A study developed a valid and reliable instrument to measure learner empowerment and tested a model in which learner empowerment was caused by teacher communication behaviors and students' self-esteem. The model tested hypothesized teacher communication behaviors (relevance, verbal immediacy, and nonverbal immediacy) and student self-esteem as…

Many states have a disconnected body of laws regarding educator evaluation. Uncoordinated legislation can create problems with respect to evaluation, appropriate standards and methods to be employed, and implementation strategies. This paper describes Utah's educator-evaluation legislation to illustrate this phenomenon. Four statutory provisions…

When working against fragmentation in education, coherence must not be confused with consistency. While consistency implies logical relations and the absence of contradictions, coherence allows for many kinds of connectedness, including associations of ideas and feelings, intimations of resemblance, conflicts and tensions, and imaginative leaps.…

The "RAMCAD" workshop summarized in this document reviewed the prospects for integrating reliability and maintainability into undergraduate engineering curricula. RAMCAD stands for Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability in Computer-Aided Design. The workshop was sponsored by Air Force human resources departments and attended by a…

This paper addresses issues in the use of facilitated communication with persons having severe communication impairments, including autism. The research on facilitation is summarized, indicating that the vast majority of studies have found no evidence of communication but have found evidence of facilitator influence on the communicator's response.…

Factor analysis of the instrument used to evaluate student perceptions of an educational interactive video program has determined that seven constructs were being measured. All of these constructs, however, were not consistently measuring the same things. In fact, the variables on which the factors loaded changed for three of the factors from…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

This report reflects the results of an evaluation of the coverage in the annual Public Library Statistics program, a joint federal-state information collection project. It is the first phase of a broader project of the Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to evaluate the overall statistics available from the annual…

The purpose of this study is to help define the precise nature and limits of the tolerable range in which a researcher may be relatively confident about the statistical validity of his or her research findings, focusing specifically on the statistical validity of results when violating the assumptions associated with the one-way, fixed-effects…

This study developed a prototype occupational interest inventory for academically disadvantaged/functionally illiterate adults. The reliability and validity of the prototype were determined by comparing the results with those of a standardized commercially-available occupational interest inventory. A counterbalance design was employed with 30…

A study examined the nature and frequency of faults and errors in reference list entries and direct quotes selected from all 1988 issues of 16 social and biological science journals. All departures from the original (additions, omissions, or changes) were labelled as either a word or punctuation deviation. Of the 402 quotes verified, 33.33%…

A study examined the nature and frequency of faults and errors in reference list entries selected from 10 journals (principally in the fields of psychology and education). The elements used for data tallying and analysis were: surname, initial(s), and other identifiers, such as Jr. and III; article title; and journal name, volume, issue number,…

School psychologists function as experts in the diagnosis of childrens' educational difficulties. Can the decision-making activities of school psychologists be characterized as expert? Practicing school psychologists (N=10) reviewed cases of children (N=120) being considered for placement in learning disabilities programs. A case consisted of 17…

A basic framework is proposed to distinguish between the many ways in which Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) can be evaluated. This includes the purpose of the evaluation, the type of methods that might be used and the measures employed. The framework is not intended to cover all applications but offers one means of structuring a review of…

The purpose of the present study was to determine how two different data collection techniques would affect the Q-factors derived from several factor analytic procedures. Faculty members (N=146) from seven middle schools responded to 61 items taken from an instrument designed to measure aspects of an idealized middle school culture; the instrument…