Taiwan government consolidated the kindergarten and daycare systems in 2012, and launched a new national curriculum framework, Early Childhood Education & Care Curriculum Framework (ECECCF), as a guidance for quality early childhood education programs. Research has shown that the effects of a new educational program highly depended on the…

The aim of this article was to independently test the factor structure of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, 3rd Edition (ECERS-3). Using a sample of 148 independent observations, Standard and Satorra--Bentler confirmatory factor analysis were used to determine if the ECERS-3 conformed to the structure published in its manual using a…

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the "Autism Program Environment Rating Scale" ("APERS"), an instrument designed to assess quality of program environments for students with autism spectrum disorder. Data sets from two samples of public school programs that provided services to children and…

The current study aims to develop a scale to evaluate the Pedagogical Formation Program implemented at a Turkish state university. Participants were 221 prospective teachers enrolled in the Pedagogical Formation Program in the 2010-2011 academic year. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on the scale items which revealed four factors…

The purpose of my study was to develop and validate a scale to assess peer mentoring practices that aim to enhance learning. In the development process, 4 focus group interviews were conducted with 10 mentors and 12 mentees who participated in 8 weeks of peer mentoring. In addition to the literature, the findings from interviews were used to…

Although collaboration is recognized as an effective means to address multifaceted community issues, successful collaboration is difficult to achieve and failure is prevalent. To effectively collaborate, collaborators must recognize the strengths and weaknesses within their own efforts. Using Mattessich and colleagues' work as a springboard, a…

The objective of this study was to validate a scale for assessment of academic projects. As a complement, we examined its predictive ability by comparing the scores of advised/corrected projects based on the model and the final scores awarded to the work by an examining panel (approximately 10 months after the project design). Results of…

Background: Evidence show that school connectedness is important to youth wellness. However, considerable inconsistency in the concepts and measures of school connectedness exists across studies. In addition, many measures do not capture the multifaceted dimensions of the school connectedness construct. This study examined the psychometric…

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…

Little research has been conducted on the effectiveness of training strategies for child care providers. The current study used an experimental intent-to-treat design to measure the impact of an established intervention, the on-site caregiver training component of the Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC), on child development and child care…

The retranslation method, usually used in job performance rating, was used to develop a scale for evaluating an educational television series. The method itself was evaluated using both developmental and actual field use data. Results were mixed. (Author/SJL)

Description of study to determine the impact of management training on student performance focuses on the need for proper evaluation. Pre- and posttraining evaluative tools for rating managers are described, differences in ratings are analyzed, and implications for evaluating management training on interpersonal skills are discussed. (LRW)

Before 1998, most large-scale studies of center-based child care programs measured quality using the 1980 version of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS). To know whether data from studies conducted after 1998 using the revised ECERS-R can be fairly compared to data from studies using the 1980 ECERS, simultaneous assessments using…

Rating scales are increasingly popular in research and clinical studies of children. The Stress Response Scale was developed to test whether a child's behavior rating scale could be constructed based on a theoretical model of personality and if it could be validated by empirical means in order to obtain clinically useful factor scores. The scale…

The following research projects are described in this annual report: (1) "Concept Learning in Discrimination Tasks," which indicates that kindergarten children are able to discriminate the letters "b,""d,""p," and "q"; (2) "Discrimination of Letter-like Forms," indicating that nursery…