Return to school after acquired brain injury in the UK – the educators' perspectives

Childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with poorer life outcomes. Increasing numbers of children and young people are surviving severe brain injury and returning to mainstream schools with multiple impairments. It is widely acknowledged that for these children, their school becomes by default their rehabilitation centre. International studies of this transition and a recent UK government report criticize educators' inconsistent implementation of support strategies, lack of educator training and poor communication between clinicians, educators, child and family. The educators' perspectives of the return-to-school are, however, not well represented in the literature. This study therefore explored the experiences of educators in the UK (N = 10) who had recently facilitated a return-to-school of a child with ABI aged 8–12 (N = 5) using semi-structured interviews analysed by data-driven thematic analysis. The findings highlight common experiences: a continuum of intensive problem-solving with heavy reliance on the Special Educational Needs Coordinator; educators valuing collaboration with clinical specialists in context over general ‘training’; uncertainty over the validity of implementing support strategies from prior teaching experience; uncertainty about how to support the child's emotional needs; and frustration with UK statutory processes for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Recommendations are made for changes to practice and future research.     

Adventures in Storyhacking: Facilitating Indirect Intercommunity Dialogue Through Story

ABSTRACT

The need for dialogue between diverse groups within society is pressing, but the shrinking of shared public space makes it difficult for storytelling to cross social divides. Through an evolving practice of multi-artform “storyhacking,” I and various collaborators have attempted to facilitate creative intercommunity dialogue by indirect means.     

Chinese-English biscriptal reading: cognitive component skills across orthographies

This study examined the associations of Chinese visual-orthographic skills, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness to Chinese and English word reading among 326 Hong Kong Chinese second- and fifth-graders learning English as a second language. Developmentally, tasks of visual-orthographic skill, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness improved with age. However, the extent to which each of the constructs explained variance in Chinese and English word reading was stable across age but differed by orthography. Across grades, visual-orthographic skills and morphological awareness, but not phonological awareness, were uniquely associated with Chinese character recognition with age and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. In contrast, Chinese visual-orthographic skills and phonological awareness, but not morphological awareness, accounted for unique variance in English word reading even with the effects of Chinese character recognition and other reading-related cognitive tasks statistically controlled. Thus, only visual-orthographic skills appeared to be a consistent factor in explaining both Chinese and English word reading, perhaps in part because Hong Kong Chinese children are taught in school to read both Chinese and English using a “look and say” strategy that emphasizes visual analysis for word recognition. These findings extend previous research on Chinese visual-orthographic skills to English word reading and underscore commonality and uniqueness in bilingual reading acquisition.     

Academic self-concept,autonomous academic motivation,and academic achievement: Mediating and additive effects

Three conceptual models were tested to examine the relationships among academic self-concept, autonomous academic motivation, and academic achievement. This allowed us to determine whether 1) autonomous academic motivation mediates the relation between academic self-concept and achievement, 2) academic self-concept mediates the relation between autonomous academic motivation and achievement, or 3) both motivational constructs have an additive effect on academic achievement. A total of 925 high school students (404 boys and 521 girls) were asked to complete a questionnaire on two occasions separated by a year interval. Results from SEM analyses provided good support for the hypothesized model positing that autonomous academic motivation mediates the academic self-concept–academic achievement relation. Results are discussed in light of self-determination theory and self-concept theory.     

Preparing students for future learning with Teachable Agents

One valuable goal of instructional technologies in K-12 education is to prepare students for future learning. Two classroom studies examined whether Teachable Agents (TA) achieves this goal. TA is an instructional technology that draws on the social metaphor of teaching a computer agent to help students learn. Students teach their agent by creating concept maps. Artificial intelligence enables TA to use the concept maps to answer questions, thereby providing interactivity, a model of thinking, and feedback. Elementary schoolchildren learning science with TA exhibited “added-value” learning that did not adversely affect the “basic-value” they gained from their regular curriculum, despite trade-offs in instructional time. Moreover, TA prepared students to learn new science content from their regular lessons, even when they were no longer using the software.     

A comparison of teachers' and school psychologists' perceptions of the importance of CHC abilities in the classroom

The broad cognitive abilities defined by the Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory have been shown to predict school achievement. However, the ecological validity of these constructs has not been studied in classroom settings. This study compares ratings by a sample of teachers (n = 53) and school psychologists (n = 86) of the importance of the CHC cognitive abilities in the classroom. The scale demonstrated adequate reliability (total scale α = .93, median α = .74), although evidence of construct validity varied between teachers and school psychologists. Both teachers and school psychologists rated quantitative ability, crystallized knowledge, and fluid reasoning as most important to school success. However, school psychologists rated short‐term memory and quantitative ability as more important than did the teachers. Importance of these differences for consultation is discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Parental perceptions of neighborhood processes,stress, personal control,and risk for physical child abuse and neglect

ObjectiveThis study set out to examine whether mothers’ individual perceptions of their neighborhood social processes predict their risk for physical child abuse and neglect directly and/or indirectly via pathways involving parents’ reported stress and sense of personal control in the parenting role.MethodsIn-home and phone interview data were examined cross-sectionally from a national birth cohort sample of 3,356 mothers across 20 US cities when the index child was 3 years of age. Mothers’ perceptions of neighborhood social processes, parenting stress, and personal control were examined as predictors, and three subscales of the Parent-To-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS-PC) were employed as proxies of physical child abuse and neglect risk. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test direct and indirect pathways (via parenting stress and control) from perceived neighborhood processes to proxy measures of physical child abuse and neglect. Multiple group SEM was conducted to test for differences across major ethnic groups: African American, Hispanic, and White.ResultsAlthough perceived negative neighborhood processes had only a mild direct role in predicting risk for physical child abuse, and no direct role on child neglect, these perceptions had a discernable indirect role in predicting risk via parenting stress and personal control pathways. Parenting stress exerted the clearest direct role on both physical abuse and neglect risk. This predictor model did not significantly differ across ethnic groups.ConclusionsAlthough neighborhood conditions may not play a clear directly observable role on physical child abuse and neglect risk, the indirect role they play underscores the importance of parents’ perceptions of their neighborhoods, and especially the role they play via parents’ reported stress and personal control.Practice implicationsSuch findings suggest that targeting parents’ sense of control and stress in relation to their immediate social environment holds particular potential to reduce physical child abuse and neglect risk. Addressing parents’ perceptions of their neighborhood challenges may serve to reduce parenting risk via improving parents’ felt control and stress.