(An item from the ISHN Member information service)  An article in Issue #5, 2015 of Journal of Developmental And Behavioural Pediatrics describes the impact of one student's disruptive behaviour on another student in the class. "Marcus is a 10-year-old boy who was followed by his pediatrician for several years. She knows him as a socially engaged, active athlete, playing soccer and baseball, out-going, and a good student. He has been in good health. At the beginning of this year, a new student was placed in Marcus's fourth grade class. This student is disruptive, impulsive, and abusive. He has frequent violent outbursts, yelling, kicking, and throwing objects, including recently throwing a desk across the room. The school has made efforts to manage this student. The teacher sets up behavior contracts, and the school has temporarily suspended the child; however, the school is unable to remove the child from the classroom. Many students, including Marcus, have been significantly affected by this disruption. Marcus describes the classroom environment as “tense.” He reports he is never sure what is going to make the student “so mad.” Over the last 3–4 months, Marcus developed nightmares, enuresis, and trichotillomania." Here is the dilemma confronting the teacher and the school. Do they continue to accept the disruptive student or do they suspend the student for the good of the others? Who is responsible for providing the support, both to the disruptive student and to other students affected by the situation? Read more>>
Note: This dilemma is one of the topics on the agenda of the ISHN-ASCD-EI dialogue on integrating health and social programs within the core mandates, constraints and concerns of education systems. For more on that dialogue, go to this web page.

(From the ISHN Member information service)  Most teachers enjoy their job, despite feeling unsupported and unrecognised in schools and undervalued by society at large, according to a new OECD survey. The OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) finds that more than nine out of ten teachers are satisfied with their jobs and nearly eight in ten would choose the teaching profession again. But fewer than one in three teachers believe teaching is a valued profession in society. Importantly, those countries where teachers feel valued tend to perform better in PISA. More than 100,000 teachers and school leaders at lower secondary level (for students aged 11-16) in 34 countries and economies took part in the OECD survey. It aims to help countries develop a high-quality teaching profession by better understanding who teachers are and how they work. 
Teachers Isolated: The survey shows that too many teachers still work in isolation. Over half report rarely or never team-teaching with colleagues and only one third observe their colleagues teach. Feedback is also rare, with some 46% of teachers reporting they never receive any from their school leader, and less than a third (31%) believe that a consistently underperforming colleague would be dismissed. But the survey shows that there is a lot teachers and school leaders can do about this: teachers who engage in collaborative learning have higher job satisfaction and confidence in their abilities. Participation in school decisions also boosts job satisfaction and makes teachers feel more valued in society.
Other key findings include:

• The average age is 43, with Singapore having the youngest teachers and Italy the oldest. More than nine in 10 (91%) have completed a university education and had teacher training (90%). A typical teacher has taught for around 16 years, usually full-time (82%) and on a permanent contract (83%).
  
• Around half of school leaders are male (51%), are around 50 years of age and have 21 years of teaching experience. They spend most (41%) of their time managing people and resources, planning and reporting
  
• The average class size is 24 students. Teachers spend an average of 19 hours per week teaching, ranging from 15 hours in Norway to 27 hours in Chile. But in about half of the countries, one in four teachers said they spend at least 30% of lesson time handling classroom disruptions and administrative tasks. Of an average total of 38 hours of work, seven hours per week are spent preparing lessons, five hours per week marking, and two hours per week on school management, working with parents and extracurricular activities.
  
• The survey challenges some stereotypical views of the profession. For example, job satisfaction rates are much more affected by classroom behaviour than class size. And most teachers find appraisals and feedback constructive: 62% of teachers, on average across countries, said that the feedback they receive in their school led to moderate or large improvements in their teaching practices.
  

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From the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #1, 2014 of Physical and Health Education Academic journal review the socialization of PE teachers. The authors note that "Teacher socialization is a term used to describe the socializing processes that influence a teacher’s beliefs, assumptions, and values regarding teaching. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teaching is greatly influenced by a teacher’s early socializing experiences. Using Lortie’s (1975) theoretical framework, Lawson (1983a) identified three main kinds of socialization that teachers face: (a) Acculturation: this includes actions, beliefs, and value systems that are learned from birth and foster ideologies about, in this case, professional conduct. (b) Professional socialization: this is the process through which prospective and practicing teachers learn and maintain the values deemed ideal for teaching physical education. Professional socialization is strongly influenced by recruits’ experiences as a K-12 school student (the period of time described by Lortie 
(1975) as the apprenticeship of observation). These experiences inform recruits’ subjective warrant, which consists of their beliefs about the requirements for being a physical education teacher. (c) Organizational socialization: this process serves to maintain the “traditional skills” valued by institutions and organizations. Organizational socialization may work against change in order to uphold traditions and routines." 

The review (full text available free) concludes that "there have been several patterns to emerge in socialization research since 2000, most notably in the increasingly progressive, “teaching-oriented” views that many physical education recruits now hold. In particular, the findings suggest that teaching orientations are now more prevalent in recruits than they were prior to 2000. Attached to this finding is a general pattern that physical education teachers today are more likely now than in the past to develop a student-centered holistic approach to teaching physical education that develops the “whole-student”, one who is socially responsible and aware. While there appears to be less evidence supporting the presence of coaching orientations in recruits which is likely due to a change in the modern recruit’s acculturation, we feel that this finding should be treated with caution, as it does not suggest that coaching orientations are “things of the past” or are no longer present in physical education. There are still many recruits who do come to physical education with the aim of becoming coaches and the sport-centred philosophies to physical education content and pedagogy that tend to come with this mindset. Read more>>

Project-based learning, based on a constructivist approach to education, is highly recommended in  health-personal-social development (HPSD) education. So a recent post  from Edutopia which describes four free web tools for creating student portfolios and projects inline will be of interest. Kidblog is unique among the web tools featured here because it is built by teachers for teachers. Kidblog provides teachers with everything they need to help students create their digital portfolios safely. It gives teachers administrative control over student blogs and accounts and the settings which are set as private by default, can be opened up to enable parents to view their children's work. If your school is fueled by Google Apps for Education, then using Google Sites to create student portfolios, or "Googlios," makes perfect sense. With Sites, students can create media-rich websites to display their work throughout the school year. Evernote can serve as a viable option for creating student portfolios. Evernote is the Swiss Army knife of organization. In other words, it does just about everything. It allows students to write, take photos, record audio, upload content and more with the ability to tag items, create notebooks for organization and share content socially. Something else that makes Evernote so versatile is that it can sync across multiple computers and mobile devices. Three Ring is worthy of consideration as well. As with Evernote, students can create and upload content from their own devices and tag, search and share their portfolios. However, what Three Ring offers that Evernote doesn't is teacher-created class accounts.  Read more>>  (An item from the ISHN Member information service) 

(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) 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 ASCD) Discover how the learning environment, instruction, and teacher attributes combine to cultivate resilience. Although research indicates that resilient students most likely have personal characteristics like social competence and a sense of purpose, it is helpful to consider additional aspects that contribute to resilient students' achievement: the learning environment, instructional pedagogy, and teacher dispositions. Learning environments that foster resilience are academic, supportive, and promote opportunities for success (Schussler & Collins, 2006). Students not only perceive that they are welcome in class but also feel comfortable asking questions. For at-risk learners, especially, research suggests that students have a strong need to perceive that an environment is caring, respectful, and supportive. Fostering resilience requires instruction that is student-centered and engaging,Although educators tend to believe that struggling students have a preference for less complicated tasks, research indicates that they instead favor assignments that spark curiosity and encourage thinking. Teachers who contribute to resilient students' positive learning experiences express high expectations, are competent in their content areas, and challenge students to do their best. Read More>>

(An item from the ISHN Member information service) The school health movement has focused on transforming schools through "whole school" strategies. As proponents, we would learn much from reading Issue #2, 2013 of Improving Schools, where the concept of "schoolwide pedagogies" is discussed in a special issue. There are several articles but this quote from the concluding article is quite revealing. "The term schoolwide pedagogy was once rarely heard and yet has now become a part of most discussions around school improvement. But what does it really mean and why is the presence of a schoolwide pedagogical framework important? Some would say that in their school the adoption of an authoritative approach such as Habits of Mind, Bloom’s Taxonomies or the Productive Pedagogies is a schoolwide pedagogical framework. To some extent they are, but what is often lacking is the intellectual and social capacity that is built through collective professional sharing and articulation of strongly held beliefs about contextually relevant teaching and learning practices. Without this sense of ownership, teacher adoption ends up being sporadic at best with some teachers paying only lip service to imposed quality frameworks". If this is the case for matters at the heart of the school (ie how to teach), then what can we expect for matters such as health, which are often seen as secondary? (unless we truly understand and commit to working within schools in a sustained manner) Read more>>

(An item from ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #1, 2013 of the International Journal of Education Development uses the \\'Capability Approach\', developed by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, as well as a realist review to assess and explain the quality of teacher practices in Tanzania. The authors suggest that the apparent gap between perceptions (teachers are nor performing well enough vs the teachers don't have enough resources) The authors conclude that " By unpacking these components of teachers’ behaviours, and understanding the underlying structures, mechanisms, tendencies and counter-tendencies that produce certain empirically apprehended actions, we can start to see entry points in which measures to improve teachers’ professional performance could be seeded. First, interventions should acknowledge teachers’ causal mechanisms because these are the valued beings and doings that are central to the lives that teachers want to lead; if interventions could aid in the achievement of these functionings, they would also aid in the reduction of some ‘deficient’ behaviours that are associated with their constraint. Secondly, interventions need to account for and address dominant counter-tendencies (or constraining conversion factors) that teachers face, as this will ground strategies in context, provide pragmatic solutions, and convince teachers that these measures are worth trying. Without acknowledgement of causal mechanisms or counter-tendencies, it is highly likely that technocratic fixes that attempt to alter certain criticised practices will not be sustained, as teachers will revert to old ways. The reason being, these criticised ‘old ways’ are grounded in the valued functionings and conversion factors that consistently generate much of teachers’ behaviour."  Read more>>

(An item from ISHN Member information service) There has been an increasing number of research articles published recently that are describing the perceptions of teachers. These studies help us to understand the concerns, professional norms, normative and sociological factors that will determine how teachers approach various health, social and environmental issues in their classrooms. An article in Issue #5, 2012 of Environmental Education Research is an example of this trend. The study examined the perceptions or pre-service teachers of using outdoor settings as a learning environment. The researchers report that "Based on the results of 110 participants, this study suggests preservice early childhood educators perceive parks as the most conducive outdoor setting for achieving educational outcomes, specifically structured learning about nature, and that they are more inclined to use maintained outdoor settings than natural outdoor settings. The strongest predictors of intention to use natural outdoor settings were perceived difficulty in using natural settings, participants’ level of nature relatedness, and the degree to which they agreed that experiences in nature were important for young children’s health and wellness. Barriers to address include perceived lack of access to natural settings and safety concerns. Read more. 

(An item from ISHN Member information service) Several articles in Issue #8, 2012 of Teaching & Teacher Education continue that journal's tradition of describing teachers, student teachers and their norms, beliefs and practices. These offer excellent insights for advocates of health and social development programs in schools. Read more. 

(Posted from the ISHN information service for its members)The articles in a new journal, the  Health Education Teaching Techniques Journal, provide a unique resource for teachers. Each issue of the journal presents research-based lesson plans that include the relevant activities and support materials as well as an explanation of the theory or behavioral basis for the lesson plan. Here is a list of the lessons that are explained in Issue #2, 2012: (1) Alcohol Prevention Letters: Creating a Circle of Support, (2) Let’s Talk about G-E-R-M-S: Educating Elementary School Students about Germs and Hand Sanitation |(3) Making Decisions: Paired-Comparison Analysis (4) Exploring the Challenges of HIV: Developing Compassionate Attitudes through Role Play (5) When Friends Self-Mutilate (6) Teaching Food Safety. Read more.