The influence of child,family, home factors and pre‐school education on the identification of special educational needs at age 10

The early identification of young children's special educational needs (SEN), as well as the development of specific strategies to support those children identified with special needs, are increasingly recognised as crucial to facilitating good adjustment to school and to ensuring that such children are helped to reach their full potential in education. Using a large national sample of young children in England whose developmental progress was followed up from pre‐school, this study investigates which child, family, home and pre‐school factors can be viewed as risk or protective factors for later SEN‐status at age 10. The experience of high‐quality pre‐school education is shown to reduce the likelihood of a child being identified as experiencing SEN in the long run. Teachers’ assessments of SEN are found to be strongly related to children's reading and mathematics attainment, but other factors also predict SEN, including a child's age within a year group.     

Exploring inclusive pedagogy

This paper reports on a study designed to examine teachers' craft knowledge of their practice of ‘inclusion’ in terms of what they do, why and how. The research approach offers an important alternative to studies of students with ‘additional needs’ and the search to articulate the specialist knowledge and skill required to teach them. Through classroom observations and interviews with 11 teachers of students across the full age range in two Scottish primary schools, we investigated how teachers make meaning of the concept of inclusion in their practice by exploring theoretical assumptions drawn from the literature about inclusive pedagogy. The analysis enabled us to identify practical examples of inclusive pedagogy that met the standard of extending what is generally available to everybody, as opposed to providing for all by differentiating for some. Examples of the inclusive pedagogical approach are provided.     

Supporting School Readiness Through Librarian-Child Interactions in Public Library Storytimes: An Analysis of Assessment Scores and Influential Factors

Early Childhood Education Journal - A recent trend in public libraries′ children’s services emphasizes the role of promoting school readiness. In order to gain a deeper understanding of...     

Who is blocking access to PubMed? Educational ‘Escape Room’ for medical residents

Teaching students how to conduct bibliographic searches in health sciences’ databases is essential training. One of the challenges librarians face is how to motivate students during classroom learning. In this article, two hospital libraries, in Spain, used Escape rooms as a method of bringing creativity, teamwork, communication and critical thinking into bibliographic search instruction. Escape rooms are a series of puzzles that must be solved to exit the game. This article explores the methods used for integrating escape rooms into training programmes and evaluates the results. Escape Rooms are a useful tool that can be integrated into residents’ training to support their instruction on bibliographic searches. This kind of learning stablishes competences like logical thinking and deductive approaching. These aspects aid participants to make their own decision and to develop social and intellectual skills.     

Suicidal Behavior and Help Seeking Among Diverse College Students

Suicidal and help‐seeking behaviors of students of color remain a significant problem on college campuses. Self‐reported suicidal experiences and help‐seeking behavior of diverse students are examined on the basis of results from a national survey of college student mental health. The results suggest significant differences in the expression of suicidal thoughts and behavior across racial and ethnic groups and different experiences in their referral for, and utilization of, professional help.     

Analogical reasoning in adolescents with intellectual disability: effects of external memories and time processing

Analogical reasoning involves the comparison of pictures as well as the memorisation of relations. Young children (4–7 years old) and students with moderate intellectual disability have a short memory span, which hampers them in succeeding traditional analogical tests. In the present study, we investigated if, by providing external memory hints, the visual aid could enable these participants to succeed in analogies comprising more relations than their memory span was able to manage. Our analogical test, composed of 2 × 2 matrices, was administered in two versions: the standard version, similar to traditional tests, required the participant to memorise all the relations involved in order to discover the solution, whereas the construction version required him/her to construct the answer part by part by using external memories, which potentially increased success by offloading the memory. Our results show that students with moderate intellectual disability reached results similar to typically developing control children when provided with external memory hints (referred to as external memories). Moreover, in the most complex levels of the test, they did not spend more time than control children in solving the analogies.     

Classroom instructional quality,exposure to mathematics instruction and mathematics achievement in fifth grade

This study examined the quality of teacher–child interactions and exposure to mathematics instruction as predictors of 5th grade student’s mathematics achievement. The sample was a subset of the children involved in the NICHD–SECC longitudinal study (N = 657). Results indicate that, even after controlling for student demographic characteristics, more exposure to mathematics instruction was related to increased fifth grade mathematics achievement for both calculations and applied problems assessments, but there was no main effect for improved instructional quality. Findings also indicate that, in classrooms where lower instructional quality was observed, greater exposure to mathematics instruction predicted improved mathematics achievement. Findings are discussed in terms of differing aspects of mathematics instruction and the possible compensatory role of exposure to instruction in classrooms of lower quality.     

Teaching Supply Chain Management Complexities: A SCOR Model Based Classroom Simulation

The SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) Model Supply Chain Classroom Simulation is an in‐class experiential learning activity that helps students develop a holistic understanding of the processes and challenges of supply chain management. The simulation has broader learning objectives than other supply chain related activities such as the Beer Game. Competing supply chains work to produce and sell two products, each experiencing differential demand. Seasonal demand, time delays, quality defects, and disruptions offer complexities that are part of actual supply chain management. The behavioral dynamics of collaboration between various functional nodes is illustrated through students’ interactions as they try to achieve their role's objectives. Through their decisions and actions, students develop a practical understanding of the processes and complexities of supply chain management. The classroom simulation actively engages students, and has been used successfully in multiple courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at multiple universities and by a major corporation during a manager training session. Assessments indicate that the simulation is an effective experiential learning activity. While it offers learning outcome flexibility, common debrief themes are SCOR model processes, supply chain relationships, information flow, seasonal demand, quality defects, reverse logistics, and supply chain disruptions.