Development and reliability of the comprehensive crisis plan checklist

It is of vital importance that children are educated in a safe environment. Every school needs to have a well‐developed crisis management document containing plans for prevention, intervention, and postvention. We developed the Comprehensive Crisis Plan Checklist (CCPC) to serve as a valuable tool that can be used to assist practitioners with evaluation of their school crisis management plans. To use the CCPC, school personnel should match the items on the checklist to elements in their developing or existing crisis plan to determine missing elements. By comparing a school or district crisis plan to the CCPC, practitioners or school personnel will be able to determine strengths and weaknesses of the plan as well as provide feedback for making their plans more complete and comprehensive. In this study, we describe the development of the CCPC and report on reliability data using this checklist. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Linking theoretical models to actual practices: A survey of teachers in gifted education

A regional survey of teachers of gifted and talented (G/T) programs, grades kindergarten through nine, in a southeastern state, was carried out. The principle foci of the survey were on theoretical models identified and used by teachers, and the importance of perceived outcome goals for children who are gifted. Respondents claimed awareness of several models of intervention but varied widely in the use of these models. Implications of the disparity between awareness and use of models are discussed. Outcome goals ranked by respondents varied in order, based on three grade level groupings of the teachers, most likely indicating changing perceptions of developmental needs as children progress through grade levels.     

Perceived Characteristics of Selected Movement Activities

The investigation used factor analytic procedures to identify dimensions which describe variations in college students' perceptions of selected movement activities. A sample of 1,421 college students completed a word pair association instrument in which each subject rated one of 24 movement activities on 21 word pairs. A range of dance, sport, and exercise activities representative of physical education curricular offerings were included in the study. The alpha factoring procedure with varimax rotation produced seven factors which accounted for 37.19% of the common variance: I Evaluation, II Potency, III Social Dynamics, IV Complexity, V Pace, VI Spontaneity, and VII Interaction. Incomplete principal components analysis was used to produce factor scores for each isolated factor. One-way ANOVA revealed that significant differences (α = .01) existed between activities on each of the seven factors.     

Developing Reflection on Practice Through Journal Writing: Impacts of variations in the focus and level of feedback

Journal writing is a popular technique for encouraging student-teachers to reflect on their professional practice during field experience placements. This paper explores the role and importance of journal feedback in developing students' reflective skills. Weekly journal entries were submitted by 35 student-teachers during a 6-week field placement. Students received individual feedback on each journal entry that focused on either the level of reflection attained in their writing or the particular issues that their entries addressed. Within these groups, the type of feedback provided was further varied according to the level of questioning and challenge with which students were confronted (high versus low). The relative effectiveness of the four different types of feedback in improving student journal writing and facilitating reflection on practice is examined. Although students in all conditions reported positive aspects of the feedback they received, feedback that focused on the level of reflection attained was more effective in bringing about improvement in journal writing than feedback that focused on teaching issues. Such feedback, combined with issue-related questions and comments designed to challenge the student and encourage consideration of alternative perspectives, would appear to offer the most effective strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of journal writing as a learning tool.     

Mindfulness and Subjective Knowledge

Epistemologists identify different approaches to knowledge, but scholarship within kinesiology has been dominated by the scientific method. Although some scholarship with roots in existential philosophy and phenomenology focuses on subjective knowledge, that work seems to have little influence on current research. This paper proposes the need for a balance of scientific and subjective knowledge and examines what impact such a balance would have on research and on professional practice. Subjective knowledge requires reflection about experience. The concept of mindfulness is proposed as a meaningful approach to subjective knowledge.     

Written expression—The last skill acquired

Conclusion These dyslexic youngsters were particularly weak in syntax. The level of productivity, the abstractness and originality of ideas were diverse. Results of Table 1 differed somewhat from Myklebust’s study and warrant further attention with larger groups of children. The subtle difficulties noted in spontaneous oral language should be explored further. Case 4 had the most difficulty with oral language. It is quite possible that written work is helping him monitor and clarify his oral language. With Case 3, the opposite seems true—oral language is perhaps aiding him in the sequencing of written language. In many respects, this paper has raised a myriad of questions and offered no answers. I believe, however, that it illustrates that written language is, indeed, the very last skill acquired by many youngsters.