The preference assessment literature has mainly focused on children and adults with developmental disabilities. To date, minimal research related to preference and reinforcer assessments has been conducted with the elderly population with cognitive impairment. This study assessed the predictive validity of engagement- and selection-based preference assessment formats with two types of reinforcer assessments. One of these reinforcer assessments was engagement-based, and the other one included a task. The participants were three elderly individuals at an adult day program with a formal diagnosis of Dementia and a score less than 24 on the MMSE. The first participant's top items in the each preference assessment were validated in both reinforcer assessments. The second participant's top items from the free operant and MSWO were validated with the engagement-based reinforcer assessment, but the other assessment produced variable responding. The third participant's top items were validated in three out of four reinforcer assessments. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for preference and reinforcer assessments and their utility with the population of elderly adults with cognitive impairments.

The main purpose for undertaking this study is to provide factual information on impost fees and development cost charges in British Columbia. The general aim of the study is to impart a better understanding of the two concepts, particularly with reference to their purpose and the circumstances causing their evolution. This study has four objectives: 1. to determine and discuss some of the major factors and events which prompted the municipalities in British Columbia to consider and adopt the levying of impost fees; 2. to clarify the philosophy and implementation strategies of the impost fee concept and determine the extent of its use in British Columbia prior to the advent of the development cost charge legislation; 3. to determine and discuss some of the major factors and events which prompted the provincial government to abolish impost fees and introduce development cost charges; and, 4. to examine and synthesize the development cost charge legislation to ascertain its philosophy, purpose and the requirements provided therein, as well as to determine the extent of its current use in the province. The information required to satisfy these objectives was collected in three distinct ways: (1) interviews with officials and representatives from various municipalities and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, (2) a questionnaire which was forwarded to 36 localities in the province, and (3) review of the limited amount of literature relating to the subject matter. This study has derived four observations: 1. The impost fee concept evolved from the municipalities' search for an alternate source of revenue to offset the financial liabilities created by their restrictive modes of revenue generation and the increasing demands for additional expenditures. More specifically, this fee was found to be a direct result of municipal strategies to alleviate the cost burdens created by urban population growth. 2. The commonly accepted definition of an impost fee is: a levy which is assessed against a developer by a municipality to defray the municipal costs of constructing or expanding services necessitated by new developments. It was perceived that the basic intent of the impost fee was to meet the demand and costs for new and improved services by imposing a financial requirement on those lands that created the demand. A questionnaire survey, conducted in January and February of 1977 revealed that a number of municipalities had adopted the impost fee concept. Of the 36 survey localities, it was found that 21 or slightly more than 58 per cent levied some form of impost. 3. The demise of the impost fee concept was found to be attributable to the municipalities1 abuse of the land use contract provision of the Municipal Act. Evidence showed the provincial government felt the land use contract contributed to inconsistencies in the development and subdivision approval process, was being used by some municipalities to require excessively high service standards from developers, and was unduly increasing the cost of housing. Further research showed that while the provincial government was sympathetic towards the municipalities' financial problems in terms of financing services for new development areas, it was reluctant to grant municipalities unlimited taxing power to acquire revenues for this purpose. Therefore, the provincial government granted the municipalities the legislative power to impose development cost charges subject to a number of restrictions and requirements, stipulated in the legislation. 4. The purpose of the development cost charge was found to be basically the same as the commonly accepted purpose of the impost fee; that being to: "provide the municipality with a source of revenue so that the municipality may call upon its banked capital cost charges to pay for a major capital expenditure that becomes necessary in relation to its highways, sewer, water, drainage, or park systems". Investigations indicated that the provincial government's philosophy behind the development cost charge provision was to make the legislation regulatory, uniform and taxing. Ancillary to this, "certainty" was to be reinstated in the development process. A survey conducted in July of 1979 revealed that 19 localities have already taken advantage of this legislation and had enacted development cost charge by-laws. A review of the development and subdivision approval process in the Municipality of Richmond showed "that the development cost charge provision of the Municipal Act does not represent the only means available to the municipalities to acquire specific revenues from developers. It was found that by exercising their administrative power, municipalities can enter agreements with developers - much like the land use contract - and contract with them to provide revenues to be used in much the same manner as development cost charges. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

No description available.

