Evidence-based health promotion in nursing homes: A pilot intervention to improve oral health

ABSTRACT

Nursing home residents over the age of 65 years are at high risk for poor oral health and related complications such as pneumonia and adverse diabetes outcomes. A preliminary study found that Massachusetts’ nursing homes generally lack the training and resources needed to provide adequate oral health care to residents. In this study, an intervention targeting Certified Nurses’ Aides (CNAs) was developed and tested. We hypothesized that following the training, CNAs would have increased knowledge and self-efficacy toward providing oral health care to the residents in their charge.

This pilot study used a one-group pretest-posttest design to test the effectiveness of a psycho-educational training intervention. Utilizing the constructs of knowledge and self-efficacy from the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Social Cognitive Theory, we framed the content of a training intervention and administered a 21-item instrument. The survey was distributed to the CNA staff of a single midsize nursing home immediately prior to and after the intervention. The 1-hour training intervention was empirically supported by formative data and delivered by dental faculty researchers.

Findings indicate increases in two areas of oral health knowledge: toothbrush position and frequency of brushing. Self-efficacy, however, did not significantly change. Although the results marginally supported our hypothesis, this pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of delivering interventions to CNAs who have direct responsibility for promoting the oral health of long-term care facility residents.     

Completion of partially worked-out examples as a generation strategy for improving monitoring accuracy

Students’ Judgments of Learning (JOLs) are often inaccurate: students often overestimate their future test performance. Because of the consequences that JOL inaccuracy can have for regulating study activities, an important question is how JOL accuracy can be improved. When learning texts, JOL accuracy has been shown to improve through ‘generation strategies’, such as generating keywords, summaries, or concept maps. This study investigated whether JOL accuracy can also be improved by means of a generation strategy (i.e., completing blank steps in the examples) when learning to solve problems through worked example study. Secondary education students of 14–15 years old (cf. USA 9th grade) either studied worked examples or completed partially worked examples and gave JOLs. It was found that completion of worked examples resulted in underestimation of future test performance. It seems that completing partially worked-out examples made students less confident about future performance than studying fully worked examples. However, this did not lead to better regulation of study.     

Leading Deep Conversations in Collaborative Inquiry Groups

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers’ conversations. Polite, congenial conversations remain superficially focused on sharing stories of practice, whereas collegial dialogue probes more deeply into teaching and learning. Examples of talk taken from collaborative teacher inquiry groups are used to illustrate these important differences. Specific recommendations are provided, including the role that teacher leaders can play in adopting and modeling specific strategies that support the use of more substantive professional conversation.     

Perceptions of women managers and their communicator competencies 1

A stepfamily often faces unique challenges that can influence the strength of its bonds. One way in which stepfamily members adapt to these challenges is through communication. This study investigates adolescents’ and young adults’ use of topic avoidance in stepfamilies and its association with satisfaction and the parenting style of the stepparent. The results revealed that the more satisfied the participants were with their mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, and stepfamily overall, the less avoidance they were likely to employ. The findings also showed that more authoritarian stepparenting tended to increase the amount of avoidance, whereas more permissiveness and authoritativeness decreased it. Authoritativeness and authoritarianism were more strongly associated than permissiveness with participants’ avoidance. Perceptions of authoritarian stepparenting were also negatively associated with participants’ satisfaction with their stepparent. Finally, low or high degrees of persmissiveness were associated with low levels of satisfaction, but moderate degrees of permissive stepparenting were associated with moderate degrees of satisfaction with one's stepfamily.     

Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race

Abstract

Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times.     

Teachable moments: Taking advantage of multicultural encounters

This paper presents the rationale of the Hartford Half Tuition Program at the University of Hartford which enrolls qualified graduates of city high schools. Since its inception four years ago, it has changed the demographics of the institution and been the catalyst for many events, discussions, and interactions that have served as teachable moments for the development of students, staff, and faculty. A critique of key elements of the program leads to the identification of lessons learned.Elizabeth A. McDaniel, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Hartford, received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Florida, M.S. in Education from Barry University, and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Miami. She is actively involved in issues relating to curriculum, instruction, and community in higher education. Tamara Moreland, Director of the Office of Graduate and Adult Academic Services at the University of Hartford, earned her B.S. in Economics, and is expected to receive her master's in organizational behavior from the University of Hartford in December 1994. Her interests are organizational design, group dynamics, and the influence of culture on interpersonal relationships.     

Experience of disadvantage: The influence of identity on engagement in working class students’ educational trajectories to an elite university

Pervasive socio‐economic differences in relation to participation in higher education in the United Kingdom are particularly prominent in the most prestigious institutions. This study provides insight into why some individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are successful in being admitted into one of these institutions. Underpinned by phenomenology, semi‐structured interviews were carried out to examine the lived experiences of high‐achieving students from socio‐economically disadvantaged backgrounds throughout their educational trajectories from primary school to a Russell Group university. Two main themes emerged from the data: identity and educational engagement. Various sources of disadvantage associated with material hardship, socio‐cultural and interpersonal factors were strongly linked to identity and students’ perceptions of their own social status. In turn, these factors and identity‐related constructs associated with peer‐group memberships, low expectations and negative group stereotypes affected how individuals engaged with education, contributing, for instance, to their lack of active involvement at school/college and poor attendance. However, identity‐related factors were also found to influence individuals’ educational engagement positively, including their motivations for overcoming obstacles, achieving high grades and pursuing HE. The barriers and facilitators discussed by these individuals have important implications for widening access to HE and thus require further consideration.     

Science Background and Spatial Abilities in Men and Women

Deficits in spatial abilities, particularly mental rotation (MR), may contribute to women's avoidance of areas of study that rely on MR, including chemistry. Women who do experience success in chemistry may do so because they have good MR skills. We examined MR ability, assessed by the Purdue Visual Rotations Test (PVRT; Bodner and R. B. (1997)) in three groups of students: those with no college science background, those with a limited college science background that did not include organic chemistry, and those with more extensive science background including organic chemistry. Men and women with extensive background that included organic chemistry performed equally on the MR task, as did those students who had no college science background. However, men outperformed women on the MR task if they had limited science training, although this effect was mediated by the total number of chemistry courses taken. Self-reports of competence on the task were positively related to MR ability, but neither self-described effort nor other background variables (such as experience with spatial tasks and participation in athletics) were important to MR. Grades in science courses were not related to MR capability for any group of students. Our results suggest that while women often show a lesser ability with MR tasks, this deficit may not be an important contribution to women's tendency to avoid the physical sciences.     

Early Childhood Educators’ Well-Being: An Updated Review of the Literature

Researchers are increasingly recognising the connections between early childhood educators’ well-being and their capacity for providing high quality education and care. The past five years have seen an intensification of research concerning early childhood educators’ well-being. However, fragmentation along conceptual, contextual and methodological lines makes it difficult to clearly identify the most effective focus for future research. The purpose of this article is to identify trends in, and implications of recent research concerned with educators’ well-being. Attention is given to ways recent studies address concerns raised in a review of earlier literature (Hall-Kenyon et al. in Early Child Educ J 42(3):153–162, 2014, doi: 10.1007/s10643-013-0595-4), and what implications recent studies have for future research efforts concerned with educators’ well-being.