No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Little research has been done which shows what the prewriting strategies of students are and what the usefulness of prewriting models are in the production of drafts. These case studies were designed to describe the prewriting strategies of four twelfth grade, advanced placement English students as they composed through three impromptu writing session, beginning with the time they received a prompt and directions to begin until they felt they had completed an essay. Each of three composing aloud sessions was used to draw a writing protocol, from which data were coded in five seconds intervals. Two basic sections were coded: strategies, the means students used to recall cognitively stored data (e.g., making associations, asking questions); and acts, anything physical the students did (e.g., transcribing, commenting). The first composing aloud session was used to draw data from which the students’ intact, acquired strategies could be determined. Given a one-word prompt, the students were asked to use as much time prewriting as they wished and to write an essay. The students were given prewriting models, Rohman’s meditation and Larson’s questioning strategy, for the next two impromptu writing sessions. They were asked to write an essay after having used the models. The students recounted their writing histories in the final session. Findings indicated that these students used l either an associational (the prompts were associated with single word nouns and phrases) or an analytical, (the question "What is it?" guided their search) strategy when they revealed their intact, acquired strategies. Prewriting served as a time for the students to develop a thesis sentence; when that task was completed, they began their essays. Rohman’s was perceived as too restrictive and limiting, while Larson’s was completely rejected. / Ed. D. / incomplete_metadata

Recent national longitudinal studies of special education students indicate that schools should concentrate on developing students' skills matched to the requirements of their potential occupations. Evidence suggests that the experience of career development among adolescents with learning disabilities is especially frustrating without early exploration and planning. This study investigates the value of using available psychometric data in assisting the school psychologist and other professionals to make initial exploratory estimates of vocational aptitude without referring the student for specialized vocational assessment. General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) scores were used in multiple regression analyses to examine the predictive relationships existing between the two instruments. The population studied included 172 adolescents wi th learning disabilities enrolled in a public school division. The analyses in this study reveal a high degree of validity between the GATB and WAIS-R. However, the prediction equation appears unsuitable for using the WAIS-R subtests for predicting GATB aptitudes. Aptitude F explains the highest degree of variance. Other squared multiple regressions range as low as .13 for Aptitude Q to as high as .52 for Aptitude S. Results suggest that even though the GATB and WAIS-R share common variance, there is enough independent information provided by each test to warrant employing both in order to insure that the students' vocational aptitudes are fully diagnosed. Implications for school psychologists and other professionals doing exploratory assessments of vocational aptitude from available WAIS-R subtests are discussed, as are assessment issues regarding adolescents with learning disabilities. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study is to show possible relationships between certain environmental, personality, and scholastic factors and difficulties in written language.

All prelicensure baccalaureate nursing students are expected to graduate with baseline knowledge and clinical judgment skills that will allow them to provide safe and competent patient care to individuals across the lifespan. Research has shown that clinical judgment in new graduates is at an all-time low. There is an abundance of research on how to cultivate clinical judgment skills in both the didactic and simulations settings; however, very few studies have been conducted exploring how to assess and build clinical judgment skills in students in the clinical setting. A pilot study, followed by a quasi-experimental study, and a related correlational study, were performed to explore how clinical judgment can be assessed and enhanced in the prelicensure baccalaureate clinical setting. These studies included outcome variables of knowledge and self-confidence. The studies were guided by Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory as well as Tanner’s Clinical Judgment Model.The pilot study used an adapted form of the focus group method and aimed to determine the best way to apply the structured debriefing method of Debriefing for Meaningful Learning (DML) in the clinical setting. The pilot study included clinical faculty (N = 4) in a baccalaureate nursing program at a small college in Upstate N.Y. The study began with training on DML, followed by an asynchronous pre implementation survey where participants provided answers to interviewer questions via Google forms. Next the study involved 3 weeks of implementing DML with clinical groups in the clinical setting and concluded with a post implementation synchronous focus group that met via Zoom©. The results of the pilot study led to a few adaptations in the DML process including the creation of a faculty script, a student guide, a new concept map, and a change to when students were expected to complete the concept map during their clinical day. The quasi-experimental study took place at the same college and included participants (N = 62) in the course NSG 323 – Concepts II in both the Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters. The intervention was DML and took place during three clinical experiences (one per week) in the first half of the semester. Participants and clinical faculty completed pretest measures in the week prior to beginning