Substance Abuse Policies in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Survey with Implications for Education of Long-Term Care Providers

The aging of the Baby Boom presents long-term care with many new challenges. Among these are the historically high levels of drug use by this cohort. This study surveyed administrators of licensed skilled nursing facilities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky regarding their perception of current drug use by residents, facility policies and procedures currently in place regarding illicit drug use, and their attitudes toward use of illicit drugs by residents. The results of interviews with 40 administrators or their designees revealed that they have experienced little problem with use or abuse of illegal drugs by residents. Fewer than one-third of the facilities had formal policies in place regarding illegal drug use. Only 10% had any experience with requests for medical marijuana, but almost one in five had a policy on the matter and nearly one-third stated they would support medical marijuana use by some of their residents if the matter arose. These authors recommend the following: (a) that the issue of illicit drug use needs to be addressed now before the situation becomes critical, (b) that administrators and staff need to be educated about recreational drug use and appropriate responses to drug abuse, (c) that screening instruments for drug abuse in this population should be developed and implemented, and (d) that policies regarding medical marijuana need to be adopted by all such facilities.     

Scientific Inquiry Self-Efficacy and Computer Game Self-Efficacy as Predictors and Outcomes of Middle School Boys’ and Girls’ Performance in a Science Assessment in a Virtual Environment

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The primary aim of the study was to examine whether performance on a science assessment in an immersive virtual environment was associated with changes...     

Fun moments or consequential experiences? A model for conceptualising and researching equitable youth outcomes from informal STEM learning

Cultural Studies of Science Education - While there are many different frameworks seeking to identify what benefits young people might derive from participation in informal STEM (Science,...     

Fish-out-of-office: How managerialised university conditions make administrative knowledge inaccessible to academics

Academics report feeling unable to cope in the managerialised university. To confirm these feelings are symptoms of managerialism's tightening grip, we use Bourdieusian concepts of field and capital to compare academics and professional staff experiential statements in an Australian university. We compare their field conditions and examine how their differences enable or hinder the accumulation of capital that defines their field. Findings show that managerialism requires professional staff to share work tasks and be on-campus, which enables them to accumulate the capital they require. Managerialism also permits and resources academics to working out-of-office to accumulate their required capital. Consequentially though, university operational knowledge becomes informal and only accessible to professional staff who accumulate the required social capital to access it. Professional staff are thus fish-in-water; easily accumulating social capital through day-to-day activities. But academics become fish-out-of-water (office); they flounder to access operational knowledge, which leads to feelings of not coping.     

Evidence of efficacy of the Integrated Literacy Study Group professional learning program to enhance reading instruction for students with emotional and behavioral disorders

This article reports on a pilot study of the Integrated Literacy Study Group, a digitally delivered professional learning intervention to prepare elementary school teachers to provide evidence-based reading instruction and behavioral strategies to students with or are at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Using broadcast methods, we recruited 72 teachers across five states in the western United States to participate in the randomized controlled trial. Intervention teachers, relative to controls, made significant gains in self-efficacy and use of the reading and behavioral strategies learned in the professional learning program. Students with or at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders served by participating teachers made significant improvements in academic competence and engagement. Teacher professional learning can improve teacher knowledge of evidence-based reading and behavioral strategies for students with (or at risk for) emotional and behavioral disorders, teacher self-efficacy, and teacher practice, with positive impacts on student early literacy and academic competence.     

Book Reviews

Serial Publications: Guidelines for Good Practice in Publishing Printed and Electronic Journals, 2nd edition, by Diane Brown, Elaine Stott and Anthony Watkinson Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers 2003, £27 (members), £30 (non‐members), 108 pp., paperback. ISBN 0‐907341‐22‐5. Available from http://www.alpsp.org/pub3.htm The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc Internet Law: Text and Materials by Chris Reed Butterworths Tolley, 2000, £24.95, paperback. ISBN 0406981418 Intellectual Property Law by Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, £32.99 (paperback), 1136 pp. ISBN 0‐19‐876343‐3 Clearing the Way: Copyright Clearance in UK Libraries by Elizabeth Gadd LISU Occasional Paper no. 31, Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU), Department of Information Science, Loughborough University. ISBN 1 901786 51 X Electronic Journals and User Behaviour: Learning for the Future from the SuperJournal Project by David Pullinger and Christine Baldwin Deedot Press, 2002, £14.95. ISBN 0‐954‐2924‐0‐5 Electronic Ecology: A Case Study of Electronic Journals in Context by Karla L. Hahn Association of Research Libraries, 79 pp., 2001, $45. ISBN 0‐918006‐46‐1 The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm E‐Serials, Publishers, Libraries, Users and Standards, 2nd edn, edited by Wayne Jones The Haworth Press Inc., 2003, 294 pp. paperback ISBN 0789012294     

Associations of Home and Classroom Environments with Head Start Children's Code-Related and Oral Language Skills

This study used data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2009 4-year-old cohort to examine associations among family characteristics, home and classroom environments, and the emergent literacy skills of Head Start children. Results from hierarchical linear models suggest that both family and classroom contexts play a unique and interactive role in supporting Head Start children's development of different sets of emergent literacy skills. Parental warmth was positively related to children's oral language skills (i.e., receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge), and teachers' educational level and the quality of instructional support in the classroom were significantly associated with children's code-related skills (i.e., letter-name and letter-sound knowledge). Further, high-quality instructional support in the classroom buffered the negative influence of low maternal education on children's oral language skills. Interventions focusing on enhancing the quality of parent-child interactions, in addition to professional development for teachers designed to improve the quality of instructional support, may contribute to promoting the development of emergent literacy skills of young children from low-income families.     

A school’s journey in creating a relational environment which supports attachment and emotional security

This article focuses on teachers’ experiences of supporting looked after and adopted children in one case study primary school in England. Children who are looked after and adopted may have a disrupted attachment with their primary carer which has resulted in an insecure attachment. Children with insecure attachments can feel anxious, uncertain and have low self-worth which can result in a struggle to adapt to school as they are unable to articulate their feelings. This article draws on qualitative research using semi-structured interviews with teaching staff in order to illuminate strategies, subsidised through Pupil Premium Plus funding, to support such children. A key outcome was the creation of a school-based model consisting of six main components that can be developed to support children with insecure attachments.     

Nonnative English-Speaking Professors’ Experiences of English-Medium Instruction and Their Perceived Roles of the Local Language

This study examines the experiences of nonnative English-speaking faculty instructors teaching subject courses in English-medium instruction (EMI) at a Korean university and reveals the perceived roles of the local language in the context. The data consist of questionnaire responses of 91 Korean professors and qualitative interviews with 15 who had answered the questionnaires. Findings showed that the participants perceived the local students’ performances and the amount of interaction between local and international students negatively. Their perceived need for the local, Korean language correlated negatively with the interaction between Korean and international students. In the qualitative interviews, the local language in the EMI context, despite the full-fledged EMI policy being implemented top down, was represented as crucial for social and instructional purposes and for their own time management. These perceived roles were found to be associated with their multiple identities, as instructors and researchers, required and practiced in the context. The findings are discussed to provide information on how to support an EMI policy for internationalization of higher education, especially in non-English-speaking societies.