Low‐Income Ethnically Diverse Children's Engagement as a Predictor of School Readiness Above Preschool Classroom Quality

This study examined whether children's observed individual engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks related to their school readiness after controlling for observed preschool classroom quality and children's baseline skills. The sample included 211 predominately low‐income, racially/ethnically diverse 4‐year‐old children in 49 preschool classrooms in one medium‐sized U.S. city. Results indicated that children's positive engagement with (a) teachers related to improved literacy skills; (b) peers related to improved language and self‐regulatory skills; and (c) tasks related to closer relationships with teachers. Children's negative engagement was associated with lower language, literacy, and self‐regulatory skills, and more conflict and closeness with teachers. Effect sizes were small to medium in magnitude, and some expected relations between positive engagement and school readiness were not found.     

A Library and a Radio Show: The Story of a Successful Partnership at 10 Years and Counting

Your Health® Radio is a weekly one-hour radio show about consumer health produced by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Family Medicine. It provides practical, health-related news and information to listeners in an easy to understand style. Hosted by a family medicine physician faculty member and co-hosted by other health professionals, it airs on a local radio station. Since 2009, Health Sciences librarians have collaborated on the show, bringing their expertise in information discovery and organization, consumer health, and health literacy to this consumer health endeavor. In the process, the librarians and libraries have also benefitted.     

Pubertal Timing and Adolescent Alcohol Use: The Mediating Role of Parental and Peer Influences

Using intergenerational, prospective data at ages 9 months, 7, 11, and 14 years from the nationally representative United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study, this interdisciplinary study unpacks why 14-year-old adolescents with early perceived pubertal timing (PT) were more likely to drink alcohol (ever, frequent, and binge drinking) compared to those whose PT was on-time or late (5,757 girls, 5,799 boys; 80% White, 10% Asian, 3% Black, and 7% Other British). Parents allowed drinking among 22% (18%) of early PT girls (boys) compared to 11% of late PT adolescents; formal mediation models showed differences by PT in parent permissiveness and gains in alcohol-using friends primarily explained age 14 PT-drinking associations. Parental alcohol permissiveness should be a key prevention target for early PT adolescents.     

The Use of Health Related Quality of Life Measurement in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Physical Therapy Practice: An Exploratory Study

Background: The American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR) recommends health related quality of life (HRQL) measurement with all cardiovascular and pulmonary patients. The current pattern of use of HRQL measurement among cardiovascular and pulmonary physical therapists is unknown. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pattern of use of HRQL measurement among cardiovascular and pulmonary physical therapists. Design: The study used a semi-structured interview format within the context of 3 focus groups. Methods: Eleven physical therapists participated in this study and all were members of the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Section of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Participants participated in a conference call and were provided a question tree to guide discussion. Results: Several primary themes emerged, including decreased knowledge, barriers, and poor indicators of patient status. In addition, several subthemes developed including lack of familiarity, lack of use, administrative and cost limitations, inappropriateness of tool for patient population, correlation between function and quality of life, and suggestions for future outcome measures. Conclusions: A lack of familiarity and use of HRQL measurement and barriers to their use were established. In addition, ideas for future research on HRQL measurements with specific patient populations in physical therapy practice were defined.Key Words: health related quality of life, outcomes measurement     

Teaching conversation skills to behaviorally disordered children

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of an instructional package designed to teach conversation skills to behaviorally disordered children. A multiple baseline design with a reversal was employed to assess the effectiveness of this package. Six children were taught in two groups of three. The teachers were taught to use the package prior to implementation to insure standardization across both groups. Data were collected in a contrived setting with a peer trained as a conversant. Observation also took place in the school cafeteria to assess generalization of the training to a naturalistic setting. Social validation data were collected from teachers and children to evaluate their impressions of the instructional package. Results indicated that the instructional package was effective in increasing conversational skills above baseline levels in all children and in both settings.     

Developing a (Non‐linear) Practice of Design Thinking

Design thinking can be a powerful way to engage the world, allowing interactive understandings that are both analytic and experiential. When fully functioning, design thinking necessarily calls upon faculties often considered a‐rational, a‐causal and a‐logical. Unfortunately, such faculties often give rise to academic suspicion. That is to say, the indeterminacies of design thinking often spawn unhelpful (and undermining) reductions. When this occurs, the fullness of design thinking gets channelled into a series of steps, rules of thumb or professional categories, thereby diluting its potency. In order to encourage a richer image of design thinking, particularly for the education of design students, this article explores ways to complement more familiar logical understandings of the design process with the functional complexity of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ‘rhizome’. As a heuristic device, the rhizome and its related concepts are employed to provide a more complete picture of design thinking and to develop a practice that imbues design work with meaningful complexity. In this way, the rhizome promotes design thinking as a process comprised of both linear and non‐linear aspects.     

Examining elementary preservice teachers’ perspectives concerning curriculum themes for video case integration

Video cases are becoming more and more prevalent throughout the United States to assist in the development and growth of preservice teachers’ instruction. This research investigates the perspectives of preservice teachers and their naïve understandings of the kinds of learning and assistance video cases can provide in their methodology courses. Personal Construct Theory was used to uncover participants’ perceptions of their needs in terms of curriculum content of video cases. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed six distinct clusters which serve as themes for discussing the early needs of preservice teachers and how video cases might be configured to address these perceived needs. Results reveal that preservice teachers’ beliefs, though naïve, do reflect the research on the actual needs of teachers in their first years of induction and support. Perhaps if preservice teachers’ predilections are examined, this data can help guide the future implementation of video cases in their university courses.