Yes / Included in methods commonly used for assessing vocational training are oral assessments (OAs) since, in addition to assessing knowledge to a depth rarely achieved in other forms of testing, they give unique insight into students’ personal attitudes, which are important factors in the workplace. However, OAs require considerable preparation by the assessors, they can be restricted by time and assessor allocation, it is difficult to fully cover the course fairly, and they can put undue stress on the examinees, hence hindering a true expression of their skills and knowledge. OAs can give insight into a student’s personal attitudes, and the purpose here is to find the relationship between OA observed attitudes and those deduced from the computer-aided assessment. For the computer-aided assessments a scheme based on comparing two statements, followed by fuzzy AHP analysis, was used to determine the student’s attitude on such topics as general safety, work area tidiness and cleanliness, care and good use of hand tools and accuracy and testing of equipment. The results from the computer-aided approach were then compared with attitudes on the same topics obtained by oral assessment. For this work the important result was that there were strong correlations between the OA observed attitudes and the computer-aided assessment derived attitudes of the students. It also became clear however that for safety, the attitude of students (and perhaps workers) is more complicated than just having a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ attitude. Social pressure and organisational influence do seem to play a part so influencing or masking the student’s true attitudes. Satisfactory correlations were found between results of students’ attitudes when tested using the OA and computer-aided methods. Further work would need to be done to confirm generalization of substituting OA methods with a computer-aided assessment method.

The need for small and medium size manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) to have access to unbiased advice on best practices and related improvement approaches has been well established. However, this need was not found addressed very effectively in the research literature. Current practice is consultants peddling assessment tools which have the veneer of objectivity, but in reality only highlight the need to purchase their canned solutions. In response, this research attempts to synthesize previous research results and other published assessment methodologies into a taxonomy based assessment methodology (TBAM) which targets the delivery of focused recommendations which target improved performance of the manufacturing enterprise. The assessment methodology which emerges from this research, draws upon two different taxonomies, termed the Manufacturing Enterprise Taxonomy (MET) and the Production System Taxonomy (PST). The MET was developed as one of the deliverables of this research and the PST was developed by a modest modification of previously published research. The TBAM approach was piloted using three different SMEs in order to obtain feedback from the field. As a result TBAM was enhanced using feedback obtained from these three pilot cases. In addition, a review panel process was developed so that a third party review was made of the methodology and its application within the case studies. The review panel was comprised of senior managers which have substantial experience in leading improvements across small and medium size manufacturers. Also, concerns about reliability and validity were addressed and a preliminary set of measures was obtained and evaluated. Based upon this preliminary technique, the validity and reliability results associated with the TBAM approach appear promising.

The purpose of this study was to provide an empirical test of the widely held belief that performance-based assessment provides a fairer picture of English-language learners' mathematical skills and knowledge than does a standardized assessment. Specifically, I compared the performance of 94 third-graders on the measurement subscale of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) mathematics test to their performance on a set of measurement reasoning and applications that was drawn from their third-grade hands-on science curriculum. Then, I present examples within the non-standardized testing setting where students were provided with real-time language-based accommodations as recommended by the research literature. Finally, I looked at how well these students' level of English language proficiency predicted performance on each of the two assessments. English proficiency level failed to predict FCAT performance. It did predict performance on the reasoning and applications tasks. These findings present a challenge to the conventional wisdom that performance-based assessments provide a less-biased picture of ELL's mathematical knowledge than do standardized tests.

In Canada, many large-scale assessments are administered in English and French. The validity of decisions made from using these assessments critically depends on the meaningfulness and comparability of scores from using different versions of assessments. This research study focused on examining (1) the degree of construct comparability and (2) possible sources of incomparability of the Canadian English and French versions of the programme for international student assessment (PISA), 2003 problem-solving measure (PSM). In this study, statistical and qualitative linguistic reviews were used to examine construct comparability and potential sources of incomparability. These procedures sought to (1) determine the degree of comparability of the measure (2) identify if there are items that function differentially and (3) identify the potential sources of differential item functioning in the two language versions of the measure. Evidence from these procedures was used to determine the comparability of the inferences based on test scores from PISA 2003, PSM. A comparative analysis of the two language versions of the measure indicated that there were some psychometric differences at the scale and item level between the two languages which may jeopardize the comparability of assessment results.

