In 1991, a student learning outcomes assessment was conducted at Wenatchee Valley College, Washington. All English 101 students in the winter and spring quarters of 1990 wrote a 2-hour final exam. Winter quarter students wrote on the same topic while spring quarter students wrote on one of three randomly assigned topics. Five English 101…

Four papers describe a study of the use of holistic writing assessment procedures in a pretest and posttest manner to determine improvement of 10th graders' writing skills. "Problem and Context" (James E. McLean) briefly describes the project and introduces the other three papers. "Holistic Scoring Procedures for Scoring Writing…

Various parallel forms of the NTE (National Teacher Examinations) Test of Professional Knowledge (NTETPK) have been administered to examinees aspiring to initial teacher certification since 1982. To confirm that recent reported scores are comparable to those from earlier forms, the stability of the score scale was studied using section…

The stability of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) was studied by examining its performance over a 5-year interval with 16 non-handicapped children aged 45 to 61 months at the beginning of the study. Global scale stability coefficients (corrected for restriction in range) for Time 1 testing (age 4 years) and Time 4 testing (age 9…

The construct validity of the Attitudes of Professional Autonomy (APA) as a proxy measure of professional orientation was studied. The sample consisted of all teachers in 94 schools in 6 districts in Louisiana, closely representing the statewide distribution of all schools by level and socioeconomic status. Usable data were received from 1,921…

This paper investigates the role of cohesion in oral proficiency testing. This study analyzed the cohesion of oral reports given by 16 Cypriot high school students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) using a modification of M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan's rating scale. It then compared the objective cohesion ratings with impressionistic…

The design, administration, revision, and validation of the Southeast Asian Summer Studies Institute proficiency examinations are reported. The examinations were created as parallel language proficiency tests in each of five languages: Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. Four tests were developed in each language: multiple-choice…

This study was undertaken to develop and field test an instrument designed to measure attitudes of middle school mathematics teachers toward low achievers in mathematics. Three 15-item subscales designed to measure teacher beliefs, feelings, and intended behaviors toward low achievers in mathematics are contained in the Likert-type scale entitled:…

Researchers have been limited in their ability to examine multiple constructs simultaneously due to the constraints imposed by traditional statistical methods. The most notable limitations include the need for a relatively large sample size while restricting the variables to a relatively small number. The application of a newly discovered…

This study attempted to develop a reliable and valid instrument for assessing work environment and continuous quality improvement efforts in the non-academic sectors of colleges and universities particularly those institutions who have adopted Total Quality Management programs. A model of a work environment for continuous quality improvement was…

Whether the construct of adaptive behavior, which has been developed and operationalized in western countries, could be successfully operationalized in a non-western country, Indonesia, was studied. Focus was on delineating procedures for cross-cultural adaptation and operationalization of the construct; creating an operationalization of the…

The Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES) of Victoria, Australia provides courses in English as a Second Language to non-English speaking migrants. Reviews currently under way are attempting to determine the effectiveness of this program and to find ways that might be used to help teachers assess the development of the students and to diagnose…

The validation of a classroom observation instrument to be used in evaluating teacher interns under the Kentucky Teacher Intern Program is described. The validation project began in 1988. Fourteen educators from state universities comprised a jury that judged the initial version of the instrument and compared it with the instrument previously…

A study examined the use of cloze procedure as a measure of learning from content instruction. Subjects were 35 physician assistant (PA) students in a cancer prevention course and 31 education students (ED) enrolled in reading instruction courses. Cloze passages were constructed from published selections on the reading process and occupationally…

The diagnostic test combines an individual reading inventory, a reading comprehension test, and a work analysis test to determine and verify the basic reading level of students, locate individual reading problems, compare reading comprehension to vocabulary level, and locate deficiencies in phonetic and structural analysis skills. For use in…