(An item from the ASCD Whole Child Blog) Thomas Armstrong, education expert, author, and Whole Child Podcast guest, just can't say enough about the importance of play. The chapter "Early Childhood Education Programs: Play" is excerpted from Armstrong's ASCD book Best Schools, which looks at not just best schools, but also best practices for teaching and learning. In this chapter, Armstrong points to early education practices that actually hinder young learners rather than helping them to get ahead. Cutting out play is one such practice that thwarts child development, says Armstrong. A young child, particularly, needs to be in a safe environment where he can touch, sense, and move in order to learn. Read more>>
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(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Advocates of health and social programs in schools who want to see initial teacher education programs modified would be well advised to read this article in Issue #4, 2013 of Action in Teacher Education. The "Process and Politics of the Redesign of an Undergraduate Middle-Grades Program" This article describes the guiding framework that led the process, the data collected, how that data was used to make decisions about learning experiences, the politics of the curriculum change, and the process that will be used to evaluate the program changes. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #4, 2013 of Educational Administration Quarterly describes the new and different kinds of leadership skills needed by school principals who are assigned to schools in disadvantaged or tribal communities. The article "examined how the federal Promise Neighborhoods program shapes leadership networks and objectives in diverse tribal and urban settings. The program calls for diverse stakeholders to provide families with resources such as parenting workshops, childcare, preschool, health clinics, and other social services that affect learning and development. We focused particularly upon how Promise Neighborhoods planning and development creates new “frontiers of educational leadership." The "Promise Neighborhoods planning grant applications in the USA —21 that were funded and 21 from tribal settings—as well as interview data and program and community-specific archival data were analyzed to learn about applicants’ purposes and compositions of partners. These data were analyzed with insights from Burt’s notion of structural holes, which suggests that leadership in “social frontier” spaces is often dependent upon negotiation, entrepreneurship, and relationship brokering." The authors suggest that " As Promise Neighborhoods and other place-based initiatives are developed, diverse networks of leaders will be called to bridge organizational boundaries, cultural differences, socioeconomic differences, and physical distances to develop coherent plans of action for collective “Neighborhoods.” Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A randomized controlled trial of the impact of a teacher classroom management program on the classroom behavior of children with and without behavior problems, reported in Issue #5, 2013 of Journal of School Psychology, indicates that such training can improve teacher practices and reduce behavior problems among students. The researchers report that " Six intervention and six control classrooms comprising 12 teachers and 107 children (aged 3 to 7 years) were recruited. Children were screened for high or low behavior problems using the cut-off points of the teacher-rated Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997). The primary outcome measure was independent classroom observations using the Teacher–Pupil Observation Tool (Martin et al., 2010). Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to examine the effect of the intervention on teacher, classroom, and child behavior. Results showed a significant reduction in classroom off-task behavior (d = 0.53), teacher negatives to target children (d = 0.36), target child negatives towards the teacher (d = 0.42), and target child off-task behavior (d = 0.48)." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in October, 2013 Issue of BMC Public Health describes the weight status of German kindergarten teachers and suggests that their health is at greater risk than that of the general population and that they may offer an unhealthy role model for their students. The researchers report that "Kindergarten teachers aged 18–62 years (n = 313) were invited to complete a self-reported questionnaire. Their obesity status, health risk behaviors (i.e., habitual physical activity, screen time activities, eating behavior patterns, smoking), and their general ability to identify overweight children and the associated health risks of overweight and obesity based on special age- and sex-specific silhouettes were analyzed. Data regarding kindergarten teachers’ weight status and smoking behavior were compared with nationally representative data from the 2009 Microcensus (n = 371310) using the Mann–Whitney U-test. The prevalence rates of overweight and obesity were 41.2% and 17.9%, respectively. The prevalence of obesity was significantly higher in kindergarten teachers (p < 0.001) compared to national Microcensus data. Only 44.6% of teachers were able to identify overweight children correctly. The fact that being overweight is associated with physical and mental health risks was only reported by 40.1% and 21.2% of teachers, respectively. Older kindergarten teachers were more likely to misclassify the overweight silhouettes, while younger, normal-weight, and overweight kindergarten teachers were more likely to underestimate the associated health risks. Obese kindergarten teachers reported spending more time in front of computer and television screens than their normal-weight counterparts, especially on weekends. In addition, obese kindergarten teachers reported eating less often with their families and more frequently reported watching television during meals. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) All too often we see government ministries and officials avoiding comparisons of the various surveys of child/youth health and policy/programs. while comparisons over time of the situation in one country or state/province are the best data to examine, reasonable comparisons among similar jurisdictions can also be very useful. We see and example of this in an aticle in Issue #5, 2013 of Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health. The article reports on a comparison of child unintentional injury deaths in New Zealand compared to 25 European countries. The overall ranking is provided but that is less important than the fact that the comparison identifies "A set of injury prevention policy and legislation priorities are presented which, if implemented, would result in a significant reduction in the injury mortality and morbidity rates of NZ children." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Articles in Issue #5, 3013 of Professional School Counselling form offer the second part of a two issue examination of the role of school counsellors in promoting mental health. These articles examine issues associated with the professional identity of school counsellors, their role in screening and early identification of problems, their involvement in school-wide programs such as Positive Behavior Support, working with community-based alliances/coalitions, and transformation of traditional school counselling programs. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) We have noted several recent articles in several journals discussing how adversity in childhood "acculmulates" within those children and gradually shows up in various risk behaviours and conditions. A special issue containing several articles in Issue #5, 2013 of School Psychology International follows this trend and examines adversity, protection, and resilience.The articles all support the idea of formulating an international research agenda on how to improve child protection and nurture resilience among these children and youth. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #5, 2013 of Journal of School Nursing advocates for four key skills or competencies that have been identified by several nursing associations in the US that focus on inter-professional collaboration. The Expert Panel identified and described four specific competency domains (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert panel, 2011): Values/Ethics, Roles/Responsibilities, Communication and Teams and Teamwork. For the full text of the article, go to this web page. To access the full report cited in the article, go to this web page.
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An examination of the data from the School Health Policies & Practices Survey from 2000 and 2010 showed that teacher development activities were correlated with increased collaboration of lead health teachers with relevant school staff. However, the analysis, reported in the September 2013 issue of the Journal of School Health noted that while increased in-service development on nutrition and physical activity resulted in greater cooperation with nutrition and other school staff, the amount of staff development time on HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention and subsequent collaboration with other school staff declined in the same time period. The implications of this study likely go beyond collaboration to other areas such as teaching on different subjects, working with parents and more. In other words, without sustained teacher development support on specific health issues, the activities on those health issues may decline, even if there is work being done on other health issues. Is the sustainability solution really m ore funding for all issues, or does our approach to teacher development need to be more generic, working with teachers on all health issues if only a finite resource is available? Read more>>
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