Within the realm of school-based interventions, implementation integrity is important for practical, legal, and ethical purposes. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that proper monitoring of implementation integrity is often absent from both research and practice. School psychology practitioners and researchers have reported that a major barrier to…

Background: Practitioners investigating cases of suspected child maltreatment often disagree whether a child is subject to or at risk of abuse or neglect in the family and, if so, what to do about such abuse or neglect. Structured decision-making is considered to be a solution to the problem of subjective judgments and decisions. Objective: This…

During family style dining (FSD), caregivers are encouraged to sit with children at the table to support, promote, and facilitate conversations. FSD is considered a best practice in child care and is encouraged by many early childhood agencies. However, there is no current research documenting the effects of FSD on mealtime interactions in the…

Adult second/foreign language acquisition is extremely challenging for many learners, with pronunciation often the one aspect in which otherwise very proficient language users fall short. Although a great deal of research has found that formal instruction in phonetics/phonology may improve learner pronunciation, no study has yet addressed the…

An ePortfolio Assessment Institute (AI) structured as a faculty development opportunity was undertaken to increase faculty confidence in teaching and assessing ePortfolios and to collect reliable data about student performance on four learning outcomes associated with an institutionwide ePortfolio initiative. Faculty raters participated in the…

Objective: There is a difference between interventions as planned and as delivered in practice. Unless we know what was actually delivered, we cannot understand "what worked" in effective interventions. This study aimed to (a) assess whether an established taxonomy of 53 smoking cessation behavior change techniques (BCTs) may be applied…

Over time, criticisms related to the technical rigor of informal reading inventories (IRIs) have led many to question using these assessment instruments for high- or low-stakes purposes. In this article, I examine reliability evidence reported in 11 new and updated IRIs and make comparisons with Spector's earlier analysis that revealed fewer than…

Research Findings: The present study provides an initial descriptive comparison of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Third Edition (ECERS-3) in a relatively large sample in 1 state that uses the Environment Rating Scales within its Quality Rating and Improvement System…

Children with hearing impairment (HI) are at an increased risk of developing speech and language problems similar to those of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), including difficulties with phonology and grammar. This study investigated similarities and differences in phonological and grammatical production between children with…

Research on the age of learning effect on second language learners' foreign accents utilizes human judgments to determine speech production outcomes. Inferences drawn from analyses of these ratings are then used to inform theories. The present study focuses on rater differences in the age of learning effect research. Three groups of raters who…

Recent findings in creativity research suggest that how creativity is operationalized may have a profound influence on theories of creative production. In this study, two paradigms--divergent thinking and creative problem solving--were compared on several indices of creativity while keeping the problem constant. Participants were students from a…

The aim of this study was to provide psychometric evidence related to the "Behavioral and Emotional Screening System Teacher Rating Scale-Preschool" form's (BESS TRS-P) ability to identify emerging problems in preschool children. Reliability and validity associated with screener scores were compared by analyzing teacher ratings of…

This study sought to validate a new measure, the Classroom Cohesion Survey (CCS), designed to examine the relationship between teachers and classroom assistants in autism support classrooms. Teachers, classroom assistants, and external observers showed good inter-rater agreement on the CCS and good internal consistency for all scales. Simple…

Concepts from the Response-to-Intervention (RTI) Model were used to promote a successful course outcome for students at risk for making low grades in an entry-level college course. The first exam served as a universal screener to identify students who could potentially benefit from RTI assistance. The researchers developed a tiered coaching…

We examine the factor structure of scores from the CLASS-S protocol obtained from observations of middle school classroom teaching. Factor analysis has been used to support both interpretations of scores from classroom observation protocols, like CLASS-S, and the theories about teaching that underlie them. However, classroom observations contain…