The construction and validation of an instrument to measure classroom adjustment.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.I. Problem: To construct a measure of classroom adjustment which would be easily administered and interpreted by the classroom teacher. II. Procedure: A. Two measures were developed; an 86 item Teacher Checklist and a 40 item Parent Rating Scale. 1. Classroom teachers were asked to submit situations which would give evidence of good classroom adjustment. Ten trait categories were established as follows: concentration, cooperation, courtesy, emotional stability, friendliness, health, initiative, responsib- ility, self-confidence and self-reliance. A list of 86 items, to check the child's performance in these trait areas was complied. i.e. "He is wiilling to lead Opening Exercises (initiative)." Any item which could not be objectively observed was discarded. For ease of checking, the 86 items were so arranged as to follow the routine of a normal classroom day. Each child was rated twice on the Checklist. In 12 classrooms, (299 children) the child was rated by his own teacher first, then by a second person. In 4 classrooms (101 children) the child's teacher did both ratings with a lapse of 4 weeks between the two. 2. The Parent Rating Scale again attempted to get evidence on the same ten traits. i.e. "He can shop by himself (Initiative)." The parents were asked to check each item as "Usually, Often or Occasionally." B. Four hundred first grade children who participated in the study were administered the following tests: 1. Otis Quick Scoring J.iental Ability Test. 2. The Teacher Checklist of Adjustment. 3. The Parent Rating Scale was filled out by parents of the children. 4. The Detroit Word Recognition Test and the Boston University Reading Tests were used to measure reading achievement. III. Major Findings and Conclusions: A. Teachers and parents found both measures were easily administered. B. Reliability was established as follows: 1. For the Teacher Checklist a. Correlation between 2 raters was .73. b. Correlation on same rater twice was .97. c. Split half reliability for whole test corrected by Spearman Brown Formula was .96. d. Item analysis revealed significant differences for 81 out of 86 items for high and low scorers. 2. For the Parent Rating Scale· a. Split half correlation on whole.test, corrected by Spearman Brown Formula, was .70. b. Item analysis revealed significant differences on 24 of the 40 items. c. The Parent Rating Scale did not correlate significantly with the Teacher Checklist (.16). C. Relation of Adjustment to Reading Achievement 1. Positive Correlations of .48 and ·57 were found between adjustment and reading achievement. 2. Children were divided on the basis of adjustment scores into three groups--high, middle and low. a. The means of these three groups on the Detroit Word Recognition Test were 25.76, 19.00 and 13.80, respectively. Means on the Boston University Test were 88.3, 52.0 and 40.5, respectively. The differenees in achievement were statistically significant between high and middle as well as between middle and low groups. b. The mean mental age for the high group was 90.5 months, for the middle 82.5 and for the low 80.0. c. The difference in mental age between the high and the middle group was very significant but the difference between the middle and low groups was not significant. d. The mean IQ's were 118, 107 and 105 for high, middle and low groups, respectively. The difference between the high and middle groups was statistically significant but this was not true between the middle and low groups

Disentangling the metallicity and star formation history of HII galaxies through tailor-made models

We present a self-consistent study of the stellar populations and the ionized gas in a sample of 10 HII galaxies with, at least, four measured electron temperatures and a precise determination of ionic abundances following the "direct method". We fitted the spectral energy distribution of the galaxies using the program STARLIGHT in order to quantify the contribution of the underlying stellar population to EW(Hbeta), which amounts to about 10% for most of the objects. We then studied the Wolf-Rayet stellar populations detected in seven of the galaxies. The presence of these populations and the corrected EW(Hbeta) values indicate that the ionizing stellar populations were created following a continuous star formation episode of 10 Myr duration, hence WR stars may be present in all of objects even if they are not detected in some of them. The derived stellar features, the number of ionizing photons and the relative intensities of the strongest emission lines were used as input parameters to compute tailored models with the photoionization code CLOUDY. Our models are able to y reproduce their thermal and ionization structure as deduced from their collisionally excited emission lines and, hence, no abundance discrepancy factors are implied for this kind of objects. Only the electron temperature of S+ is overestimated by the models, pointing to the possible presence of outer shells of diffuse gas in these objects. This kind of geometrical effects can affect the determination of the equivalent effective temperature of the ionizing cluster using calibrators which depend on low-excitation emission lines.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, MNRAS (in press

Uncovering multiple Wolf-Rayet star clusters and the ionized ISM in Mrk 178: the closest metal-poor Wolf-Rayet H ii galaxy

New integral field spectroscopy (IFS) has been obtained for the nearby metal-poor Wolf–Rayet (WR) galaxy Mrk 178 to examine the spatial correlation between its WR stars and the neighbouring ionized interstellar medium (ISM). The strength of the broad WR features and its low metallicity make Mrk 178 an intriguing object. We have detected the blue and red WR bumps in different locations across the field of view (∼300 pc × 230 pc) in Mrk 178. The study of the WR content has been extended, for the first time, beyond its brightest star-forming knot uncovering new WR star clusters. Using Large/Small Magellanic Cloud-template WR stars, we empirically estimate a minimum of ∼20 WR stars within the region sampled. Maps of the spatial distribution of the emission lines and of the physical–chemical properties of the ionized ISM have been created and analysed. Here, we refine the statistical methodology by Pérez-Montero et al. (2011) to probe the presence of variations in the ISM properties. An error-weighted mean of 12+log(O/H) = 7.72 ± 0.01 is taken as the representative oxygen abundance for Mrk 178. A localized N and He enrichment, spatially correlated with WR stars, is suggested by this analysis. Nebular He II λ4686 emission is shown to be spatially extended reaching well beyond the location of the WR stars. This spatial offset between WRs and He II emission can be explained based on the mechanical energy input into the ISM by the WR star winds, and does not rule out WR stars as the He II ionization source. We study systematic aperture effects on the detection and measurement of the WR features, using Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra combined with the power of IFS. In this regard, the importance of targeting low metallicity nearby systems is discussed