(An item from the ISHN Member information service) The existence of a micro-political system in each school has been discussed often in educational research. An article in Issue #3, 2013 of the NASSP Bulletin discusses how this can affect new principals. The researchers report that "This year-long qualitative study detailed the lived experiences of two suburban novice middle school principals as they found themselves leading within a macropolitical environment containing slashed public school budgets, contracted student programs, teacher cutbacks, and policy mandates to improve student achievement. The study captured the ideologies and values of subsystems between teachers and administrators, negotiations of boundaries and turf between administrators and teachers, and how principals asserted bureaucratic leadership approaches for political ends. Read more>>
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(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Several articles in a Supplementary Issue of Public Health Reports provide a comprehensive reframing of sexual health promotion, moving away from disease-focused, preventive strategies towards a holistic and health promoting approach. One article in the issue presents an excellent ecological analysis and then presents the principles that could underlie ecology-based actions. These principles include contextualizing the issues, using systemic thinking, focusing on relationships, acknowledging sexuality and emphasizing wellness. Another article reports on how the state or Oregon is shifting from a teen pregnancy strategy to a sexual health promotion approach. Two articles present indicators for monitoring progress in the US and Canada. Two articles discuss the impact of socio-economic status on teen pregnancy and early initiation of sexual activity. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #6, 2013 of Preventive Medicine reports on the success of a three year capacity-building approach to school physical activity promotion. According to the authors " The objective was to determine changes in capacity over a 3 year intervention (2005–2008) in schools and whether greater increases in capacity were associated with greater decreases in overweight/obesity. “It's your Move!” (IYM) was an obesity prevention project, in 12 Australian secondary schools (5 intervention; 7 comparison), that aimed to increase community capacity to promote healthy eating and physical activity. Capacity was assessed pre/post intervention using the ‘Community Readiness to Change (RTC)’ tool. Comparisons from baseline to follow-up were tested using Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks and results plotted against changes (Newcombe's paired differences) in prevalence of overweight/obesity (WHO standards). RTC increased in intervention schools (p = 0.04) over time but not for comparison schools (p = 0.50). The intervention group improved on 5 of 6 dimensions and the three intervention schools that increased three levels on the RTC scale each had significant reductions in overweight/obesity prevalence. Read more>>
(An item from ISHN Member information service) The use of ecological analysis and action as a concept is emerging in many school-based programs and approaches. It is more than fitting to see how it is in use in the flield of environmental education. An article in Issue #2, 2013 of the Journal of Environmental education suggests that an ecological framework be used to design instructional programs. Read More>
(An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in the December 2012 Issue of Social Science & Medicine suggests that realist perspectives should be integrated within random controlled trials in order to better understand the complexity of interventions and how their components and their characteristics interact with the local context. The authors suggest that `Randomized trials of complex public health interventions generally aim to identify what works, accrediting specific intervention ‘products’ as effective. This approach often fails to give sufficient consideration to how intervention components interact with each other and with local context. ‘Realists’ argue that trials misunderstand the scientific method, offer only a ‘successionist’ approach to causation, which brackets out the complexity of social causation, and fail to ask which interventions work, for whom and under what circumstances. We counter-argue that trials are useful in evaluating social interventions because randomized control groups actually take proper account of rather than bracket out the complexity of social causation. Nonetheless, realists are right to stress understanding of ‘what works, for whom and under what circumstances’ and to argue for the importance of theorizing and empirically examining underlying mechanisms.`The authors also propose that ‘realist’ trials should aim to: examine the effects of intervention components separately and in combination, explore mechanisms of change, analysing how pathway variables mediate intervention effects; use multiple trials across contexts; draw on qualitative & quantitative data; and be oriented towards building theories setting out how interventions interact with context. This last suggestion resonates with recent suggestions that, in delivering truly ‘complex’ interventions, fidelity is important not so much in terms of precise activities but, rather, key intervention ‘processes’ and ‘functions’. Read more
(An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #5, 2012 of Prevention Science uses ecological analysis to identify the bullying prevention interventions that are more effective in the school context. The researchers report that" Data for this study are drawn from the School-Wide Information System (SWIS) with the final analytic sample consisting of 1,221 students in grades K – 12 who received an office disciplinary referral for bullying during the first semester. Using Kaplan-Meier Failure Functions and Multi-level discrete time hazard models, determinants of the probability of a student receiving a second referral over time were examined. Of the seven interventions tested, only Parent-Teacher Conference (AOR = 0.65, p < .01) and Loss of Privileges (AOR = 0.71, p < .10) were significant in reducing the rate of the reoccurrence of bullying and aggressive behaviors. By using a social-ecological framework, schools can develop strategies that deter the reoccurrence of bullying by identifying key factors that enhance a sense of connection between the students’ mesosystems as well as utilizing disciplinary strategies that take into consideration student’s microsystem roles. Read more.
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