Putting More Life Into Life Career Courses: The Benefits of a Holistic Wellness Model

Career and life planning courses are gaining popularity across university campuses. The authors outline curricula for career and life planning courses that integrate a holistic wellness approach with career development Curriculum and learning activities to enhance the life planning component of the course are included.     

Effective Life Management in Parents of Children with Disabilities: A Cross-National Extension

This study is part of an on-going research program exploring life management in families of children with a variety of disability characteristics and age ranges. Scorgie, Wilgosh, and McDonald (1996) used a qualitative, interview methodology to identify effective strategies, qualities, and transformational outcomes for parents of children with disabilities who had been identified, by service agencies, as having effective life management strategies. A larger group of parents, from similarly identified, effectively managing families, was surveyed (Scorgie, Wilgosh, & McDonald, 1997), using the Life Management Survey (LMS) developed from the nine themes found in the qualitative study, supporting the original findings. A replication of the LMS survey study (Wilgosh, Scorgie, & Fleming, 2000) confirmed the previous findings with parents who were not preselected as effective life managers. In fact, the consistency across the three Canadian studies supported examination of family life management cross-nationally. The present study shows that Catholic Italian parents of children with disabilities have patterns of effective life management strategies, parent qualities, and parent transformational outcomes which characterize them and are similar to those of the Canadian parents. However, in the Italian study, some differences were found related to type of disability, emphasizing the need for qualified professional support, guidance and counselling, focused on the unique needs of each family, as related to the child's disability needs.     

Does Special Educator Effectiveness Vary Depending on the Observation Instrument Used?

In this study, we compared the results of 27 special education teachers’ evaluations using two different observation instruments, the Framework for Teaching (FFT), and the Explicit Instruction observation protocol of the Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) observation system. Results indicate differences in the rank‐ordering of teachers depending on which instrument was used. Overall scores on RESET were higher on average than those on FFT. Item‐level analyses showed that across 125 correlations, 73 were significant, low‐moderate, and 52 were nonsignificant. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Practicing Connections: A Framework to Guide Instructional Design for Developing Understanding in Complex Domains

Educational Psychology Review - Research suggests that expert understanding is characterized by coherent mental representations featuring a high level of connectedness. This paper advances the idea...     

The Role of Supervisors' and Supervisees' Mindfulness in Clinical Supervision

The authors explored whether supervisor and supervisee self‐ratings of mindfulness (N = 72 supervision pairs) predicted perceptions of the supervisory relationship and session dynamics. Only supervisor self‐ratings of mindfulness predicted their own ratings of the supervisory relationship and session dynamics.     

Improving Efficiency of Education in Developing Countries

Abstract

The article looks at how some of the developing countries are seeking to improve both the external and internal efficiency of their educational systems. It considers the question of access and the fairness or equity of that access, and also how the developing world is testing innovative instructional methods as alternatives to traditional methods. It looks at how these new methods are being applied in Indonesia, Liberia and Korea, and describes the USAID project for improving the efficiency of educational systems (IEES).     

Secondary school transition for children with special educational needs: a literature review

Successful transition from primary to secondary school is important for psychosocial well‐being. Children with special educational needs (SEN) may face additional complexities at transition, although the impact of this process on children's psychosocial adjustment has been underexplored. The article aims to review systematically the literature exploring the impact of transition on the concerns and psychosocial adjustment of children with SEN in comparison to typically developing children. Published studies were identified through a systematic search of six electronic databases. Articles fulfilling inclusion criteria were reviewed and a quality criteria system was developed to rank studies. Children with specific learning difficulties perceive lower levels of social support and more peer victimisation after transition than typically developing children, but methodological limitations and the modest number of studies restricted the conclusions that could be drawn.