During the past several decades, a new class of measurement theory, called latent trait (or item response) theory, has become popular. Supporters contend that results obtained through the use of this theory prove vastly superior to classical measurement statistics. This paper investigates the use of the Rasch model, one of the more popular latent…

For language teaching, the early 1970s marked a break from the behaviorist hold of audio-lingualism and a new perspective derived from cognitive code psychology and Chomskian linguistics swept the profession. The wave of methods born of this perspective predominated for a decade. In general, the 1980s have had less to offer language teachers in…

This paper argues for a dialectical conception of theory that avoids the problem of trying to yoke together theories that embody conflicting epistemological and idealogical concerns in any unified way. Called a "cognitive-social epistemic," this dialectic is a theoretical construct that subsumes a family of cognitive and social theories…

John Dewey's vision of communication posits an important ideal that educational researchers are hard pressed to meet, for the language that facilitates exchanges between scholars often encumbers their attempts to convey their work and findings to a wider, lay audience. The canons of inquiry (of foremost concern to researchers) rarely coincide with…

It is widely assumed that empowerment represents the organizational transformation strategy to help schools fulfill a broad array of announced goals, such as academic excellence, economic prosperity, military security, and social equity. This paper directs a demystifying light on the rhetoric and rationality of organizational transformation theory…

This paper views the enhancement of students' self-concepts as a high priority for school psychologists. It focuses on the theory, research and implications for practice regarding academic self-concept. Four models of the structure of self-concept and their resulting implications for practice are reviewed: (1) nomothetic; (2) taxonomic; (3)…

This paper describes the use of educational research and development resources by practitioners within the National Education Association's Mastery in Learning Project (MIL), a 5-year national second wave reform effort. Four research questions were addressed: (1) What are practitioners' information needs over time in the context of research-based…

Summarizing the wealth of recent research on sentence combining as an effective method of teaching students to tighten and vary their written sentences, this booklet explains how and why sentence combining works. The first half of the booklet provides background information on sentence combining, exploring the basis for the claim that sentence…

If content analysis is to satisfy the requirement of objectivity, measures and procedures must be reliable. Reliability is usually measured by the proportion of agreement of all categories identically coded by different coders. For such data to be empirically meaningful, a high degree of inter-coder reliability must be demonstrated. Researchers in…

Over the years, journalists, social scientists, and government commissions have defined news in a variety of ways, but their definitions consistently lack the notion that, above all, news is a commodity and must sell. Within the journalism profession, and particularly in television news, the potential for conflict between a media corporation's…

To investigate whether researchers are developing empirically-based public relations research efforts, and whether such efforts could be considered useful to public relations practitioners, a study conducted a content analysis of all articles published in "Public Relations Review" from 1977 through 1987. Articles (196 were coded in all)…

What is meant by saying that reality is socially constructed or that writing is a social process must be thought about carefully. Advocates of a social constructivist view of writing have been able to challenge dominant cognitivist and expressionist paradigms surprisingly quickly. However, such a swift victory needs to be examined. When tested in…

A study examined the situation-specific program development strategies used in 47 different settings in the southwestern United States from January 1987 to January 1988. Specialized and elite interviews were administered to program developers to identify the approaches that are being used and to determine how they relate to the approaches…

This project proposed to design and develop interactive videodiscs for teaching learning theory to teacher education students. The thesis was that simulations provided via interactive video could help prospective teachers both "see" the use of learning theory and more readily transfer theory into practice in the classroom. The intended…

Arguing that many new ideas, techniques, and products fail to be adopted because they are not properly linked to the needs of knowledge users, this chapter presents an approach to the problem of linking the knowledge user with the knowledge producer that is designed to provide linkage agents with a frame of reference and tools for disciplined…