(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>>
(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>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A systematic review of school and community-based mental health programs in low and middle countries was reported in the September 2013 o=issue of BMC Public Health. The reviewers report that of the 22 studies selected for the review "With regard to the school-based interventions, the quality of evidence from the 14 studies is moderate to strong. Findings indicate that there is reasonably robust evidence that programmes implemented across diverse LMICs can have significant positive effects on students’ emotional and behavioural wellbeing, including reduced depression and anxiety and improved coping skills. Promising interventions include the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP-A), delivered by teachers in Mauritius. This study is an example of an evidence-based intervention adapted from a HIC. Another promising intervention is the teacher led peer-group support intervention for AIDs orphaned children. This study suggests the potential of peer support mental health promotion interventions in optimizing adjustment and decreasing the psychological distress associated with AIDS orphanhood. Such interventions may have great potential in addressing the increased risk of depression, peer relationship problems, post-traumatic stress and conduct problems. There is also some encouraging evidence that interventions which combine lifeskills with reproductive and sexual health education and physical health and fitness can have a significant positive effect on pupils’ risk-taking and prosocial behaviour. These findings are consistent with the substantive evidence from multiple reviews of school-based interventions in HICs which report the greater effectiveness of multi-component interventions (i.e. interventions that adopt a social competence approach and develop supportive environments), when compared with interventions that focus on specific problem behaviours". Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Family dinners have recently been highlighted as a way of promoting health of children and adolescents as well as preventing different health problems. However, an article in Issue #3, 2013 of the Journal of Health & Social Behavior reports that an analysis of the 1997 US National Longitudinal Study of Youth (n = 5,419) suggests that dinners have little effect on substance use and may actually cause an increase. The authors report that "The results indicate that family dinners are not generally associated with alcohol or cigarette use or with drug use initiation. However, a continuous measure of family dinners is modestly associated with marijuana frequency, thus suggesting a potential causal impact. These results show that family dinners may help prevent one form of substance use in the short term but do not generally affect substance use initiation or alcohol and cigarette use." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Two articles in Volume 93, 2013 of Social Science & Medicine indicate that complexity theory is emerging as a planning and analysis tool in public health and health promotion. the two examples are a public health response TB outbreak in London, UK and a disaster management planning & response in five Canadian communities. Some of the complexity concepts that emerged in the two articles include self-direction, inter-connectedness, culture as a backdrop, dynamic contexts, situational awareness and connectedness, and others. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A review article reported in Issue #9, 2013 of the American Journal of Public Health makes the cost-effectiveness argument for the use of school-based Dental Therapists. The authors report that "The United States faces a significant problem with access to oral health care, particularly for children. More than 50 countries have developed an alternative dental provider, a dental therapist, practicing in public, school-based programs, to address children’s access to care. This delivery model has been demonstrated to improve access to care and oral health outcomes while providing quality care economically. We summarize elements of a recent major review of the global literature on the use of dental therapists, “A Review of the Global Literature on Dental Therapists: In the Context of the Movement to Add Dental Therapists to the Oral Health Workforce in the United States.” We contrast the success of a school-based model of caring for children by dental therapists with that of the US model of dentists providing care for children in private practice. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in the September 2013 issue of School Psychology Quarterly describes the ambivalent feelings and perceptions of parent involvement held by by teachers. The study was designed as follows: "Parent involvement indicators and correlates were selected from a review of existing research. Participants included 34 teachers and 577 children in kindergarten through third grade. The vast majority of the sample was African American (78%), followed by Caucasian (19%) and other ethnic backgrounds (2%). Two subscales from the Parent Involvement-Teacher scale, contact and comfort, were entered as indicators in a latent profile analysis to determine the number and types of parent involvement classes. Contact included the frequency of interactions between parents and teachers; comfort included the quality of their relationship with the parent and how well their goals were aligned". The authors report that "Three classes provided the optimal solution. This included two classes of parents with low contact with teachers but different comfort levels; one with low contact and low comfort (11%), and one with low contact but high comfort (71%). The remaining class, representing 18% of parents, was rated high on both contact and comfort. Low income status, family problems, and social, emotional, academic, and self-regulation problems distinguished the low comfort class from the other two classes. It is imperative to help teachers feel more comfortable working with families who may be experiencing substantial stressors and who also have children who need support across school and home settings." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article from the August 2013 issue of the Canadian Journal of Educational Administration & Policy reports on a research review examining the impact of a school's culture on physical activity levels. The authors state that " Edgar Schein’s organizational culture model offered the framework for analysis in which pertinent articles were categorized into one of three levels of school culture: (1) artifacts, (2) espoused values, and (3) underlying member assumptions.
