Over the course of five consecutive fall and spring semesters, 119 undergraduate and graduate candidates in a special education initial teacher licensure program from a large Midwestern, public university participated in a study to examine their reflections of their student teaching experiences. Specifically, candidates reported their a) knowledge of and b) ability to effectively implement skills associated with their teacher education program and Council for Exceptional Children standards and c) the extent to which they observed the effective implementation of these skills during student teaching. Candidates reported highest scores in areas related to professionalism and collaboration and lower scores in designing functional behavioral assessments and interventions for students with low incidence disabilities. Conclusions for educators are included.

PURPOSE:The purpose of the study was to examine mean differences between intrapersonal and institutional variables and the overall perception of radiation safety (OPRS) among U.S. radiologic technologists. The study also sought to demonstrate the applicability of the socioecological model for radiation safety decision-making.METHODS:A quantitative, cross-sectional design with the Radiation Actions and Dimensions of Radiation Safety survey instrument was used to collect data and guide hypotheses testing. The 425 research participants included radiologic technologists working in radiography, mammography, computed tomography, and radiology management. Categorical and descriptive data were calculated, and 1-way analysis of variance tests were used to analyze hypotheses.RESULTS:Seven main effects demonstrated mean differences between groups for the OPRS, including age (F5,419 = 2.55, P = .03), years of experience (F5,419 = 4.27, P = .001), primary employed imaging modality (F2,422 = 9.04, P < .001), primary role (F2,422 = 4.58, P = .01), shift length (F3,421 = 10.33, P < .001), primary practice facility (F4,404 = 5.00, P = .001), and work shift (F3,405 = 4.14, P = .007), with shift length having the largest effect. Level of education, employment status, number of imaging credentials, gender, patient population, and practice location were not significant at the level of P ≤ .05.DISCUSSION:Radiation safety culture is a multidimensional topic that requires consideration of several intervening influences, making the socioecological model well aligned when considering radiation safety culture and radiation safety perception in medical imaging. Previous research on radiation safety perception among radiologic technologists demonstrated that leadership actions, teamwork across imaging stakeholders, organizational learning, and questioning behavior are drivers of OPRS. However, this study's findings demonstrate that radiologic technologist scheduling practices and primary employed imaging modalities also should be considered when seeking to improve OPRS.CONCLUSION:This study presents an extensive examination of intrapersonal and institutional variables on OPRS among U.S.-based radiologic technologists and provides findings to support radiation safety culture decision-making in medical imaging, particularly for shift length considerations.

This study used the Trends in International Math Science (TIMSS) 2015 Advanced data from nine countries to examine the relationship between students' sense of school belonging and their attitudes towards mathematics, and the extent to which student gender moderated these relationships. Results showed that students' sense of school belonging emerged as a statistically significant, positive predictor of students' liking and valuing of mathematics. For most countries, no significant moderating effect of student gender was observed. However, among Portuguese students, the relationship between students' sense of school belonging and each attitude measure was stronger for males than for females.

The present study examined the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study “Advanced” data to examine how the educational credentials of maths teachers and other teacher characteristics were related to attitude towards advanced mathematics and perceptions of engaged teaching among 12th-grade students enrolled in advanced mathematics courses in the U.S. As attitudinal outcomes in this study, two measures of attitude towards mathematics were employed – the Students Like Learning Advanced Mathematics scale and the Students Value Advanced Mathematics scale, and one measure of student perception of engaged teaching – the Students’ Views on Engaging Teaching in Advanced Mathematics Lessons. A set of multilevel regression analyses were conducted predicting each of these aforementioned outcomes. No statistically significant effects on the attitudinal outcomes were observed for teacher variables. Positive effects were noted for parental education on students’ valuing of advanced mathematics. A prominent finding was that higher levels of parental education were associated with higher student levels of valuing mathematics, which likely reflects a family/home culture that implicitly or explicitly places high value on science and mathematics. Identifying factors that might facilitate positive attitude is important to increase the likelihood that students will choose, and be retained in, mathematics and STEM education and careers.

The present study examined the 2015 Trends in international mathematics and science study “Advanced” data to examine how both the type of homework assigned and how that homework was used were related to advanced mathematics achievement and attitudes toward advanced mathematics among 12th grade students in the USA. Additionally, students’ use of the internet was examined as a predictor of these outcomes. Results showed that the use of homework assignments that required students to find one or more applications of the content covered in class was a statistically significant positive predictor of both Students like learning advanced mathematics and students value advanced mathematics, while discussing homework in class was a significant, negative predictor of Students like learning advanced mathematics. Additionally, using the internet to discuss math topics with other students and to find information was significantly, positively associated with both attitudinal outcomes. Using the internet to communicate with the teacher was positively associated with Students like learning advanced mathematics scores.

The present study examined data from the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study to address cross-cultural differences in 4th grade students' attitudes towards science and how students' sense of school belonging (SSSB) scores were related to attitude towards science. Regression results indicated that SSSB emerged as a significant, positive predictor of Students Like Learning Science (SLS) and Students Confident in Science (SCS) scale scores across countries. Additionally, statistically significant moderating effects for Taiwan were evident for the relationship between SSSB and both SLS and SCS scores. Specifically, when compared with students in the USA, the positive effect of SSSB on these attitudinal outcomes was less pronounced among students in Taiwan.

PURPOSE: To investigate changes in shooting performance of law enforcement officers under varying levels of stress. This study determined how increasing levels of stress from operating a firearm on static targets changed when participants were subjected to simulated life threatening situations. METHODS: Thirteen law enforcement officers completed three trials of hangun shooting trials using a battery-operated laser marking pistol. Trial one included a modified course from the Illinois State Firearms Qualification Course of Fire. Officers completed two separate simulation trials separated by 48 hrs (SIMCON1, SIMCON2). , Each officer engaged in dangerous encounters with virtual suspects using a TI Simulator (TI Training, Golden, Colorado) requiring each officer to draw his weapon and fire against an armed assailant. Heart rate, blood pressure, salivary cortisol, and shooting performance data were collected throughout the courses of fire. RESULTS: Compared with the qualification course of fire (99.23% hit rate of intended target), there was a statistically significant reduction p < .001 in percentage of shots hit during both SIMCON1 (hit rate 47.48%) and SIMCON2 (hit rate 50.13%) conflicts. Compared to trial 1 mean heart rate increased 16.46 BPM and 19.7 BPM and systolic blood pressure 18.77 mm Hg and 23.08 mm Hg respectively for SIMCON1 and SIMCON2 trials. Although a significant physiological effect was noted following both SIMCON trials, it did not statistically correlate with poor marksmanship performance. CONCLUSIONS: Future research should collect physiological variables such as heart rate and blood pressure when the officers are on duty. This real-life situation would likely heighten the physiological responses versus that of simulated setting used in this study. It may provide better insight how real-life scenarios may negatively affect marksmanship performance.

This study introduces a coefficient of discrimination for use with nominal and ordinal regression models. Computation of the coefficient is demonstrated with data from the Pew Research Center's 25th Anniversary of the Web Omnibus Survey pertaining to cell/home phone ownership, where the coefficient of discrimination indicates that respondent age and gender increased the probability of a correct versus incorrect classification by 13.9%. Additionally, the coefficient is compared to existing coefficients.

The impact of sparse data conditions was examined among one or more predictor variables in logistic regression and assessed the effectiveness of the Firth (1993) procedure in reducing potential parameter estimation bias. Results indicated sparseness in binary predictors introduces bias that is substantial with small sample sizes, and the Firth procedure can effectively correct this bias.

The purpose of this study is to examine issues involved with choice of a link function in generalized linear models with ordinal outcomes, including distributional appropriateness, link specificity, and palindromic invariance are discussed and an exemplar analysis provided using the Pew Research Center 25th anniversary of the Web Omnibus Survey data. Simulated data are used to compare the relative palindromic invariance of four distinct indices of determination/discrimination, including a newly proposed index by Smith et al. (2017).

The word “accountability” has become a mantra in public education. Arguably, this one word, and the movement it has produced, has shaped the direction of our field in the past decade more than any other (Harris, 2011). This movement has led to many positive changes including an examination of gaps in student achievement, the types of assessments used in schools, and the strength of the performance evaluation systems for principals and teachers. Many large urban school districts, as well as entire states, have revamped the way public school principals and teachers are evaluated. In fact many, including the State of Tennessee, Dallas Independent School District, Milwaukee Public Schools, Houston Independent School District, and the State of Illinois, have started or will start using some sort of student achievement metric as part of teacher and/or principal performance evaluations. The ideas surrounding using student growth seem simple enough: If student test scores improve, it means the teacher or principal is doing his or her job well and therefore should be rewarded. This seemingly simple idea is in fact quite complex. Many school administrators may not have the background or training to implement growth models as part of performance evaluations (Mitgang, 2012), which could lead to potentially unethical and incorrect implementation of newer forms of accountability such as growth modeling. Such problems have already arisen in a number of districts across the nation (Harris, 2011).

This syntax program is intended to provide an application, not readily available, for users in SPSS who are interested in the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) and r biased adjustment indices such as the Fisher Approximate Unbiased estimator and the Olkin and Pratt adjustment.

Along with an established professional development school (PDS) relationship, examples from two research projects (cases), with a brief history of the PDS and its connection to the nine essentials guiding the partnership, are presented. In the first research case, teachers participated in inquiry-based science methods classroom practices. Results indicated that participants substantially increased their science literacy knowledge and understanding. In the second research case, clinical, professional development-based experiences provided teachers with pragmatic, problem-based learning opportunities. Teachers utilized and practiced the knowledge, application, and analysis garnered from their training and experiences toward the numerous concepts and strategies underlying the diagnosis of reading problems and the formulation of literacy instruction for struggling middle school student readers.

Along with an established professional development school (PDS) relationship, examples from two research projects (cases), with a brief history of the PDS and its connection to the nine essentials guiding the partnership, are presented. In the first research case, teachers participated in inquiry-based science methods classroom practices. Results indicated that participants substantially increased their science literacy knowledge and understanding. In the second research case, clinical, professional development-based experiences provided teachers with pragmatic, problem-based learning opportunities. Teachers utilized and practiced the knowledge, application, and analysis garnered from their training and experiences toward the numerous concepts and strategies underlying the diagnosis of reading problems and the formulation of literacy instruction for struggling middle school student readers.

This syntax program is an applied complement to Veall and Zimmermann (1994), Menard (2000), and Smith and McKenna (2013) and produces nine pseudo R2 indices, not readily accessible in statistical software such as SPSS, which are used to describe the results from binary logistic regression analyses.