Since early European settlement of Aotearoa New Zealand Māori children have been constructed as deficient learners in the education system, and this construction continues to undermine their learning at school today (Butchers, 1930; Macfarlane, 2005; Ministry of Education, 1998, 2005). Educational assessment practices have largely contributed to this discourse, because they reflect western ideologies regarding the reasons for testing, who does the testing, what counts as important to test, how results are interpreted and so on (Bishop & Glynn, 1999). Further, the tests used have been developed with monolingual and monocultural European children. Reading acquisition and language development have been implicated as major learning deficits for Māori children (Crooks & Flockton, 2005; Ministry of Education, 2006; Wagemaker, 1992). And a body of research signals that the reading related language skills for phonological awareness and narrative ability are linked to reading acquisition for English (Adams, 1990; Botting, 2002; Rollins, McCabe & Bliss, 2000). My research is an enquiry into how Māori children respond to reading related language assessments for narratives and phonological awareness, taking into account their lived experiences and cultural practices. My aim is to create possibilities for alternative discourses to the deficit discourse. With support from a local Kaumātua and school whānau I worked as a participant-observer in two classrooms in two schools for one year, following 17 Māori children. Critical theory, socio cultural theory and Kaupapa Māori theory informed my position. The techniques I used to approach my research practice and analyse my data reflect the influence of these frames as I understand and interpret them. Throughout the year of field work, I undertook a range of activities, including conversations with parents, children and school personnel, observations of class 'lessons' and the teaching strategies used by the teacher, visits to the children's homes, collection of school records, and administration of assessments related to reading, narrative tasks, and phonological awareness according to a standardized English test, the Preschool and Primary Inventory of Phonological Awareness (PIPA) (Dodd, Crosbie, MacIntosh, Teitzel & Ozanne, 2000) and a specifically designed set of Māori language tasks. I used video and audio recording for some activities, and wrote my observation notes while observing or immediately following an event or session. My findings showed that the home and school contexts for the children were largely bicultural and bilingual. The children were living their lives in ways vastly different to monolingual and moncultural Pākehā (European) children. Those who had been at school for approximately five years were reading at or above their age, in line with traditional reading norms, despite showing relatively poor phonological awareness skills determined by the 'standard' test procedures. The 'standard' testing process for both phonological awareness and narrative ability presented most of the children as language deficient and in need of intervention, or at least in need of ongoing monitoring. However, my analyses driven from the theoretical frames mentioned above presented the children with language strengths and difference. These children were clearly able, achieving learners. My study highlighted the fact that the bilingual and bicultural knowledge and skills of Māori children are not valued in the predominantly monolingual and mono-cultural education system, and this has serious implications for their learning and for perpetuating the cycle of deficiency construction because the children are seen not to meet the requirements of the system and its assessment protocols. Further, regardless of phonological awareness and narrative 'ability', by the time Māori children have been at school for a period of time, approximately five years, they are able to read English and understand the written text. This finding questions the relevance of the salience generally attributed to phonological awareness as a crucial building block for bilingual children who are proficient in or exposed to a non-alphabetic language, such as te reo Māori. I argue that the assessments used in schools are inappropriate for bilingual and bicultural Māori children. When the children's language skills were analysed using alternative systems to the 'standard' methods prevalent in schools, they were able and achieving learners. They were not learners 'at-risk' but learners 'at-promise', to use Tabachnick and Bloch's terms (1995). This study provides empirical evidence that bilingual and bicultural Māori children's learning needs are not met by the current school system. Continued research in this area will strengthen the necessity for changes to be made in the education system, changes that are sensitive to, and value, linguistic and cultural difference in the classroom. In the areas of pre-service teacher and speech-language therapist education, and ongoing professional development for educationalists, linguistic and cultural differences need to be presented afresh. Educational assessment practices must change to recognise learning strengths of Māori children and to stop the perpetuation of deficiency constructions. Schools have to be willing to understand more fully the home contexts of their students and to engage in teaching practices that are cognizant of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Without such fundamental changes in our view of the cultural and linguistic strengths of Māori children, very little real change can occur despite lofty words and plethora of strategies and policies.

In Canada, many large-scale assessments are administered in English and French. The validity of decisions made from using these assessments critically depends on the meaningfulness and comparability of scores from using different versions of assessments. This research study focused on examining (1) the degree of construct comparability and (2) possible sources of incomparability of the Canadian English and French versions of the programme for international student assessment (PISA), 2003 problem-solving measure (PSM). In this study, statistical and qualitative linguistic reviews were used to examine construct comparability and potential sources of incomparability. These procedures sought to (1) determine the degree of comparability of the measure (2) identify if there are items that function differentially and (3) identify the potential sources of differential item functioning in the two language versions of the measure. Evidence from these procedures was used to determine the comparability of the inferences based on test scores from PISA 2003, PSM. A comparative analysis of the two language versions of the measure indicated that there were some psychometric differences at the scale and item level between the two languages which may jeopardize the comparability of assessment results.

In Canada, many large-scale assessments are administered in English and French. The validity of decisions made from using these assessments critically depends on the meaningfulness and comparability of scores from using different versions of assessments. This research study focused on examining (1) the degree of construct comparability and (2) possible sources of incomparability of the Canadian English and French versions of the programme for international student assessment (PISA), 2003 problem-solving measure (PSM). In this study, statistical and qualitative linguistic reviews were used to examine construct comparability and potential sources of incomparability. These procedures sought to (1) determine the degree of comparability of the measure (2) identify if there are items that function differentially and (3) identify the potential sources of differential item functioning in the two language versions of the measure. Evidence from these procedures was used to determine the comparability of the inferences based on test scores from PISA 2003, PSM. A comparative analysis of the two language versions of the measure indicated that there were some psychometric differences at the scale and item level between the two languages which may jeopardize the comparability of assessment results. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate