以同伴支持促留守儿童的心理健康发展

同伴关系是留守儿童获得社会支持和安全感的重要源泉,同伴交往经验可以促进留守儿童自我概念和人格的发展,为其提供行为榜样。因此,通过为留守儿童之间的相互了解和交往创设有利条件,并实施有效的交往指导,倡导支持性的交往行为等教育措施,帮助留守儿童建立支持性的同伴关系,进而促进留守儿童心理行为健康发展。     

Investigating the extent and use of peer support initiatives in English schools

This survey aims to give a broad overview of the way peer support is currently used in English primary and secondary schools, and to highlight common patterns. Regional strata samples of schools were selected from an online database. Questionnaire data were obtained from 240 schools (130 primary and 110 secondary), of which 186 had peer support schemes. An adjusted estimation (which makes some correction for non‐response error) suggests that 62% of schools are using a structured peer support scheme. The survey results also give an indication of some common patterns and commonalities in the characteristics of existing schemes, as well as some differences between primary and secondary schools. The implementation of peer support is often multi‐dimensional, particularly in secondary schools after a scheme had been running for some time. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research and in terms of the nature of school‐based peer support programmes.     

福州市高校图书馆员社会支持水平调查

该调查利用湖南医科大学肖水源编制的《社会支持评定量表》,以311名福州市几所高校图书馆工作人员为研究对象,对影响高校图书馆员社会支持水平的相关人口统计因素进行了分析,研究表明：当前福州市高校图书馆工作人员社会支持处于较高水平;性别、年龄、婚姻状况以及工作年限是影响高校图书馆工作人员社会支持水平的重要因素.     

Professional support staff at higher education institutions in Sweden: roles and success factors for the job

This paper aims to analyse and discuss the professional support staff at higher education institutions in Sweden in terms of how they view their roles and what the success factors for them are. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with support staff from the fields of business liaison, internationalisation and strategic research support. The results show that the participants have shaped their own roles and see themselves as back-office staff. This can make it challenging for them to prove their contribution to the academic activities of education and research. Because they neither identify themselves as administrators nor hold academic positions, their ability to build credibility on a personal basis is a central success factor. Aware of being actors in a culture dominated by academic values and norms, they see a more transparent discussion of their roles as a desirable development in the sector.     

A complete circuit: the role of communication between class teachers and support staff and the planning of effective learning opportunities

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore how support staff make sense of their experiences of assisting children with additional support needs in mainstream classes. Focussed and productive communication with the class teacher was perceived as being crucial to effective practice. A conclusion of this study is that absence of communication relating to pedagogy and pupil need between class teachers and support staff prevents effective planning on the part of the teacher and effective support practices on the part of the additional supporting adult.     

Religious coping,meaning‐making and stress: perspective of support staff of children with disabilities in residential disability centres in Oman

Staff providing support to children with disabilities in residential disability centres in Oman are exposed to stressful work environments which may put them at an increased risk of burnout. Previous research has examined predictors of stress in disability support staff, but there is little consensus as the findings are inconclusive. Using a cross‐sectional design, a short survey examined religious coping styles, meaning and inner sense of peace, attitude to meaning in life, organisational religiousness practices and stress of 142 female disability support staff from community disability centres in Oman. Multiple regression analyses indicated that positive religious coping was more predictive of stress than negative religious coping. There was an association between meaning‐making and stress in disability support staff. Religious organisation explained most of the variance in stress scores and was the best predictor of stress in disability support staff. Implications of the study are discussed in relation to the role of both culture and religion.     

Behaviour support in secondary schools

Student voice and pupil empowerment projects are common in many mainstream schools. However, such initiatives are more challenging to implement in provision for students experiencing (social), emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). As a consequence, they are less frequently attempted. This article reports one such attempt at an SEBD special school, where a student research group was formed to evaluate the school's behaviour policy. The students' views remind professionals of the need for consistency, positive relationships and communication underpinning behaviour management strategies. The article also reflects on a number of issues to consider when implementing such projects in special education contexts.     

职业高中师资队伍建设存在的问题及对策

由于各方面的条件限制,职业高中的师资队伍建设中存在着教师数量不足、队伍不稳定、结构不合理等诸多问题。为了提高职业高中的教育教学质量,就必须拓宽教师来源渠道,确保师资充足;拓宽教师培训渠道,保证师资质量;加大“双师型”教师的培养力度,满足高技能人才培养的需要;提高农村职业高中教师的待遇。     

遵义市中等职业教育师资队伍建设问题思考

新时期的职业教育发展对教师队伍素质提出了更高的要求。职业教育的特点决定了教师应兼具有广博的文化知识和较强的实践技能和教学能力。从遵义市中职教育存在的问题来看,解决好师资队伍的建设是发展职业教育的关键。     

Using quality enhancement processes to achieve sustainable development and support for sessional staff

Abstract

Consistent with quality enhancement, we report on how we used a continuous improvement cycle to formalise and embed an academic development and support programme for our School’s sessional staff. Key factors in establishing and maintaining the programme included: local change agents supported initially by institutional project funding; School support for key academic and administrative roles; timely access to reports and tools from nationally-funded projects and sessional staff input. Reviewing our approach against national standards highlighted ongoing actions while collaboration with academic developers is critical for advancing our understanding and reviewing our approaches in our continuously changing context.     

Sharing the load,supporting the staff

Although the issue of challenging behaviour receives a great deal of attention in educational literature, the exact nature of this behaviour is open to debate. Challenging behaviour can be defined objectively by listing or describing behaviours that are considered disruptive and undesirable. On the other hand, challenging behaviour can be seen as contextual or relative. Based on data from questionnaires and interviews with children and teachers in an Irish primary school, we argue that these approaches to challenging behaviour are not mutually exclusive and find support for an interactive approach. This ‘behaviour‐in‐context’ approach involves taking a perspective of behaviour as a response to environmental and individual needs while recognising the objective undesirability of some behaviours. In our study, the development of a mutually acceptable construct of behaviour has emerged as a vital first step in intervention.     

Promoting doctoral students' research self-efficacy: combining academic guidance with autonomy support

A diverse sample of doctoral students completed an on-line questionnaire assessing their supervisors' academic, personal and autonomy support and their research self-efficacy. The more task-related help and personal support students received, the more positively they evaluated their supervision. The degree to which supervisors encouraged students to think and act autonomously (autonomy support) was not uniquely associated with students' supervision satisfaction but predicted greater research self-efficacy. A combination of high levels of autonomy and academic support was associated with the highest levels of research self-efficacy, whereas when greater levels of personal support were accompanied by low levels of autonomy support, students reported lower research self-efficacy. These results indicate that effective doctoral supervision involves supporting students to voice and act on their own ideas while simultaneously providing guidance on how to complete research tasks.     

Perspectives of SENCos and support staff in England on their roles,relationships and capacity to support inclusive practice for students with behavioural emotional and social difficulties

With teachers under pressure to meet curriculum targets, responsibility for including students with behavioural emotional and social difficulties (BESD) in mainstream schools falls heavily on non‐teaching staff. In this article, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with special educational needs coordinators (SENCos) and support staff in a small sample of secondary education settings in England, to examine their perceptions of their role, their relationships with students with BESD and their parents and their ability to facilitate inclusive practice. Despite both SENCo and support staff roles having been regarded as low‐status roles in the past, findings reported here depict a set of highly skilled workers crucial to the inclusion of students with BESD. Through the creation of a nurturing environment combined with caring attitudes and accessibility, these staff were able to form positive relationships with these students and their parents. Implications regarding staffing, resources and inclusion are further discussed.     

Teacher assistant support and deployment in mainstream schools

Models of support for students with disability and learning difficulties in mainstream classes in Australia rely extensively on teacher assistants (TAs). Current models, however, inadvertently perpetuate low expectations because providing TA support can be one of the most restrictive supports offered in a school [Giangreco, M. F. 2010a. “One-to-One Paraprofessionals for Students with Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms: Is Conventional Wisdom Wrong?” Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 48 (1): 1–13; Etscheidt, S. 2005. “Paraprofessional Services for Students with Disabilities: A Legal Analysis of Issues.” Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities 30(2): 60–80]. In addition, the increasing instructional role of TAs in the classroom is concerning. Negative outcomes for students where TAs provide support have been noted [Giangreco, M. F., J. C. Suter, and M. B. Doyle. 2010. “Paraprofessionals in Inclusive Schools: A Review of Recent Research.” Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation 20: 41–57; Webster, R., P. Blatchford, and A. Russell. 2010. “Should Teaching Assistants Have a Pedagogical Role? Lessons Following the DISS Project.” Paper Presented at the BERA annual conference, September 1–4, University of Warwick, UK]. A qualitative case study was conducted in an Australia city over three years across four primary school sites to identify the issues and propose possible solutions. The study identified five different models of TA support and deployment. It was found support models used in mainstream schools were generally inequitable – if students did not have a disability or learning difficulty they received instruction primarily from a qualified teacher, but if students had a disability or learning difficulty, they received instruction from a TA who may have had no qualifications, no involvement in planning, limited supervision and unclear reporting; and no clear duty statement requirements. A more inclusive and more equitable model of TA support is discussed.     

Schools and support staff: applying the European pedagogic model

The following discussion by Pat Petrie draws on a body of research conducted at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, the Institute of Education, University of London. These studies include: a survey of out‐of‐school services in the European Union (Meijvogel and Petrie, 1996); work on children's services in Sweden (Moss and Petrie, 2002); the changing role of the school internationally (Moss, Petrie and Poland, 1999); social pedagogy and work with looked‐after children in six European countries (Petrie, Boddy, Cameron and Wigfall, forthcoming 2006); and the incorporation of childcare into education in Sweden, Scotland and England (Cohen, Moss, Petrie and Wallace, 2004). Methods used in these studies have included commissioning reports from national experts, and local fieldwork involving interviews with policy makers and practitioners at all levels, in national and local governments and in a wide variety of services where pedagogues work face to face with children.     

Examining the Circles of Adults process for Children Looked After: the role of self-efficacy and empathy in staff behaviour change

ABSTRACT

The Circles of Adults (CoA) group problem solving process has been used by educational psychologists (EPs) when supporting vulnerable educational placements, but its effects upon staff or student outcomes have not been explored. CoAs were used in the current research with staff supporting Children Looked After (CLA) in secondary schools. A quasi-experimental explanatory, sequential, mixed-methods design investigated changes in participant causal attributions, perceived self-efficacy, and perceived implementation of subsequent actions. Participation in the CoA had no significant effects upon causal attributions or self-efficacy; however, staff perceived greater self-efficacy and success in implementing actions following the CoA. They valued the process, reporting enhanced group cohesion and task focus. Insights and empathy were deepened regarding the focus student, as were awareness of group processes and reflection. Threats in small-scale research are considered and a possible mechanism for the CoA’s effect as a supervisory approach is proposed.     

Professional learning among specialist staff in resourced mainstream schools for pupils with ASD and SLI

Supporting pupils with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in mainstream schools is a challenging task. This article proposes a professional development framework for educational psychologists (EPs) to consider when supporting the development of specialist ASD staff. The framework focuses on training content, educator characteristics and organisational elements. Nine mainstream schools developing additional provision to support children with ASD and specific language impairment (SLI) participated in the research. Specialist staff were provided with training and took part in follow up interviews about their developing practice. A pre- and post-questionnaire of participants (N = 30) attending the specialist training is supplemented with longitudinal interview data from specialist staff (N = 20). A paired sample t-test of questionnaire data showed that staff self-efficacy significantly increased pre- to post-training with a large effect size (0.61). Thematic analysis of interviews provided evidence of sustained professional development over time, underpinned by supportive organisational factors.     

Peer to peer support: the disappearing work in the doctoral student experience

This paper reflects on the importance of study groups in contributing to a positive postgraduate experience and explores specific concepts, such as ‘disappearing behaviours’ in contrasting the ‘official’ languages of universities with the beneficial behaviours found through study groups. Additionally the paper advocates the systematic inclusion of strategies such as study groups in the postgraduate experience. Funding arrangements and research frameworks for higher education in Australia focus on student progress and completion, as well as comparison of research quality within and between universities. As a result, there is a significant emphasis on timely completion of postgraduate degrees. This paper posits that there is an apparent contradiction between the indicators of success in this area, such as completion rates and annual progress reports and the positive contribution that study groups can make to the doctoral student experience.     

Susceptibility to peer influence during middle school: Links with social support,peer harassment,and gender

The present study explores concurrent relations between social support, gender, susceptibility to peer influence, and peer-based aggression and harassment in a socioeconomically and racially diverse sample of 774 seventh and eighth grade students. Results indicate that students perceiving lower support from their family or school were relatively more likely to be highly susceptible to peer influence, and to have friends who they believed were also highly susceptible to peer influence. Further, higher susceptibility to peer influence was associated with increased involvement in relational aggression and sexual harassment, both as a perpetrator and as a victim. Gender moderation effects were also found. The negative association of school support and susceptibility to peer influence was found greater in girls than boys. Girls who were highly susceptible to peer influence, or who had friends who were highly susceptible, had a relatively greater risk for involvement in relational aggression and sexual harassment, as compared with boys. Implications of these results for educators and school-based mental health professionals are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.