In need of review: Developing Sensory Provision in Northern Ireland’s Mainstream Primary classrooms

The impact of Sensory Processing Difficulties across a range of Special Educational Needs is well researched. More recently, the impact on children’s mental health and well-being, linked with anxiety, depression and self-injurious behaviours, have redirected international research to consider the holistic benefits of sensory provision, for those with special educational provision and the wider classroom population. A SMART SURVEY was designed to collate empirical evidence regarding current sensory awareness and provision in mainstream primary schools throughout Northern Ireland, in a time efficient manner. Out of 809 schools, 164 (20.27%) fully completed the online survey. Findings indicate that Special Educational Needs Coordinator confidence in developing practice, supporting staff and children was limited and impaired by insufficient and inconsistent training opportunities. While healthcare research recommends provision by trained professionals, Occupational Therapy input was limited (n = 34; 24.8%), resulting in practice that could be detrimental rather than beneficial to children’s progress. Respondents identified a need for sensory training for teachers (n = 124; 93.94%) to ensure that the impact of Sensory Processing Difficulties on the holistic development of all children is understood. Pupil voice was undervalued (n = 5; 3.6%). Active involvement of children in the process of evaluation and intervention is recommended to enhance pupil autonomy and well-being.     

The relationship between phonological awareness and the development of orthographic representations

A training study was conducted to investigatethe relationship between phoneme segmentationability and the development of orthographicrepresentations. Five-year-old children withvarying degrees of phoneme segmentationability were taught to read ten new words byrepeated presentation of the words onflashcards. It was found that those childrenwho were most well equipped to perform phonemesegmentation tasks acquired this new readingvocabulary significantly faster than those whowere less phonemically aware. A series ofpost-tests was implemented to discover thenature of the internal orthographicrepresentations which the children had createdfor the words learned. The results of thesepost-tests demonstrated that the children whowere most phonemically aware had alsointernalised the most detailed orthographicrepresentations, despite needing fewerlearning trials. Salient letters fororthographic storage were predictable from thechildren's phoneme segmentation abilities. This paper provides strong support for thethesis that phonemic awareness is related toorthographic storage as well as alphabeticreading techniques.     

Assessing the impact of football-based health improvement programmes: stay onside,avoid own goals and score with the evaluation!

Health improvement is an important strand of the Premier League’s ‘Creating Chances’ strategy. Through community programmes, professional football clubs offer health-enhancing interventions for a number of different priority groups at risk from a range of lifestyle-related health conditions. However, while national guidance recommends evaluating health improvement interventions, concerns remain about how to do this most effectively. This study aims to investigate the popularity of football-based health improvement schemes and assess the challenges associated with their evaluation. Adapted from existing methodologies, a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to an ‘expert’ sample (n?=?3) of football-led health evaluators. The sample was selected because of their experience and knowledge of performing evaluations of football-led health improvement programmes. Our ‘experts’ offered reasons for the popularity of football settings as channels for health improvement (including the reach of the club badge and the popularity of football), the justification for evaluating such schemes (including confirming effectiveness and efficiency) and the challenges of implementing evaluations (capacity, commitment and capability). Finally, a selection of key considerations for the evaluation of the impact of football-led health improvement programmes (obtaining expert guidance, building capacity and planning for evaluations) are discussed.