length And Detail Of Students' Compositions, Christine Sonsini

Theses and Dissertations

This study was based on the following question: Could it be that first grade students who receive primary writing instruction using The Children's Writing and Publishing Center computer software program compose longer and more detailed texts than those first grade students who receive traditional primary writing instruction using pencil and paper?

One group of students received primary writing instruction using a desktop publishing software program, while the other group received primary writing instruction using pencil and paper. After receiving an equal amount of instructional and individual writing time, both groups were given the same writing assignment. The students' compositions were …

A Study Of The Effect Of A Computer Writing Program On The Writing Ability Of Elementary School Students, Barbara A. Autuore

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if significant differences in the creative writing of students would arise between a group of second grade students using a computer writing program and a group of second grade students using the traditional pencil and paper method of writing. The students were also given an attitude survey to determine whether or not the computer had an effect on their attitudes toward writing.

Students In both the control and experimental groups were holistically rated on a pre-test writing sample. Both groups were also given an attitude pre-test. One group of students wrote stories …

Gender Differences In Computing: Attitudes, Use, And Stereotypes, Mary S. O'Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the grade level at which students' attitudes towards computers begin to change. Application and gender bias towards computers were also examined. To achieve this, a survey was developed and administered to selected students in the third through eighth grades in the Egg Harbor City School District. in addition to the survey, students were asked to draw a "computer expert." Comparisons were made between males and females and the elementary and junior high grade levels.

Independent "t" tests were performed to identify significant differences at the .05 level. Significant differences in attitudes towards computers were …

Student And Teacher Perceptions Of The Aversiveness Of Behavior Management Techniques, Brent Halstead

Theses & Honors Papers

This research investigated teacher and student perceptions of behavior management techniques. Subjects for this study were all ninth grade students in a city high school. Both the students and their homeroom teachers were surveyed. The sample was drawn from a city school district in central Virginia. The sample provided 169 subjects, five teachers and 164 students.

The results of the study were consistent with previous research in the field. Students thought public discipline and techniques that involved outside forces (parents, principals , etc.) were most aversive. Students perceived token economies and private correction as not aversive.

Teaching Decision Making Skills, Beatrice Landrum Gallier

Theses & Honors Papers

Summarized in this document are results from a survey distributed to find the number of hours elementary, middle and high school teachers were trained to teach the six decision making skills to students . This survey found that at least sixty percent of all teachers responding received no training. The teachers indicated which skills were the most important for students to acquire . The skills which were most important for students to acquire were rated among the lowest for student mastery of the concept/skill. Although many of the teachers were not trained, they did report teaching the skills as the …

Volume 08, Number 03, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 08, Number 03 of Reaching Through Teaching.

The Adaptation Of Regular Elementary Classrooms For Children With Moderate And Severe Disabilities: Inclusion Practices From The Principal's Perspective, Jerry R. Herman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the perceptions of elementary school principals in Tennessee regarding the desirability and feasibility of adapting regular elementary classrooms and programs for the inclusion of children with moderate and severe disabilities. The purpose of the study was to add an administrative dimension to current research on inclusive educational programming for children typically educated in special (CDC) class settings. Data collection for the descriptive design of the study was accomplished by use of a 40 item survey instrument with a 7-point Likert-type scale for each construct (i.e., desirability and feasibility). Four ten item subscales addressed the areas of Staff …

The Adaptation Of Regular Elementary Classrooms For Children With Moderate And Severe Disabilities: Inclusion Practices From The Principal's Perspective, Jerry R. Herman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the perceptions of elementary school principals in Tennessee regarding the desirability and feasibility of adapting regular elementary classrooms and programs for the inclusion of children with moderate and severe disabilities. The purpose of the study was to add an administrative dimension to current research on inclusive educational programming for children typically educated in special (CDC) class settings. Data collection for the descriptive design of the study was accomplished by use of a 40 item survey instrument with a 7-point Likert-type scale for each construct (i.e., desirability and feasibility). Four ten item subscales addressed the areas of Staff …

The Relationship Between Student And Faculty Learning Style Congruency And Perceptions Of The Classroom Environment In Colleges Of Teacher Education, Patrick N. Kariuki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of congruence between teachers' and undergraduate education majors' learning styles in selected colleges of the Tennessee Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, and to determine if the style congruence was related to student perceptions of the classroom learning environment. A related purpose was to identify needed changes in classroom environments based on the characteristics of the actual and ideal classroom environments as perceived by students, characteristics of the actual classroom environment as perceived by their teachers, and characteristics of actual and ideal classroom environments as perceived by men and women …

Machiavellian Attitudes Acknowledged By Principals Of Tennessee Secondary Schools, George M. Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of Machiavellian attitudes acknowledged by secondary school principals as measured by the Mach V Attitude Inventory Scale. The data were collected from an ex post facto survey of 169 public and nonpublic secondary school principals, grades 9-12. Principals completed the Mach V scale and a 13-item demographic survey. Sixteen research questions were formulated to examine the relationship among the variables which produced seventeen null hypotheses. Of the seventeen null hypotheses, four were found to be significant and thirteen were nonsignificant. A review of the descriptive data indicated that the majority …

