Response to intervention (RTI) has been discussed as a new model of assessment. Although the basic process by which RTI works has received frequent attention in the literature, the available research leaves several important questions unanswered (Kavale et al. in Learn Disabil Q 28(1): 2-16, 2005). One concept within RTI that has received little…

Recently, within the field of special education, attention has been accorded to the conceptualization and measurement of family outcomes. The Family Quality of Life (FQOL) Scale is an instrument that can be used to measure family outcomes for families who have children with disabilities, and it has been demonstrated to have psychometric validity.…

The Best Practices for Mental Health in Child Welfare Consensus Conference focused on developing guidelines in five key areas (screening and assessment, psychosocial interventions, psychopharmacologic treatment, parent engagement, and youth empowerment) related to children's mental health. This paper provides an overview of issues related to the…

Background: Negative trauma-related cognitions have been found to be a significant factor in the maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults. Initial studies of such appraisals in trauma-exposed children and adolescents suggest that this is an important line of research in youth, yet empirically validated measures for use with…

Evidence continues to maintain that the use of antecedent variables (i.e., instructional practices, and environmental characteristics) increase prosocial and adaptive behaviors of students with disabilities (e.g., Kern et al. in J Appl Behav Anal 27(1):7-19, 1994; Stichter et al. in Behav Disord 30:401-418, 2005). This study extends the literature…

Background: Behavioural phenotypes associated with genetic syndromes have been extensively investigated in order to generate rich descriptions of phenomenology, determine the degree of specificity of behaviours for a particular syndrome, and examine potential interactions between genetic predispositions for behaviour and environmental influences.…

Discrete-trials teaching (DTT) is commonly used to implement applied behavior analysis treatment for children with autism. The authors investigated a revised self-instructional manual for teaching university students to implement a 21-component DTT procedure to teach three tasks to confederates role-playing children with autism. Also, as a…

Are there management tools that professionals use in business that academics have used successfully in higher education? The answer to that question is "yes", and the balanced scorecard (BSC) is one such tool. The author reports on measures that administrators chose for the BSCs of 2 educational institutions whose successes have been…

The European Union launched the Lisbon Strategy in 2000 with the aim of establishing itself as the world's most powerful economy. The importance of job quality has returned to the top of the European employment and social policy agenda. As targets are set, significant progress has been made in the creation of indicators. In this study, we compute…

This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date, empirical and methodological view over the new scenarios and environments for language teaching and learning recently emerged (e.g. blended learning, e-learning, ubiquitous learning, social learning, autonomous learning or lifelong learning), and also over some of the new approaches to language…

Earlier research on assessment suggests that even when Native English Speaker (NSE) and Non-Native English Speaker (NNES) writers make similar errors, faculty tend to assess the NNES writers more harshly. Studies indicate that evaluators may be particularly severe when grading NNES writers holistically. In an effort to provide more recent data on…

This report presents the value-added models that will be used to measure school and teacher effectiveness in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) in the 2010-2011 school year. It updates the earlier technical report, "Measuring Value Added for IMPACT and TEAM in DC Public Schools." The earlier report described the methods used…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the representation of other cultures in award-winning picture books from the United States, Australia, and Great Britain between 1960 and 2009. Not only was the cultural content of children's literature over the past fifty years investigated, but the protocol created to evaluate the books was a newly…

This chapter addresses different modalities of assessment, provides an overview of the assessment processes of the basic skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) tested by the Cambridge First Certificate in English (FCE) examination, and explores the ways in which the FCE Online Course and Tester--the resources provided through the…

IMPACT is the District of Columbia Public Schools' (DCPS) system for assessing and rewarding the performance of teachers and other school-based staff. This system is called IMPACT because the adults serving in the DCPS have the ability to make a dramatic, positive impact on students' lives. The system is designed to help staff become more…