Researchers have often noted the desirability of investigating the incidence of academic misconduct of college students who will be in employment fields requiring a high level of competence and/or a high level of personal integrity, such as elementary school and secondary school teachers. The Academic Misconduct Survey (AMS) developed by Charlotte…

In Hong Kong there has been a move toward greater self-management in schools. The government has supported the School Management Initiatives scheme and has stated that the management system calls for teacher appraisal as one of its internal quality assurance mechanisms. This study examined the relationship between dimensions of school climate and…

Formal teacher appraisal was introduced to schools participating in Hong Kong's School Management Initiative (SMI) without prior evaluation of its effectiveness. This study examines the current practice of appraisal and provides guidelines for schools wishing to introduce teacher appraisal. Teachers from SMI schools (n=337) completed…

The relationship between factors underlying a measure of acculturation, the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans (ARSMA), and the 566-item Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was studied. The ARSMA consists of 20 questions that are scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from Mexican oriented (1) to Anglo oriented (5).…

Early childhood special educators recognize the necessity of establishing indices of reliability and validity for instruments that provide an index of developmental status. Many such instruments present little empirical evidence regarding psychometric integrity, particularly for a non-normative sample. The 341-item Battelle Developmental Inventory…

A scaling procedure is proposed, based on item response theory (IRT), to fit non-hierarchical test structure as well. The binary scores of a test of English were used for calculating the probabilities of answering each item correctly. The probability matrix was factor analyzed, and the difficulty intervals or estimates corresponding to the factors…

The sources of multidimensionality found in several different forms of a licensure examination were studied. The relationship between one source of multidimensionality, differential item functioning (DIF) (or factors producing DIF), and content characteristics was explored in an attempt to isolate aspects of training or curriculum that could…

In 1985, Arizona initiated a 5-year pilot test of the Career Ladder Teacher Incentive and Development Program. The program provided alternate avenues for teachers to advance other than by accumulating years of experience and college credits. Data were collected annually through the Career Ladder Perception Assessment Scale Survey, which evaluated…

This paper reports on a study designed to identify the relationships among the context variables of sense of efficacy, teacher empowerment, and school climate as perceived by 1,802 Kansas City (Missouri) teachers. Factors related to teacher sense of efficacy (teaching efficacy and personal efficacy), to teacher empowerment, defined as the…

Classical commitment studies are either sociologically oriented or based in the psychological empirical research tradition. A review of the literature reveals agreement on the multidimensionality and the contextual complexity of commitment, two principles which guide the hypotheses of the present study. This study uses the Administrator and…

Newman (1984) examined the causal relations between math self-concept and math achievement in an 8-year longitudinal study using Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) analyses. He concluded that math self-concept did not influence subsequent math achievement. However, the study suffered in that math self-concept was inferred from a single-item…

Factors affecting 750 Wyoming public school teachers' response rates to a mail survey examined in this study were: personalization of the cover letter and of the envelope; grade level taught (elementary, junior, or senior high); sex of teacher; and regional characteristics (rural area, small town, or large town). Two experimental treatments were…

This document outlines the major points of the first annual status report of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project. Section 1 contains a list of 15 basic principles and assumptions upon which the project is based. Section 2 presents three conclusions drawn at the end of the first year and a half of the project. First,…

This document is the second annual status report of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project. Section 1 describes six documents developed during the project; identifies persons participating in the project; reports that the effective schools research is applicable at all levels of a suburban school system; reports that…

The 1985 Buros-Nebraska Symposium was devoted to the broad issue of the influence of cognitive psychology on testing and measurement. The (1) "Introduction: The Implications of Cognitive Psychology for Testing" (Royce R. Ronning et. al.) lists four major issues addressed by the symposium--cognitive psychology as a basis for questioning some…