Developing Active Citizens: Community Service Learning In Social Studies Teacher Education, Rahima C. Wade

Service Learning, General

How are social studies teacher educators to prepare teachers for working in a society fraught with social, environmental, and economic problems? If the true mission of our profession is active citizenship, we must help our students learn the value of engaging in long-term efforts to revitalize our democratic society and the skills to respond compassionately to those whose daily needs cannot wait for societal transformation. This article is based on the premise that social studies teacher educators are in a unique position to develop future teachers' commitment to giving their students opportunities for active involvement in the community and the …

The Role Of Transformational Leadership In The Collaborative Development Of A Full Inclusion Program: An Action Research Study, Paul R. Hain

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This dissertation is a critical action research study on full inclusion for students with learning disabilities. The study describes how full inclusion for 16 students with learning disabilities in three regular classes was implemented in an Illinois elementary school over a one year period. The purpose of this study is to describe how transformational leadership, collaborative decision-making and action research helped in the development of full inclusion.

Action research was the method used to 1) observe and collect data about the project, 2) to analyze what was happening, and 3) help guide the inclusion teaching team in taking actions …

An Analysis Of Curricular Options Currently Used In High School Resource Rooms For Students With Learning Disabilities In Virginia, Dana Harrison

Theses & Honors Papers

This study examined the curricular approaches for students with learning disabilities in high school resource rooms in the state of Virginia . Sixty-five resource room teachers participated in the study. Subjects completed a 25 item likert-type scale survey which reflected the five basic ·curricular opt ions for students with learning disabilities. Subjects were required to indicate the extent to which he or she emphasized the statement in the classroom. Descriptive Statistics, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and a Tukey Test of Multiple Comparisons were used to analyze the data. The results of the ANOVA revealed that Curricular Options (the Within …

Koinonia, Harley Schreck, Jon Kaluga

Koinonia

Taking Student Culture Seriously: A coordinated program of research by five colleges in the Christian College Coalition, Harley Schreck

President's Corner, the Editor's Disk

ACSD Proposed Bylaw Change, New Professionals' Retreat Cancelled

CoCCA: Know Teams? No Problem & Hot Ideas!

Book Review-Right from Wrong: What You Need to Know to Help Youth Make Right Choices

New South East Regional Director, Northwest Regional Activity

Preservice Teacher Education Using Flexible, Thematic Cohorts, Kenneth D. Peterson, Nancy Benson, Amy Driscoll, Ronald B. Narode, Douglas Sherman, Carol Tama

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications and Presentations

Describes one school of education's response to the call for reform, and outlines the qualities unique to institutional change experienced in its evolution from a four-year undergraduate program to a fifth-year graduate teacher preparation program featuring thematic cohorts of students. Profiles of four of the cohorts are presented.

The Communicator - Vol.7 No. 1 - Spring, 1995, Nova Southeastern University

The Communicator

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Effect Of Developmental Kindergarten Placement On Student Achievement: Issues And Other Alternatives For The "Unready" Child, Sandra F. Earley

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of developmental kindergarten placement beyond third grade and whether differences exist in levels of academic achievement between students who participated in developmental kindergarten and those who were recommended to attend but did not.

The target population of this study spanned 3 years and included 203 kindergarten eligible students in a suburban school district in mid- Michigan who were recommended to attend developmental kindergarten. The accessible population was 105 of the original 203 students.

The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) reading and mathematics test mean scores were analyzed for both groups …

Creating Bicultural Identities: The Role Of School-Based Bilingual Paraprofessionals In Ontemporary Immigrant Accommodation (Two Kansas Case Studies), Edmund T. Hamann

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

This study locates the professional and informal practices of school-based bilingual paraprofessionals (paras) in the context of the larger social phenomenon of acculturation, cultural brokerage, and identity construction. It demonstrates how the paras in two Kansas communities transform an assimilationist mandate into something quite different, the promotion of bicultural identities, as part of a process called “additive biculturalism.” Additive biculturalism incorporates Weiss’s characterization of paras as cultural brokers (1994), but expands upon it significantly. As the first part of additive biculturalism, bilingual paras model and promote bicultural identities among the English-Learner students and parents they work with. As the second …

No. 125 1995 April

International Journal for Business Education

SIEC Historical Documents

The Nature Of Data Sources That Inform Decision-Making In Reading By Experienced Second-Grade Teachers, Margaret Mary Dinan Davis

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Studies

This qualitative research was designed to describe the nature of data sources that inform decision making in reading by experienced second grade teachers. Data was collected on seven subjects from multiple sources: seven, successive interviews, think alouds using videotaped lessons, classroom observations, and inspection of documents such as grade books, student work samples, report cards, and reading tests. Data analysis was accomplished by transcribing all data into a qualitative data base (Padilla, 1991). Text chunks were tagged and filtered by data source. Categories such as oral language and comparison of data were added as they emerged during analysis. The most …

