Balancing pressures for SENCos as managers,leaders and advocates in the emerging context of the Covid-19 pandemic

This article considers the role of the SENCo during Covid-19 pandemic conditions of school lockdown with partial reopening for children classified as ‘vulnerable’. It is argued that the existing pressures and tensions already experienced by SENCos – for example, related to time, workload, status, and their prescribed managerial and strategic role – have been highlighted by pandemic conditions. Pressures resulting specifically from the pandemic are reflected by considering how SENCos will adjust to enact their role during this time. It is concluded that an advocacy role for pupils with special educational needs and disability, who are at risk of becoming increasingly marginalised within school and wider communities during this pandemic, should now be considered a central element of the SENCo’s remit.     

A cost/effectiveness evaluation of lay therapy treatment for child abusing and high risk parents

This longitudinal investigation tested the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of a lay therapy treatment program in comparison with a standard social work treatment approach. A pretest-extended posttest research design was used to follow a group of child abusing and high risk mothers who received lay therapy (N = 27) and a randomized control group of similar clients (N = 28) over a 12-month period. Outcome data were obtained through interview and direct observation of the parents and children at six-month intervals. A variety of standardized instruments were used including Cattell's 16 Personality Factor Test, Coopersmith's Self-Opinion Form, and the Nurturance and Parent Observation Scales, adapted from Baumrind. Treatment success was defined as progression toward the mean scores of a matched comparison group (N = 21) obtained from the general population of the community during the pretest. The results indicated a trend toward improvement on the outcome measures for both treatment groups. The group receiving lay therapy treatment improved only slightly more than the group receiving standard treatment; however, there was also significantly less attrition with the lay therapy group. Analysis of time budget study data indicated that the lay therapists spent an average of 17.46 hours per month with each of their clients thus permitting the social workers to spend considerably less time with lay therapy clients. Analysis of the direct costs of the programs, based on time budget information, indicated that the lay therapy treatment involved more direct client contact than the standard treatment approach and was also substantially more costly. The high cost of the program was attributed to low caseloads and redundancy in supervision. This study presents several practical program and research recommendations.     

Taking a Closer Look at the Factors That Influence Ethnic Identity

Ethnic identity (EI) has long been known to supersede race as a predictor for attitudes and behaviors. However, little is known about the constituent parts that comprise and influence ethnic identity. In order to improve communications that target EI, we examine both demographic and communication variables to determine which have a greater pull on people’s attitudes and actions. Race appears to moderate the effects of age on ethnic identity, whereby age was negatively related to ethnic-identity exploration among White participants and positively related to ethnic identity commitment among Black participants (p < .05). Having a higher income, print-media use, and information-engagement orientation were also positively correlated with ethnic identity; education and gender were not. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

PITFALLS AND PROMISES: THE USE OF SECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

ABSTRACT:  This paper considers the use of secondary data analysis in educational research. It addresses some of the promises and potential pitfalls that influence its use and explores a possible role for the secondary analysis of numeric data in the 'new' political arithmetic tradition of social research. Secondary data analysis is a relatively under-used technique in Education and in the social sciences more widely, and it is an approach that is not without its critics. Here we consider two main objections to the use of secondary data: that it is full of errors and that because of the socially constructed nature of social data, simply reducing it to a numeric form cannot fully encapsulate its complexity. However, secondary data also offers numerous methodological, theoretical and pedagogical benefits. Indeed by treating secondary data analysis with appropriate scepticism and respect for its limitations, by demanding that tacit assumptions about the unreliability of secondary data are applied equally to other research methods, and crucially by combining secondary data analysis with small-scale in-depth work, this paper argues for a return to prominence of secondary data analysis in its own right as well as becoming a central component of the new political arithmetic tradition of social research.     

Activity frames and complexity thinking: Honoring both public and personal agendas in an emergent curriculum

This article which is largely conceptual in nature, explores the possibilities provided by embracing complexity thinking that are attentive to, but not confined by, externally imposed curriculum mandates while simultaneously honoring the interests and needs of individual students and the classroom collective. From this perspective, the ideas of negotiating authority, adopting a holistic view, engaging in participatory democratic practices, and using a project-based approach to learning are examined. In doing so, the concept of ‘activity frames’ is introduced and developed as a useful way of responding to curriculum mandates while being responsive to and respectful of individual and collective student learning agendas.     

The developmental influence of sex composition in preschool classrooms: Boys fare worse in preschool classrooms with more boys

A multilevel modeling approach was employed to investigate the relation between sex composition and developmental change in 70 urban preschool classrooms. The research represents a unique contribution as (1) few studies have examined the influence of sex composition during the preschool years, (2) it represents the first research to use a continuous (i.e., sex ratio) as opposed to binary (i.e., mixed- versus single-sex) indicator for classroom sex composition, and (3) the sample represents an important and often neglected group (i.e., low-income children from urban schools). A series of HLM models were run, addressing the nested nature of the data (children within classrooms), and relating classroom sex composition to developmental change using the cognitive, motor, and social subscales from the Child Observation Record (COR). Overall, there were no main effects at the classroom-level for sex composition. However, a cross-level interaction indicated that, while girls’ development was not influenced by classroom sex composition, boys in classrooms with proportionally more boys fared significantly worse in terms of development as assessed by combined score on the COR. More specifically, this interaction was significant when predicting the COR cognitive subscale, but nonsignificant when predicting the COR social and motor subscales. This was true when controlling for the number of students at the classroom-level, as well as child's age and baseline ability (i.e., Time 1 COR) at the child-level. Implications for early childhood education policy are discussed.