The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of scientific research. The growing scale of science has been accompanied by a shift toward collaborative research, referred to as "team science." Scientific research is increasingly conducted by small teams and larger groups rather than individual…

This EEF guidance report reviews the best available research to offer schools and teachers four recommendations to support parental engagement in children's learning. Parents play a crucial role in supporting their children's learning, and levels of parental engagement are consistently associated with better academic outcomes. Evidence from our…

The purpose of this article is to critically review the literature on parent-implemented interventions aimed at promoting and enhancing the social and communicative behavior of young children with autism spectrum disorders. Twelve parent-implemented intervention studies that were conducted, at least in part, in home environments and were published…

In this study, functional communication training alone and combined with extinction and/or punishment was evaluated for four clients with severe retardation, behavior problems, and communication deficits. Results showed that the combination of training plus punishment produced the largest and most consistent reductions in target behavior problems.…

This investigation documented how hearing-impaired adults (n=8) use communication repair strategies and attempted to change these strategies by communication therapy. Subjects practiced using alternative repair strategies when they did not correctly speechread a videotaped sentence. After therapy, subjects utilized the "repeat" strategy less and…

These conference proceedings contain the following 23 presentations: "Development of a Communication Skill Model Using Interpretive Structural Modeling" (Karen S. Nantz and Linda Gammill); "The Coincidence of Needs: An Inventional Model for Audience Analysis" (Gina Burchard); "A Computer Algorithm for Measuring Readability" (Terry D. Lundgren);…

Twenty-one students with autism, ages 6-20, were taught to use facilitated communication to unlock their ideas and communicate through typing. Facilitated communication involves physical and emotional support for typing or pointing at letters, helping students maintain focus, and fading physical support. Subjects revealed unexpected literacy and…

This conference proceedings document serves to establish the state of the art, highlight important methodological and conceptual issues, and identify priorities for future research in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. The document includes the papers from two opening presentations, issue papers and reactant papers, a…

Evaluation of the interactive intervention model with mothers and young children (n=32) with developmental delays found that treatment mothers became more responsive and less directive and provided clearer linguistic models. Treatment children increased their use of vocal turns but did not make significantly greater improvement in overall…

Comparisons were made in the conversations of 16 low income children in a preschool intervention program, a group of low income children not in the program, and a group of middle income children. Adults' conversational turns included three types of cognitively complex initiations. Results demonstrated a facilitating effect of day care…

Describes an evaluation plan and preliminary results for the ATS-6 satellite interactive telecommunication program for teaching basic science and clinical diagnosis at sites remote from an established medical school (University of Washington). This study assesses the technical feasibility, interaction characteristics of the education programs, and…

The Veterans Health Administration (VA) provides a case study for linking performance measurement, information technology, and aligned research efforts to facilitate quality improvement in a large, complex health system. Dialogue between clinical researchers and VA leaders occurs through structured activities (e.g., the Quality Enhancement…

Brief case studies of three projects are presented to illustrate the steps which open "Wonderful Programs" to evaluation research. The evaluator is provided with the perspective needed to believe the evaluation is worth doing. The project staff is then redirected to the need for a new type of evidence. An ongoing review of the commitment…

A program was designed for training secondary school trainee teachers in expressive nonverbal behavior and for assessing the effect of various combinations of different training elements. The program was developed on the basis of nonverbal descriptors of "enthusiastic teaching": vocal delivery, eyes, facial expression, gestures, and eye contact…

This project studied the use of still picture telephones by four Swedish adults (ages 25-45) with profound mental retardation and additional severe disabilities. After 5 to 6 months of subjects employing still picture telephones on a regular basis in their daily lives, relatives, staff from group homes, and other caregivers completed…