Special support and neighbourhood school allocation in Finland: a study on parental school choice

Although freedom of parental school choice has expanded to the Finnish education system, the government has maintained the principle of neighbourhood school allocation. Moreover, the Finnish education system has recently undergone a reform of its special needs education; all pupils are entitled to receive support in three categories of general, intensified or special. The focus of this article is to examine parental positions on school choices in relation to the parents’ social class and their children’s support needs in basic education. The results of the study are based on a quantitative questionnaire, which collected responses from 208 participants drawn primarily from four different municipalities in Finland. The study found that the category of a child’s support, rather than the socio-economic class of the parents, determined the child’s school allocations. Furthermore, the more support the parents felt their children needed, the more importance they placed on special education practices and less on the neighbourhood school allocation. In addition, the parents’ opinions were found to differ based on social class, rather than category of support. In conclusion, we argue that the social segregation of students with special educational needs can be avoided, if the principle of neighbourhood school allocation is preserved.     

Social robots as cultural objects: The sixth dimension of dynamicity?

We investigate youths' conceptualization of social robots. Informed by Schudson's theory of the potency of the cultural object, we conducted two studies. The first study centered on essays on social robots written by bachelor's and master's students. The second study centered on prototypes of social robots built by small groups comprised of same students. The essays and prototypes were content analyzed. The results confirm that social robots embody all five dimensions that characterize cultural objects. However, to fully understand this peculiar cultural object, another dimension needs to be introduced: dynamicity.     

Leading for Change: School Leader Advocacy for Undocumented Immigrant Students

School leaders can ally with other educational stakeholders to encourage undocumented student persistence in Pk-12 schools. We explore (1) how school leaders create systems of support for undocumented and newly arrived immigrant students, and (2) how school leaders interpret and implement policies or school structures that affect student educational access. Border crossing theory guides our examination of how school leaders traverse and transgress borders that can impede students' education. This embedded case study included interviews with nine administrators working on the US-México border. The study finds that leaders expected to make a difference in students' lives by focusing on relationships and programming, committing to equity, and resisting deficit thinking about students and their families.     

Plain language summaries: Enabling increased diversity,equity, inclusion and accessibility in scholarly publishing

• Plain language summaries (PLS) are accessible, short, peer-reviewed summaries of scholarly journal articles written in non-technical language.
• The aim of PLS is to enable a broader audience of experts and non-experts to understand the original article.
• Here, we outline the evidence base for the value and impact of PLS and how they can enable diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in scholarly publishing.
• PLS can diversify readership and authorship, address information inequity, include typically under-represented stakeholders and provide an accessible route into scholarly literature.

     

Training for Impact: Improving the Quality of Staffs Performance

The study reported in this article examines the effects of training, feedback, and on–the–job coaching on the quality of staff performance. Forty staff members in three units of a psychiatric hospital were trained in a new system for writing patient progress notes. Initial training (Training 1) included a) establishing the importance of progress notes, b) rules and format for good notes, and c) examples of properly written notes. Training 1 resulted in slight improvement in performance over baseline. A second training program (Training 2), including examples and non–examples of well–written notes, was followed by a substantial increase in quality of staff notes. The quality of notes reached desired levels only after a feedback component was added in which the trainer posted data showing overall quality of notes and provided individual coaching to staff members regarding quality of group notes. We conclude from these results that the quality of staff performance of an organizationally significant task can be improved by a combination of training, feedback, and on–the–job coaching. Training using both examples and non–examples of properly completed tasks is superior to training using examples only. Training followed by feedback and on–the–job coaching is superior to training alone. The results support our conclusion that omitting a basic element of performance technology will yield low quality performance.