Review Of Parent Education Resources For Adults With Low English Proficiency, Elizabeth J. Sandell

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

This paper reviews seven parent education resources for adults with low English proficiency, focusing on materials that are flexible and adaptable to parent education programs. Each review lists the name and publisher of the resource, date of publication, cost, intended audience, content, goals, format, and reviewer comments. The resources include: (1) "Nurturing Program for Parents and Young Children" (Family Development Resources), a remedial parenting skills program; (2) "Small Wonder" (American Guidance Service), which uses activity cards to explain child development; (3) "Child Care Picture Books" (Minnesota Early Learning Design), a series of six parenting skills picture books available in English …

Section One: Purposes And Policy Issues

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

No Content

Section Two: Overview Of The Procedures For Developing A Licensure Examination, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

There are a variety of strategies that may be employed in the development of a licensure examination. The following list of activities illustrates typical procedures. Depending on the needs and conditions of the particular occupation, certain variations in specific activities may take place or changes in the sequence may be appropriate. In addition to the procedures listed, many decisions will be made that may add activities. For example, the decision to use a computerized item bank or to enter into a computerized adaptive testing format will require procedures in addition to those described briefly below.

1. Conducting a job (or …

6. Developing And Using Clinical Examinations, Jimmie C. Fortune, Theodore R. Cromack

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

Generally, clinical examinations for licensing (sometimes called performance tests) involve the candidate completing one or more tasks (in licensing this is thought of as "services for a client") that have been selected from the supervised practice Gob analysis) of an occupation or profession. The clinical examination may exist in contexts (occupations) that do not require client interactions. Such contexts include building trades, automobile repair, accounting, etc. The tasks may range from fixing brakes, to preparing a body for burial, to wiring a house, or auditing a set of business interactions.

Other contexts require the candidate to perform services or …

7. Basic Psychometric Issues In Licensure Testing, Howard W. Stoker, James C. Impara

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

The number of people in the United States who carry some responsibility for the writing of examination questions and the construction of tests is unknown. In the Preface to The Construction and Use of Achievement Examinations, published by the American Council on Education in 1936, the authors indicated that the number probably exceeded a million. That number has certainly grown in the past 60 years. Questions are posed to students by teachers at all levels of education; the Armed Forces have people whose job it is to construct tests which are used in the promotion of personnel; over …

4. Practice Analysis: Building The Foundation For Validity, Joan E. Knapp, Lenora G. Knapp

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

INTRODUCTION

A review of the literature associated with job analysis reveals two extremes of opinion as represented by the following provocative quotes:

Historically job analysis has been a relatively soporific area of industrial and organizational psychology, characterized by neither heated controversy nor prominent visibility in the research literature. (Harvey, 1991, p. 71)

Validation was once a priestly mystery, a ritual behind the scenes with the professional elite as witness and judge. Today it is a public spectacle combining the attraction of chess and mud wrestling. (Cronbach, 1988, p. 3)

Both our evaluation of practice analysis research and our professional experience …

5. Systematic Item Writing And Test Construction, Anthony Laduca, Steven M. Downing, Thomas R. Henzel

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Standardized objective testing remains the most popular mode of licensure testing. Even where other types of tests are incorporated, it is often the case that they are provided as complimentary to standardized, multiple-choice (MC) tests. Moreover, scoring theories and standard-setting procedures have been developed over the years in the context of standardized MC testing. At the same time, critics have pointed to limitations of contemporary MC testing practices, including lack of fidelity to real-life challenges and emphasis on recall of factual minutiae. In our view, testing professionals should make conscientious attempts to modify test development procedures so as to address …

3. Policy Issues With Psychometric Implications, Michael Rosenfeld, Richard F. J. Tannenbaum, Scott Wesley

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Testing candidates with disabilities, testing repeaters, and coaching involve issues of fairness, the validity of the inferences made from test scores, and protection of the public. Licensing boards must develop policies to deal with each of these issues. It is interesting to note that although all three are of concern to licensing agencies, little of the research on these topics has been conducted in licensure settings. This chapter discusses the results of research conducted on each topic, considers the psychometric implications for policy of each, and suggests steps licensing boards can take when formulating policy.

TESTING CANDIDATES WITH DISABILITIES IN …

Section Three Emerging Practices

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

No abstract provided.

8. Item Banking, Betty A. Bergstrom, Richard C. Gershon

Licensure Testing: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices

Item banks developed by licensure agencies range from a collection of items stored on index cards to highly sophisticated electronic databases. Regardless of the storage mechanism, most banks contain items that have been organized and referenced according to procedures established by the licensure agency. This chapter outlines useful practices for building and maintaining a computerized item bank. We address storage of item text, graphics, and statistical history. We deal with the creation of paper-and-pencil and computerized tests from an item bank and the use of Item Response Theory (lRT) to calibrate and equate item banks. New directions in item banking …