(An item from the ISHN Member information service) As societies turn again to schools to solve their economic problems (a false promise), we are already seeing a return of demand for more job skills education and "instrumental" education aimed more directly at preparing students for vocational purposes. Several articles in Vol 61, 2013 of International Journal of Educational Research help us prepare for this cyclical debate about educational purposes and competing futures for schooling. Read more>>

(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) 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) 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:

1. Religious Orthodoxy. This ideology aims to teach the habits and values that will lead to that religion's realization of how life ought to be lived in accordance with that faith. Educators driven by religious orthodoxy strive to help students learn appropriate norms and morality and to conduct their lives according to these norms.
2. Cognitive Process. Educators who are primarily aligned to this stance believe that the central role of schools is to help students learn to think, reason, and problem solve. Cognitive processors select instructional strategies that involve problem solving and inquiry.
3. Self-Actualization. Those who believe in self-actualization believe that the purpose of teaching is to bring out the unique qualities, potentials, and creativity in each child. They value student choice and self-directed learning, and are keen to provide for students' unique and multiple needs, interests, and developmental tasks.
4. Technologist. Technologists place strong emphasis on accountability, test scores, learning specific sub-skills and measurable learning. They might be "driven by data," and frequently use terms such as accountability, time on task, mastery, diagnosis and prescription. This is an ideology which as been adopted by many policy-making bodies in recent decades and is associated with external assessments, high stakes testing, and teacher performance.
5. Academic Rationalism. Academic rationalists believe that knowledgeable adults have the wisdom and experience to know what's best for students. They often deliver teacher-centered instruction, are drawn to the Classics, and use instructional strategies such as lectures, memorization, demonstration, and drill. They evaluate students through summative exams and content mastery.
6. Social Reconstructionism. Social Reconstructionists believe that the purpose of education is to help students become good citizens who can help take care of the world. They view learners as social beings who ought to be concerned with social, political, and environmental issues. They believe that education is an instrument of change and that schools are an institution charged with the responsibility of bringing about a better future and world. 

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>> 

(From the ISHN member news/research service) Researchers are increasingly focused on repeated and prolonged student absences as a primary cause for student academic difficulties. A recent report in the US indicates that student health and safety problems are often causes of these absences. By concentrating our health and social programs on students who are missing school, we can ensure that these programs are better integrated with the priority concerns of education systems. The US report notes that "Chronic absence is a national crisis, dragging downachievement for students across the country. An estimated 5 million to 7.5 million students in the United States are missing so much school that they are academically at risk.In some communities and schools, more than one out of four children are chronically absent.Most school systems report on overall attendance and miss the fact that much of the absences are actually affecting a minority of students who mss classes often. In Utah, a 2012 statewide analysis showed that 13.5percent of all students were chronically absent and that those chronically absent in any year between 8th and 12th grades were 7.4 times more likely to drop out of high school".The US report explains that "Many students cannot get to school because of chronic health conditions; inadequate access to medical, mental health or dental care; unstable or poor-quality unhealthy housing; unreliable transportation; or a lack of effective family and community supports and service delivery. This is especially true for children living in poverty or involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems. An analysis by the University of Utah found that students who were homeless were 2.5 times more likely to be chronically absent. In addition, environmental conditions, such as mold and lead poisoning, can make children more susceptible to absenteeism. Sometimes poor attendance occurs when students are avoiding going to school because of bullying, academic difficulty, dangerous routes to and from school, an unhealthy school climate, punitive disciplinary practices or the lack of effective instruction. Teacher absenteeism can prompt some children to avoid school. Analyzing chronic absence data by classroom can help reveal if the problem is school-wide or concentrated in particular classrooms. In some cases, it is not the student alone who is demonstrating aversion. Poor attendance could be a reflection of a parent’s negative experiences with school and their lack of confidence that their child’s experience will be different. The US reports calls for an inter-agency response to the problem of prolonged or repeated absences for some students. This is a great opportunity for health, safety & social development programs to be more relevant to educators in achieving their core objectives.  Read More>>