A project was undertaken to develop and validate English-as-a-second-language (ESL) materials for use with the occupational knowledge section of the Indiana adult basic education (ABE) curriculum guide, "Learning for Everyday Living." Developed during the project were 10 units designed to develop the ESL skills necessary to understand…

A survey of educators was conducted to determine the relative importance of eight desirable characteristics of competency based education materials and then to apply the results to materials actually in use. Initially, 129 vocational instructors, administrators, and instructional designers were surveyed using a pair-comparison method. Objectives…

The role of evaluation in a working model for the diffusion of educational innovations is the central topic of this paper. The working model is a product of the Trent Valley Centre (TVC), a "regional laboratory" type extension center of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The first objective of the program is to generate the…

A study of library school faculty and academic library directors' perceptions of the educational quality of master's and doctoral programs in library and information science and of the professional contributions of library school faculties is reported. Perception rankings are compared to similar studies carried out in 1980 and 1986. (18…

Utilizes 19th-century census figures to reveal a more accurate and richer picture of womens' participation in the frontier work environment. Although the occupational classifications accurately reflected the rise of an industrial economy, they ignored womens' entrepreneurial rural efforts. Presents statistical data to rectify this situation. (MJP)

The importance of teamwork in Information Systems Development (ISD) practice and education has been acknowledged but not studied extensively to date. This paper tests a model of how groups participating in ISD projects perform and examines the relationships between some antecedents of this performance based on group research theory well…

This study uses iterative solution techniques to determine empirically optimal standards for student to faculty ratios by discipline and student level for a group of 11 public, research universities, all of whom were members of the Association of American Universities. One set of benchmark standards was based on four-variable solutions within…

This study illustrates how a factor analysis of a well-designed student-rating instrument can increase its utility. Factor analysis of a student-rating instrument was used to reveal constructs that would explain student attrition in science, mathematics, and engineering majors. The Instructional Development and Effectiveness Assessment (IDEA)…

South Carolina's School Incentive Reward Program Program (SIRP) based on year-to-year gains in reading and mathematics achievement, which seemed to have face validity, was evaluated, particularly its use of the relative gains of students in only the highest grade in the school as the basis for the awards. When this requirement was relaxed so that…

A study examined the way in which vocational and technical faculty and students perceive the effectiveness of French and Raven's five power bases. (To explain the way in which organizational control operates, French and Raven postulated the following five power bases: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert power.) During the study,…

The orientation of this report is that of identifying educational projects which can be considered truly exemplary. The bulk of the report consists of a 23-step procedure for validating the effectiveness of educational programs using existing evaluation data. It is not intended as a guide for conducting evaluations but rather for interpreting data…

This book includes revised presentations from an October 2001 meeting of the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the Cornell Rehabilitation Research and Training Center that considered the validity of current data for measuring trends in the employment rate of people with disabilities and investigated the causes and…

This document contains four symposium papers on transfer of learning. In "Learning Transfer in a Social Service Agency: Test of an Expectancy Model of Motivation" (Reid A. Bates) structural equation modeling is used to test the validity of a valence-instrumentality-expectancy approach to motivation to transfer learning. "The…

This article describes a one-year study of 120 fifth grade students whose teachers participated in a program entitled Project SMILE (Science and Mathematics Integrated with Literary Experiences). The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which the classroom implementation of Project SMILE positively influenced the classroom…

This research looks specifically at the perceived needs of secondary school science teachers in Malaysia so that subsequent effective in-service programmes can be planned and implemented. The prime aim of this cross-sectional survey study is to ascertain the perceived needs of 1,690 practicing secondary school science teachers, characterized by…