Assessing wellbeing at school entry using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: professional perspectives

Emotional and behavioural disorders in early childhood are related to poorer academic attainment and school engagement, and difficulties already evident at the point of starting school can affect a child’s later social and academic development. Successful transfer from pre-school settings to primary education is helped by communication between pre-school staff and primary school teachers. Typically, in Scotland, pre-school establishments prepare individual profiles of children before they start school around the age of five years, highlighting their strengths and development needs, for transfer to primary schools. There is, however, no consistent approach to the identification of potential social, emotional and behavioural problems. In 2010, in one local authority area in Scotland, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was introduced for children about to start school as a routine, structured, component of the transition process to help teachers plan support arrangements for classes and individual children. The SDQ assesses emotional, conduct, hyperactivity/ inattention and peer-relationship problems as well as pro-social behaviour. In order to be an effective means of communicating social and emotional functioning, the use of instruments such as the SDQ needs to be practicable. Finding out the views of pre-school education staff with experience of assessing children using the SDQ was, therefore, essential to establish its future utility.

Aim

The purpose of this study was to explore the views of pre-school education staff about assessing social and emotional wellbeing of children at school entry using the SDQ. The objectives were to examine the opinions of pre-school workers about completing the SDQ and to elicit their thoughts on the value of doing this and their perceptions of the usefulness of the information collected.

Method

Pre-school establishments were approached using a purposive sampling strategy in order to achieve a mix of local authority (n=14) and ‘partnership’ establishments (n=8) as well as different socio-economic areas. Semi-structured interviews (n=25) were conducted with pre-school head teachers (n=14) and child development officers (n=11) in order to explore the process of completing the SDQ along with perceptions of its value. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.

Results

In general, staff in pre-school establishments viewed the use of the SDQ positively. It was seen as a chance to highlight the social and emotional development of children rather than just their academic or educational ability. Most felt that the SDQ had not identified anything they did not already know about a child. A minority, nevertheless, suggested that a previously unrecognised potential difficulty was brought to light, most commonly emotional problems. Completing the SDQ was felt to be relatively straightforward even though the staff felt under pressure from competing priorities. Concerns were, however, raised about the potential of labelling a child at an early stage of formal education.

Conclusion

The findings from this small scale study suggest that, from the point of view of pre-school education staff, it is feasible to assess children systematically for social and behavioural problems as part of the routine transition process at school entry.     

Improving the educational experience of children and young people in public care: a Scottish perspective

The context for this paper relates to the policy and practice implications of efforts to achieve social justice for Scotland’s 12,000 children and young people in the care of local government authorities. The paper is located within a growing evidence base of the educational experience of young people in care and leaving care. The data on attainment and exclusion from school in particular are reviewed and confirm that looked‐after children in Scotland, as elsewhere in the UK, typically leave education with significantly fewer school leaving qualifications than is now the common expectation for young people in their age group and are significantly more likely to lose time in school due to exclusion. However, the review also shows the devastating impact of being in care on young children’s attainment in reading, writing and mathematics. The implications of the data reviewed are discussed in relation to the concepts of social justice, resilience and the educationally rich environment.     

The effect of phonics instruction on the reading comprehension of beginning readers

This study investigated whether two groups of6-year-old beginning readers taught to read by aphonics and by a ``book experience' non-phonicsapproach would differ in reading comprehension as wellas the processes of word recognition. The two groupswere matched for word recognition but despite this, thephonics taught children had higher readingcomprehension. Phonics taught children produced morecontextually appropriate errors, and in both singleword and text reading made more spoken attempts atreading unknown words. The non-phonics taught childrenhad much faster reading reaction times to familiarwords but they scored less in phoneme segmentation andnonword reading tasks. Compared with the nonphonicsgroup, the phonics group spent more time in attemptsat identifying unknown words and this included usingcontextual information, which apparently resulted inmore rehearsal of the meaning of the story text andhence better reading comprehension performance.     

Reciprocal Learning in the Partnership Project: From Knowing to Doing in Comparative Research Models

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to describe an international project aimed at building a knowledge base between Canada and China and beyond for cross-cultural educational understanding and harmonious relationships. The overall purpose of this work is to move beyond cross-cultural comparison and competition to collaborative reciprocity. Reciprocal learning is the guiding term for the Canada–China Partnership Project. The term is relatively commonplace and its deceptive simplicity veils important research and public discourse consequences. The Partnership Project, though not explicitly comparative in nature, draws heavily on the literature of comparative education, particularly with respect to methodology and understandings of Chinese and Canadian education. We describe four comparative education approaches which we think of as models of reciprocal learning across cultures. In the following remarks, we unpack these ideas of reciprocal learning as they apply to collaborative studies of Chinese and Canadian education. The models are assessed for their potential to generate collaborative teaching and learning situations with associated reciprocal learning.     

Developmental and individual differences in children's on-line representations of dynamic social events

Developmental and clinical differences in children's on-line understanding of ongoing social events were examined. Boys with (n = 38) and without (n = 41) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were compared. Prior social schemes and integrative processes were hypothesized to influence children's representation of incoming social cues. Younger children and children with ADHD were expected to differ from older children and children without ADHD, respectively, in what they encoded and how they organized the encoded information. Differences in on-line representation were postulated to underlie differences in children's recall and social reasoning. Children's prior social schemes, looking time and on-line verbal protocols, recall, and social reasoning were assessed. Younger boys and ADHD boys showed less integrated on-line representations, accounting for poorer recall and reasoning.     

The social value of anonymity on campus: a study of the decline of Yik Yak

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the social value of anonymity in online university student communities, through the presentation of research which tracked the final year of life of the social media application Yik Yak. Yik Yak was an anonymous, geosocial mobile application launched in 2013 which, at its peak in 2014, was used by around two million students in the US and UK. The research we report here is significant as a mixed method study tracing the final year of the life of this app in a large UK university between 2016 and 2017. The paper uses computational and ethnographic methods to understand what might be at stake in the loss of anonymity within university student communities in a datafied society. Countering the most common argument made against online anonymity – its association with hate speech and victimisation – the paper draws on recent conceptual work on the social value of anonymity to argue that anonymity online in this context had significant value for the communities that use it. This study of a now-lost social network constitutes a valuable portrait by which we might better understand our current predicament in relation to anonymity, its perceived value and its growing impossibility.     

Testing the effectiveness of handwriting interventions: introduction to the special issue

This special issue was born within the COST Action IS1401ELN—Strengthening Europeans’ Capabilities by Establishing the European Literacy Network, with the major goal of disseminating evidence-based practices to promote handwriting and motivate researchers to move this research field forward. This issue includes five articles testing a different range of interventions to promote handwriting in students with and without disabilities from kindergarten to middle grades, across multiple contexts (viz., United States, Switzerland, Belgium, and Portugal). A final commentary paper closes the special issue with a discussion on the importance of acquiring fluent and legible handwriting along with the contributions and limitations of the investigations presented in the special issue.