School artifacts associated with physical activity were used more frequently by students and staff when these spaces and equipment were maintained, relevant to the school context and when daily practices allowed access to these artifacts during leisure times. A secondary theme revealed the importance of school-based, adult and student role models; when both were plentiful in schools, students and staff were more active at school on a daily basis. Another key finding indicated that students in Physical Education (PE) classes that reinforced traditional, team games (i.e., basketball, volleyball) were less active than students in PE classes that incorporated culturally relevant, lifestyle, and small-sided games. Read more>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service) A research review published in Issue #3, 2013 of Advances in School Mental Health suggests that "no clear consensus statement has emerged regarding school mental health promotion other than that child mental health is an important area that should be addressed in schools. This integrative review seeks to address this gap." The authors conclude that " Findings suggest a whole school approach focusing on mental health promotion rather than on mental illness prevention is effective in promoting child and youth mental health. However, study populations are limited and many studies either lack clarity regarding who implemented interventions, lack theoretical foundations, process evaluations or youth viewpoints." Read more>>
Note: The International School health Network has posted a draft consensus statement on school mental health programs on this web page. As well, an overview of the research and experience on SMH programs can be found on this web page in a Wikipedia style summary. (An item from the ISHN Member information service) We have been tracking the absence of effect on physical activity programs on obesity/overweight in this web site. (PA has many other benefits but apparently not reductions in weight). However, it appears that a focus on mental health and friendships may hold greater promise. An article in the September issue of the Journal of School Health reports on the aboriginal adaptation of the Healthy Buddies program. The authors note that: "There was a significant decrease in zBMI (1.10 to 1.04, p = .028) and WC (77.1 to 75.0 cm, p < .0001) in the HB group (N = 118) compared with an increase in zBMI (1.14 to 1.23, p = .046) and a minimal WC change in the control group (N = 61). Prevalence of elevated BP did not change in the HB group, but increased from 16.7% to 31.7% in the control group (p = .026). General linear model analysis revealed a significant interaction between time, group, and zBMI (p = .001), weight status (p = .014), nutritious beverage knowledge (p = .018), and healthy living and self-esteem score (p = .005). The HB program is a promising school-based strategy for addressing obesity and self-esteem in Aboriginal children." Read More>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #4, 2013 of Journal of Health Organization & Management discusses how the unique professional identities and norms of physicians can hinder organizational improvements and developments. Since school health promotion programs usually and ultimately report to a physician who is the senior manager, this article should be of importance when seeking to modify health system approaches to schools. The authors found that "If managers want physicians to engage in improvements, they must learn to understand and appreciate physician identity. This might challenge managers' identity. The paper shows how managers – primarily in a Swedish context – could act to facilitate physician engagement. This in turn might challenge physician identity. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A blog post from Edutopia underlines the need to understand teacher belief systems when we try to integrate health & social programs more closely with their work. Robert Garmston (with co-author Arthur Costa) identifies six predominant ideologies that influence educators' decision making:
Elena Agular, the author of the Edutopi blog suggests that conflict among teachers can arise when these six beliefs collide. Now imagine the collisions when non-teachers, with different belief systems, seek to enter the school. Read More>> (An item from the UCLA School Mental Health Project) After damning indictments in the 1970s and 1980s, classroom ability grouping and tracking practices fell into disrepute and declined. 1 Data over the last decade indicatea resurgence of grouping practices in classrooms. 2 Tracking in the form of assigning students to certain classes based on designated ability also dipped initially, but for the most part continues to produce differential course placements of students that are associated with inequities in post-secondary opportunities. At the outset, we want to be clear that academic tracking per se is inappropriate. Grouping and placing students in classes solely based on their test performance and grades has negative repercussions to the students and to the society. The potential negatives include reducing equity of opportunity at school and beyond, perpetuating inequities and disparities based on race and socio-economic status, fostering a climate of hopelessness and disengagement at school and in the community and contributing to mental health problems. That said, in the 21st century, discussions of classroom grouping practices must focus on the appropriate role for grouping in facilitating student learning. At the same time, attention must be given to the dilemma of minimizing potential negative effects. Our emphasis here is on (1) grouping as a fundamental feature of most efforts to teach in classrooms and (2) learning supports that directly address barriers to learning and teaching as essential in minimizing the dilemma of negative effects. Read More>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in the September 2013 Issue of the international Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health cal;ls for a culturally relevant and competent approach to child protection in aboriginal communities. The authors argue that "Child Sexual Assault (CSA) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is a complex issue that cannot be understood in isolation from the ongoing impacts of colonial invasion, genocide, assimilation, institutionalised racism and severe socio-economic deprivation. Service responses to CSA are often experienced as racist, culturally, financially and/or geographically inaccessible.". The article is based on a two day forum. "The forum was attended by eighty invited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal youth sexual assault managers and workers representing both “victim” and “those who sexually harm others” services. In keeping with Aboriginal Community-Based Research methods forum participants largely directed discussions and contributed to the analysis of key themes and recommendations reported in this article. The need for sexual assault services to prioritise cultural safety by meaningfully integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Worldviews emerged as a key recommendation. It was also identified that collaboration between “victims” and “those who sexually harm” services are essential given Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander C&YP who sexually harm others may have also been victims of sexual assault or physical violence and intergenerational trauma. By working with the whole family and community, a collaborative approach is more likely than the current service model to develop cultural safety and thus increase the accessibility of sexual assault services. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A Canadian study reported in Issue #1, 2013 of Injury Prevention reports that walking or riding to school does increase the risk of child injury. The researchers note that "This cross-sectional study is based on the 2009/10 Canadian Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey. A sample of children aged 11–15 years (n=20 076) was studied. Multi-level logistic regression was used to examine associations between walking or bicycling to school and related injury. Regular active transportation to school at larger distances (approximately >1.6 km; 1.0 miles) was associated with higher relative odds of active transportation injury (OR: 1.52; 95% CI 1.08 to 2.15), with a suggestion of a dose–response relationship between longer travel distances and injury (p=0.02)" Read More>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #3, 2013 of Safer Communities make the argument that youth justice systems should be based on a preventive approach when dealing with youth rather than the assumption of guilt or trouble that often accompanies their treatment in the system. "The paper presents three general findings. First, young people can be subject to youth justice intervention without a “presenting problem” or offence committed. More pertinently this form of pre-emptive criminalisation violates the child's human rights, due-process and legal safeguards. Second, young people who are drawn into the net of formal youth justice intervention can suffer from the stigmatising and labelling effects of being criminalised. Third, there is a pressing need for youth justice policy and practice to be transformed, in order to allow for the implementation of more informal, diversionary and restorative measures. The paper considers “alternative perspectives” and the prospect of a youth justice predicated upon the principles of informal justice, child-friendly values and the notion of inclusion". Read More>>
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