The theme for the 58th annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) was Bridging Cultures Through Literacy. In the first section of the Yearbook, Parker Fawson's presidential address captures the unique nature of ALER and its role in his professional development, and then moved beyond to capture the changing…

Large-class English teaching is an inexorable trend in many Chinese universities and colleges, which leads to a strange and serious phenomenon that most students' English is ironically but vividly described as "the dumb English". Therefore, cultivating students' communicative skills and developing their language competence has become a…

The level of learners' expertise has been used as a metric and diagnostic mechanism of instruction. This metric influences mental effort directly according to the applications of cognitive load theory. Cognitive efficiency, an optimal measurement technique of expertise, was developed by Kalyuga and Sweller to replace instructional efficiency in…

The students at Newburgh Free Academy (NFA), a high school located in Newburgh, New York, organized their own "Dancing with the Teachers" contest in an effort to raise scholarship funds. Their creativity paid off. More than 850 tickets were sold at $5 each to attend this evening of entertainment, contributing more than $4,000 to…

This case study explains varied perspectives on a difficult dialogue. It provides recommendations for student affairs professionals and faculty members who work with students and teach courses in content areas that are related to diversity, social justice, and privilege.

This paper seeks to explore the actual educational setting, to see if there are appropriate conditions to develop Collective Capacity (CC) in educational institutions. It sees CC as the new land mark in work philosophy and presents a theoretical approach to the concept. Based on a theoretical framework, the authors underline what the primers for…

A wide range of developments in science in recent years has altered our views of our world and ourselves in significant ways. These views challenge the direction of applied science and technology in many fields, including those associated with learning and performance in organizations. At the same time, they open up opportunities and…

Research suggests that allowing individuals to control their own practice schedule has a positive effect on motor learning. In this experiment we examined the effect of task difficulty and self-regulated practice strategies on motor learning. The task was to move a mouse-operated cursor through pattern arrays that differed in two levels of…

Basic issues in understanding Item Response Theory (IRT), or Latent Trait Theory, measurement models are discussed. These theories have gained popularity because of their promise to provide greater precision and control in measurement involving both achievement and attitude instruments. IRT models implement probabilistic techniques that yield…

Two experiments tested the Conceptual Dependency Theory, stating that verbs are represented in memory as combinations of actions and relations encoding underlying conceptual structure. Experiment I results supported the conceptual complexity hypothesis, while II rejected complexity for imagery as the predictor of performance. (CHK)

The development of a new technique, the Relative Difficulty Ratio (RDR), is described, as well as how it can be used to determine the difficulty level of a test so that meaningful inter-test difficulty comparisons can be made. Assumptions made in computing RDR include: 1) each item must be scored dichotomously with only one answer choice keyed as…

Two techniques for writing achievement test items to accompany instructional materials were contrasted: (1) generating items from statements of instructional objectives, and (2) generating items from rules for transforming instructional statements (adapted from Bormuth). Items of each type were written by two experienced item writers. Subjects…

Available from: Comparative Administration Research Institute, Kent State University Press, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242. (IRT)

Among children four to six years of age who were tested for their detection of melodic transformations, performance was superior for transformations that changed contour, for greater changes in contour, and for faster presentation rates. Melodies transformed by reordering tones were as discriminable as those transformed by inserting novel…

Analysis of language samples collected from 110 linguistically normal one- to four-year-olds indicated a direct relationship between chronological age, mean length of utterance, and percent of complex sentences. Analysis of the complex sentences in each sample indicated subcategories for each type of complexity with their own order of acquisition.…