Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1976. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-86).

The Structure-of-Intellect - Learning Abilities Test (SOI-LA) (Meeker, 1975) has an enthusiastic following in the USA, but is little-known in Australia. It is based on the Structure-of-Intellect model of J P Guilford, and through a series of up to 26 subtests, purports to identify 14 general learning abilities. Forms are designed to cater for students from Kindergarten to adult. In NSW, classroom teachers can have support for students with learning difficulties through the Support Teacher program; this support often falls far short of need, as there is a paucity of time and material resources. There is a need for a tool which can identify areas of both strength and weakness efficiently and suggest effective strategies to cater for the identified weaknesses; the Meeker paradigm is purported to address this need with a diagnostic approach which identifies learning disabilities which underlie and serve to maintain school-based learning difficulties, and prescribes materials and approaches for remediation. This study explores the first part of the Meeker paradigm, the diagnostic approach of the Structure-of-Intellect - Learning Abilities Test. This exploration is undertaken in the context of four rural Support Teachers and their student with learning difficulties from Grades 2-6. Rather than consider questions of the Test's validity, this study was designed to explore the Test's utility in the Support Teacher context, by giving the Support Teachers a working knowledge of the concepts of SOI-LA, and to compare the application of their knowledge with the information about their students' learning disabilities from the Test results. Problems are evident with the Support Teachers' knowledge and understanding of their students' disabilities; whist they felt comfortable about the approach which the Test takes, they felt they did not know their students well enough to make informed judgements about their disabilities. It was apparent from the study that the Support Teachers' understanding of the concepts of the Test was comparatively superficial, despite their impression that they did understand well. Several difficulties with the instrument itself are highlighted by this study; the assumptions underlying the derivation of the general ability scores are questioned, and the suitability of Test Forms for a learning disabled population of this age is open to criticism. The Structure-of-Intellect - Learning Abilities Test may have utility as an instrument for gaining information about a student's disability on an individual basis, and may be best in the hands of the School Counsellor.

The Campanian Iles Formation of the Mesaverde Group in northwestern Colorado contains a stacked series of some 11 shoreline sequences that form clastic wedges extending east and southeastwards from the Sevier orogenic belt to the Western Interior Seaway. Iles Formation shorelines and their alluvial and coastal plain equivalents (Neslen Formation, Trail and Rusty members of the Ericson Formation) are well exposed from Utah and from southern Wyoming into northwestern Colorado. The Iles Clastic Wedge was examined in the subsurface Piceance Basin and at outcrops in Meeker and south of Rangely, NW Colorado. The clastic wedge contains low-accommodation regressive-transgressive sequences (8-39 m thick) of Loyd Sandstones, Sego Sandstone, Corcoran Member, and Cozzette Member and their updip-equivalent Neslen Formation strata. Facies associations of the sandstone succession indicate storm-wave dominated coasts that transition seaward into offshore/prodelta mudstones with thin-bedded sandstones and extend landward into tidal/fluvial channels and coal-bearing strata; facies associations also indicate interdeltaic coastal embayments with moderate tidal influence. 14, 75-km-long Piceance Basin transects (dip and strike oriented) makes it possible to evaluate coastline variability, and the progressive southeasterly pinchout of the 11 coastline tongues within the larger Iles Clastic Wedge. The thickness and great updip-downdip extent of the Iles stratigraphic sequences (compared to the underlying Blackhawk or overlying Rollins sequences) support previous observations of a low accommodation setting during this time. It has been suggested that this low accommodation was caused by combined effects of embryonic Laramide uplifts and Sevier subsidence across the region. Uplift or greatly reduced subsidence across the Western Interior Seaway would have caused an increase in coastal embayments as well as generally accelerated coastal regressions and transgressions in this 3.3 My interval. / text