their clinical experiences. Pretest clinical judgment was measured during a simulation scenario by the participants’ clinical faculty using the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric (LCJR). The LCJR is a 4-point Likert-type scale measuring 11 dimensions of clinical judgment under four subscales of noticing, interpreting, responding, and reflecting. Self- confidence was measured using a revision of the NLN Student Self-Confidence subscale of the NLN Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning instrument. The revised scale is an 11-item Likert-type scale. The revision involved changing items that include the word “simulation” to the word “clinical experience.” Knowledge was measured, posttest only, using scores on the second Unit Exam of the course. A mixed 2 x 2 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) followed by simple main effects t tests were used to analyze the clinical judgment and self- confidence data, and independent samples t tests was used to analyze exam scores. Results for clinical judgment did not reveal a significant interaction between groups and time (F (1, 60) = .21, p = .652). There was a statistically significant main effect found for group on LCJR scores overall (F (1, 60) = 7.65, p = .008). Both pretest and posttest mean scores for the LCJR were lower in the intervention group (M = 22.54 and M = 25.88 respectively) than in the control group (M = 27.75 and M = 30.33 respectively). The results for self-confidence did not reveal any significant interaction between groups and time (F (1, 59) = 1.44, p = .235). The mean scores for the posttest were higher in the intervention group (M = 42.65) than in the control group (M = 40.83). Results also showed that while self-confidence scores from pretest to posttest for the intervention group increased, the scores from pretest to posttest for the control group decreased; however, the differences in groups did not reach statistical significance (F (1, 60) = .45, p = .504). An independent samples t test showed no significant difference in Unit II exam scores, measuring knowledge, between groups (p = .451, d = .20). A correlational study was completed exploring the relationships between clinical judgment, knowledge, and self-confidence using the data obtained in the quasi-experimental study. This study also explored the differences between groups for each correlation, and whether having prior health care experience impacted each outcome variable. Results showed no statistically significant correlation between pretest clinical judgment and pretest self-confidence scores (r = .09, p = .502), nor between posttest clinical judgment and self-confidence scores (r = -.22, p = .085) for the entire sample. However, there was a significant negative relationship between posttest self-confidence and clinical judgment in the control group (r = -.36, p = .034). The differences between groups in the pretest correlations of clinical judgment to self-confidence (zobs = .298, p = .764) and in the posttest correlations of clinical judgment to self-confidence (zobs = -1.61, p = .107) were not significant. There was also no statistically significant relationship revealed between both the pretest (r = -.10, p = .439) and posttest (r = -.18, p = .163) self-confidence scores and knowledge, as measured by Unit II exam scores for the entire sample, as well as within groups. The difference in correlations between groups on both the pretest self-confidence scores and exam scores (zobs = -1.29, p = .197) and posttest self-confidence scores and exam scores (zobs = -.643, p = .522) were not statistically significant. However, both pretest (r = .36, p = .004) and posttest (r = .39, p = .002) clinical judgment scores and posttest- only exam scores were revealed to have a positive statistically significant correlation for the entire sample, as well as in the intervention group only (r = .59, p = .002 and r = .632, p < .001 respectively). The difference in correlations between pretest clinical judgment and knowledge was significant (zobs = -2.29, p = .023). The correlation between posttest clinical judgment scores and exam scores for control group was .084, and .632 for the experimental group. The difference in correlations between posttest and knowledge was ~ .55, also statistically significant (zobs = -2.45, p = .0151). There is a long-held understanding in nursing education that the teaching-learning strategies in the clinical environment need to be evaluated and improved. While not revealed to have a statistically significant effect in this initial study, the use of structured debriefing methods should still be further explored in the clinical setting to determine whether the process can be an acceptable pedagogical approach to improve knowledge and clinical judgment in the clinical setting. The moderate positive statistically significant relationship between clinical judgment and knowledge found in this study aligns with Tanner’s (2006) theory that the development of both knowledge and clinical judgment is a related and cyclical process where both should be emphasized. The inverse relationship found between self-confidence and clinical judgment/knowledge, while not statistically significant in this study, suggests that students will benefit from honest and constructive feedback on their performance to accurately evaluate themselves and their ability to perform in the clinical setting.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a group of adolescents with the learning disorder of dyslexia and a group of adolescents without dyslexia in regard to their ability to make realistic drawings. Subjects selected for the study were from a suburban junior high school in which a random sample was taken of both dyslexic and non-dyslexic students. Each was given three standardized drawing tasks, including a still-life drawing, a contour drawing, and a perspective drawing. The drawings were judged by five evaluators on a continuum of realistic to non-realistic. The ratings were then analyzed by the application of the Mann-Whitney U-Test, which indicated that there are no significant differences in the abilities of the two groups to render drawings realistically.

