Workbook

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Contents

INTRODUCTION............................................1CHAPTER I Background....................................13CHAPTER II Review of the Literature.....................31CHAPTER III Method......................................53CHAPTER IV Results......................................71CHAPTER V Discussion....................................83

Chapter One

For this chapter, briefly answer the following questions. Keep in mind that the order in which you answer these questions is not as important as the sequential logic as it relates to your topic. Note: These questions are not meant to be answered with yes or no responses.

I. Do professionals think your topic is important?

Example from my dissertation: One of the broadly accepted goals of special education is to help students become competent adults (Perrone & Male, 1981). Competent individuals are "those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter daily, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely miss the expedient course of action" (D'Zurilla & Goldfried, 1971). Naisbitt (1982) has suggested that students who are skillful have bright futures because of their ability to meet personal needs while being innovative and useful members of future societies. It continues ...

Now for your thesis/dissertation jot down brief, but important information in the space provided.

Do professionals think your topic is important?

__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

Sources:

II. What do the professionals know about your topic and what is the timeline for this knowledge?

Example from my dissertation: Since the early 1970s, educators have increased their emphasis on the community placement of individuals with mental retardation (Craighead, Craighead, Kazdin, & Mahoney, 1994). With this trend has come the realization that there are a number of skills that facilitate adaptation in community settings. Increasingly, more developmentally advanced skills, such as telephone usage (Risley & Cuvo, 1980), money management (Cuvo, Veitch, Trace, & Konke, 1978), pedestrian behavior (Page, Iwata, & Neef, 1976), clothing-selection (Nutter & Reid, 1978), cooking (Johnson and Cuvo, 1981), use of fast food restaurants and buses (McDonnell & Ferguson, 1988; Marholin, O'Toole, Touchette, Berger, & Doyle, 1979) have been focused upon in order to facilitate adaptation of individuals with mental retardation into community settings. Initially, investigators working with persons with mental retardation emphasized the training of play skills such as toy contact or toy manipulation (Wehman & Marchant, 1978) and social interactions among children in a play situation (Strain, 1975). Keogh, Faw, Whitman, and Reid(1984)employed a treatment package consisting of modeling, verbal and physical prompts, and corrective feedback to train adolescent boys with severe mental retardation to play with commercial games.

What do the professionals know about your topic and what is the timeline for this knowledge?

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Sources:

III. What are the professionals doing about your topic?

Example from my dissertation: With the emphasis on sheltered and supported employment, a number of studies have concentrated on developing work and work-related skills in individuals with mental retardation (Gold, 1972, 1976). Training programs have focused on teaching a variety of simple and more complex job skills, such as sorting different sized bolts and assembling bicycle brakes (Gold, 1972).

In addition to teaching specific job skills, research has focused on maintaining and increasing work output. A variety of procedures have been evaluated in the past studies, including differentially reinforcing higher rates of work (Bellamy, Inman, & Yates, 1978); changing the latency of reinforcement by decreasing pay periods from one month to one week (Martin & Morris, 1980); increasing the amount of money per task (Bates, Renzagalia, & Clees, 1980); and manipulating antecedent stimuli, such as providing specific job information and reducing environmental distractions through use of partitions (Martin, Palltta-Cornick, Johnstone, & Goyos, 1980).

What are the professionals doing about your topic?

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Sources:

IV. Are professionals having problems in what they are doing?

Example from my dissertation: While problem solving is accepted as one of the basic skills children need, generally, it is not taught as such in most schools (Dolman & Williamson, 1983). The general method used to teach problem solving according to Treffinger, Speedie and Burner (1974) has been to follow a particular technique or to set steps, such as translating word problems into equations (Kaufman, 1979). The transferability of specific instruction to other problem sets is questionable (Treffinger et al. 1974). An example of this comes from the study by Treffinger et al. (1974) that used a test of problem solving as a criterion measure and found no growth in ability to solve real-life school problems.

Are professionals having problems in what they are doing? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

Sources:

V. Do professionals neglect important aspects of your topic?

Example from my dissertation: A complication related to problem solving behavior is that various cultures emphasize different modes of problem solving. There is overwhelming evidence that culture plays an important role in children's cognition and that different cultures promote different learning styles and problem solving strategies based on their cultural values and backgrounds. However, no study was found to suggest whether culture plays any role in the problem solving of individuals with mental retardation or whether any particular cognitive strategy is more effective than others in training individuals with mental retardation from different cultural backgrounds to problem solve in social interpersonal situations.

Do professionals neglect important aspects of your topic? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

Sources:

VI. If needed, provide descriptions/ and or definitions of terminologies you will use in this study.

Example from my dissertation:

Definition of Problem Solving and Decision Making

Problem solving is broadly defined by Anderson (1985) as the active process of trying to change the...