The aim of this study was to improve understanding of smokers' potential reactions to genetic testing for smoking-related diseases. One thousand twenty-four respondents completed a postal survey; 186 were smokers. Questions addressed anticipated psychological and behavioral reactions to genetic test results using hypothetical scenarios. Of…

Purpose: The primary goal of this case study was to describe the speech, prosody, and voice characteristics of a mother and daughter with a breakpoint in a balanced 7;13 chromosomal translocation that disrupted the transcription gene, "FOXP2" (cf. J. B. Tomblin et al., 2005). As with affected members of the widely cited KE family, whose…

Purpose: The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) is a community-based program providing primary, acute, and long-term care to frail elderly individuals. A central component of the PACE model is the interdisciplinary care team, which includes both professionals and non-professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine the…

Schools and districts are adopting out-of-school-time (OST) programs such as after-school programs and summer schools to supplement the education of low-achieving students. However, research has painted a mixed picture of their effectiveness. To clarify OST impacts, this synthesis examined research on OST programs for assisting at-risk students in…

In this article, the author describes how she maintains student interest with the use of advanced technology. The author is currently using an assessment tool in her classroom--the Classroom Performance System (CPS)--that actually brings cheers from her students. The CPS provides an objective way to measure student understanding by using…

Based on Inglehart's (1997) idea that the importance of modern values is challenged by a growing importance of postmodern values in postindustrialised societies, we analyse the consequences of students' attempts to integrate (modern) achievement values and (postmodern) well-being values. Since opportunities for value integration are limited,…

Overall spiritual wellness, as well as 4 individual components of spiritual wellness, has been theoretically and empirically linked with depression. Prior to this investigation, no study has examined the relationship between spiritual wellness and depression by using a 4-component measurement model of spiritual wellness. In this study of older…

This research studies the effects of mobility on the high-stakes test scores of a Title I South Central Texas school district. The study involved 10, 5th-grade elementary feeder school populations graduating to the 6th grade in 3 middle schools. The researcher compared the 1st administration scores of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills…

Literature suggests that developing a community of learners is the key to a successful online-learning experience. In this study, the instructor of a multimedia authoring course adopted a synchronous communication tool (Yahoo Messenger) to interact with learners orally on a weekly basis and, thereby, to establish a sense among the learners that…

Teachers may be the most important element of an effective school, but does that mean that K-12 improvement must wait on the ability of schools or systems to recruit, nurture, and retain outstanding teachers? Such a strategy implies that widespread excellence hinges on the ability of publicly funded school systems to attract more than 3.3 million…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…

Taking advantage of the convergence of technology and new insights of teaching and learning, the Ministry of Education of Malaysia has implemented a new educational reform primarily to revise the current curriculum, establish new learning standards, and incorporate the use of technology as an integral part of the learning process. This new…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of Word and Passage Reading Fluency measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks…

Concerns about noncompletion and the quality of the 1st-year student experience have been linked to recent changes in higher education such as modularisation, increased class sizes, greater diversity in the student intake and reduced resources. Improving formative assessment and feedback processes is seen as one way of addressing academic failure,…

In this journal issue, the authors of the focus articles have provided a suite of very stimulating and thoughtful articles. The overarching purpose of this research is to explore the application of principles derived from the view of validity proposed by Kane (2004) to their research on issues related to the measurement of mathematical knowledge…