Perspective and Purpose Recent investigations by Steffe, Richards, and von Glasersfeld (1979) have indicated that addition and subtraction problem-solving competencies are developmental in nature and that these competencies build upon counting abilities. They postulate that, in beginning addition and subtraction, a type of problem-solving strategy termed counting-all develops prior to another kind of strategy termed counting-on (for addition) and counting-back (for subtraction). If these tasks are developmental, one may assume that students approach the tasks in qualitatively different ways based upon their developmental levels. Neo-Piagetian researchers have postulated that a quantitative measure of development explains the qualitatively different ways in which children react to the same cognitive task at different stages of development. The measure, termed mental space or M-Space, describes the number of schemes which may be coordinated at one time. First graders, the majority of whom have an M-Space of a+2 or a+3, are capable of solving addition and subtraction word problems by utilizing the counting-all and/or the counting-on (back) strategies. Given this information, the purpose of this study was to determine what effect M-Space level has on the strategy a subject uses to solve problems when he is trained on a strategy which either matches or mismatches his M-Space level. Design To determine whether a match between M-Space and strategy demand is necessary or whether instruction will facilitate the chunking of schemes which allows the developmental task to be solved by a strategy which would otherwise be above the subject's M-Space level, the following steps occurred: one hundred thirty-nine first graders were pretested to identify those who could count to sixteen, perform numeral/number correspondence to sixteen, but could not solve addition and subtraction number fact problems to sixteen. One hundred fifteen subjects meeting these criteria were given the Cucumber Test and Backward Digit Span Test to assess their M-Space levels. After eliminating subjects before and during training, 50 subjects remained. Twenty-six subjects with an a+2 M-Space were divided into two training groups. Approximately half of the group was trained to use an a+2 strategy (the count-all strategy) to solve addition and subtraction word problems and the other half of the group was trained to use an a+3 strategy (the count-on (back) strategy). The same training procedure was used for the twenty-four subjects with an M-Space of a+3. Four to five weeks later, a delayed posttest consisting of four addition and four subtraction problems and one each of three types of transfer problems was presented. Results Mann-Whitney test results indicated that there were significantly fewer a+3 responses by the subjects with an a+2 M-Space who were trained to use an a+3 strategy than there were for subjects with an a+3 M-Space trained to use an a+3 strategy. However, there was no significant difference between those with an a+2 M-Space trained on an a+2 strategy and those with an a+2 M-Space trained on an a+3 strategy. Results of other research questions indicated that subjects gave similar responses to transfer problems which varied by material or additional variable; for subjects with an a+3 M-Space trained on an a+3 strategy, there were significantly more a+3 addition responses than subtraction responses; the implied comparison subtraction problem was answered incorrectly more often than straight take-away subtraction problems, and students tended to devise simple addition and subtraction problems and solve them by using memorized number facts. Discussion The findings indicate that more study is warranted for the application of the M-Space construct to a theory of how mathematical knowledge develops sequentially, the different ways in which addition and subtraction tasks can be conceptualized, and the instructional implications of applying a developmentally based theory of instruction to mathematics problem-solving. / Ph. D.

The Virginia Employment Commission's Job Service has implemented an automated testing procedure to refer applicants to job openings. This procedure, Validity Generalization (VG) testing, utilizes the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) to assess and predict ability for successful performance in all occupations. The purpose of this study was to assess applicants' reactions to VG testing and to evaluate VG' s impact on applicants' subsequent placement outcomes. Twelve research questions were developed to examine applicants' attitudes toward 1) the GATB's useful-ness as an ability test and referral tool, 2) the services provided by the Job Service, and 3) their job. Overall findings revealed certain important trends. First, although initial reactions to VG were favorable, applicants' attitudes twelve weeks later were much less favorable, indicating dissatisfaction with the outcome of Job Service placement eff0rts. Only 7% of applicants tested were placed through VG referral. Second, findings indicated that VG testing produced no significant negative impact on applicant subgroups, such as minorities, females, Veterans, etc., relative to other applicants. Finally, results suggested that applicants placed through VG referral were no more satisfied with those jobs, perceived them to be no better person/job 'matches', and were no less likely to turnover than applicants placed through other means. Due to insufficient sample sizes for many analyses, the reliability of certain findings is uncertain. It was recommended that the VEC increase the number of applicant referrals made through VG, ensure that computer-maintained records are accurate and accessible and that Job Service personnel more-stringently follow the 'top-down' rank-ordered referral procedures which optimize the effectiveness of VG testing. / M.S.