This comprehensive "Handbook" focuses on the most used polytomous item response theory (IRT) models. These models help us understand the interaction between examinees and test questions where the questions have various response categories. The book reviews all of the major models and includes discussions about how and where the models…

Current educational reforms can be described as top-down, heavy-handed, and test driven. But they are not based on research about how children learn best or how they become enthusiastic, competent, and independent thinkers for life. Such accepted practices as grading, grouping by age, and teaching to pass standardized tests are completely at odds…

A human systems approach that emphasizes knowing the parts of a phenomenon, their order, and particularly their interactions needs to be adopted by industrial arts. A student-based theoretical framework that incorporates systems and subsystems in industrial arts has been presented by Donald Maley. The theoretical base includes 10 organismic…

This report focuses on preventing potentially disabling conditions from developing into disabilities and on minimizing the effects of such conditions on a person's productivity and quality of life. It describes disability as a social and public health issue and not just a physical condition. The report begins with an executive summary, an…

This book is the product of a forum titled New Research Directions and Paradigms, held at the Congress of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Mental Deficiency in Australia in August 1992. The book presents 13 chapters, all written within a critical paradigm for disability research which critiques the reification of…

The study documents what happened in 10 rural communities when a federal educational funding program (Experimental Schools) in 1972 provided 5-year grants for demonstration projects designed both to improve the school system and, through the schools, to address a variety of community needs. The study employs two strategies to document the ways in…

The classic career counseling models have focused primarily on practical and prescriptive methods aimed at occupation with little attention to the process nature of life, which is inclusive of work but not limited to it. The New Careering advocates a theory of life, not job, as career and focuses on the career theory of the individual by…

The 14 chapters of this book review and synthesize research on the influence of college on students. Chapter 1 provides a detailed discussion of the evolution of research on college outcomes as an area of study, outlines the conceptual framework that guided the review, and provides a general overview of the study. Chapter 2 summarizes the major…

This book describes a learning organization and reports on experiments carried out at four levels--individual, team, organizational, and societal--illustrating the action imperatives for creating a learning organization. Part 1 (chapters 1-3) explores the shifts that are leading companies to become learning organizations. It offers a framework for…