Professionals’ views on the new policy for special educational needs in England: ideology versus implementation

In 2014 a new policy for special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision was introduced in England. As it has been the case in countries where SEND reforms were introduced, these changes raised challenges and opportunities for the professionals supporting children with SEND. However, to date, little systematic and large-scale evidence has been made available on how professionals perceive these changes. In this study, the views of 349 professionals were ascertained using a semi-structured online survey. The results revealed that although many professionals agreed in principle with some of the key changes introduced, several constraints were reported including tight timelines, budget cuts, and difficulties in the collaboration between education, health and care, suggesting a rather fragmented implementation of the new policy. No significant differences were found between groups of professionals for most items, however educational psychologists and special needs co-ordinators disagree on the extension of the provision age range, on how well the children’s needs are described in the education, health and care plans, and on the professional requirements of this process. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for meeting children’s needs and in comparison with other policy changes worldwide.     

Prekindergarten Interactive Book Reading Quality and Children’s Language and Literacy Development: Classroom Organization as a Moderator

Research Findings: This study examined the association between interactive book reading quality and prekindergarten children’s gains in language and literacy skills over the course of an academic year for 96 teachers and 417 children across multiple locations in the United States. Two moderators were examined, namely, children’s initial skill level and teachers’ classroom organization during an interactive read-aloud session. In keeping with prior research, interactive book reading quality, measured by examination of teachers’ extratextual talk, was positively and significantly related to children’s development of both language and literacy skills. Interactive book reading quality was not significantly moderated by children’s initial skills, with the exception that interactive book reading quality appeared most beneficial to children’s print knowledge for children entering prekindergarten with relatively low skill. The unique contribution of this study is that the association between interactive book reading quality and children’s expressive vocabulary was dependent on an organized classroom during the book reading session. Practice or Policy: The quality of teachers’ talk during interactive book reading may matter for children’s vocabulary development only when reading sessions are characterized by relatively high classroom organization. Classroom organization should be an important consideration while planning for interactive book reading sessions.     

Channel adaptive rate control for energy optimization

Low energy consumption is one of the main challenges for wireless video transmission on battery limited devices. The energy invested at the lower layers of the protocol stack involved in data communication, such as link and physical layer, represent an important part of the total energy consumption. This communication energy highly depends on the channel conditions and on the transmission data rate. Traditionally, video coding is unaware of varying channel conditions. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer approach in which the rate control mechanism of the video codec becomes channel-aware and steers the instantaneous output rate according to the channel conditions to reduce the communication energy. Our results show that energy savings of up to 30% can be obtained with a reduction of barely 0.1 dB on the average video quality. The impact of feedback delays is shown to be small. In addition, this adaptive mechanism has low complexity, which makes it suitable for real-time applications.     

Learning to talk the educational psychology talk through a problem-based course

A sociocultural view of learning proposes that learning involves becoming enculturated into a community of practice. A step along the way is learning to use the specialized language of such a community, as language is a crucial tool that regulates participation, mediates cognition and plays a central role in the development of thought. Problem-based learning (PBL), with its emphasis on collaborative discourse, provides opportunities for students to develop the conceptual language of a discipline, which in turn affects cognition. In a problem-based undergraduate Educational Psychology course, many psychological theories, concepts and principles are introduced to pre-service teachers. During the course, as students learn through problem solving, they engage with new knowledge. This evolving knowledge requires new discourse structures that will allow students to express their new ideas and that will ultimately structure students' ways of knowing. The content of group and individual artifacts is analyzed to examine how PBL influences students' language and knowledge development over the course of the semester in an Educational Psychology class (n = 34). The goal of this paper is to present these analyses and to discuss how the change affects students' language and knowledge.     

Longitudinal Relations among Maternal Self-Efficacy,Maternal Warmth,and Early Adolescents’ Prosocial Behavior

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This article examined two-wave longitudinal paths among maternal self-efficacy, maternal warmth, and early adolescents’ prosocial behavior. Design . Participants were 194 Italian mother/child dyads from 9–13 years at the first assessment and 12–15 years at the second assessment. Using a two-wave longitudinal design, the present study tested cross-lagged paths among maternal self-efficacy, warmth, and early adolescents’ prosocial behavior controlling for the stability of these variables and their concurrent associations. Results . Maternal warmth mediated the link between maternal self-efficacy and adolescents’ prosocial behavior, and bi-directional effects between maternal self-efficacy and maternal warmth were found. Conclusions . These findings support a parent-driven model in the promotion of prosocial behaviors across early adolescence and a general need to consider simultaneously parental cognitions (maternal self-efficacy) and actions (maternal warmth) in explaining adolescents’ prosocial behaviors. Implications for parenting program interventions are discussed.     

Trademarks’ relatedness to product and service innovation: A branding strategy approach

The use of trademark data in innovation studies is still limited because as yet no guidelines exist to ascertain which trademarks relate to innovation. This paper proposes that a branding strategy approach may help to identify innovation related trademarks. Companies use distinctive branding strategies for innovation and these branding strategies have important consequences for the design of new trademarks and their application scope. Based on a sample of Benelux and Community trademarks, we find that trademarks for brand creation relate more often to product innovation. In addition, we find negative effects of a trademark’s industry scope on its relatedness to product innovation, and of a trademark’s geographic scope on its relatedness to service innovation. Our findings bear several key implications for further research towards identifying innovation-related trademarks from a branding strategy perspective.     

The Attitudes of Different Partners Involved in Higher Education towards Students with Disabilities

In this article we analyse the inclusion of students with disabilities in the field of university attendance, emphasising the importance of attitudes of teachers as well as the rest of the university community as a whole for inclusion to be successful. The effect of variables of gender, education and training and contact with students with disabilities on these attitudes is also detailed. A scale was applied to assess attitudes towards disabilities to 2671 participants, including students with and without disabilities, teachers and administrative and services staff from the Faculty of Education in a University in Southern Spain. The results show that in general, the university community has positive attitudes towards students with disabilities, with differences according to the group, with university teachers having the most favourable attitudes. The results are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.     

To trademark or not to trademark: The case of the creative and cultural industries

Research on the use of trademarks by innovating companies is growing. Yet, large research gaps exist in our understanding of the use of trademarks beyond manufacturing and beyond specific service sectors. This study focuses on the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) and argues that these industries represent a salient case to advance research on trademarks. After reviewing the main characteristics of CCIs, a conceptual framework is developed to classify motives to trademark and motives not to trademark for firms in these industries. The paper offers original empirical evidence on the relevance of these motives from survey results on a sample of 486 European firms in five selected CCIs.Results from principal component analysis are used to propose a taxonomy of firms with specific attitudes and strategies towards trademarking. All results are discussed in terms of their implications for using trademarks as the basis for novel economic indicators of product variety and innovation.     

Field dependence-independence cognitive style and academic achievement: A review of research and theory

Field dependence-independence was originally conceived as a neutral style dimension, in that field-dependent subjects were considered to be as well-adapted to their environment as field-independent subjects. Subsequent authors, however, questioned this assumption of neutrality, on the grounds that field-independent subjects generally perform better in certain intellectual tasks. Such findings provoked interest in the possible repercussions of field dependence-independence for education. Here, we review research into the possible effects of FDI on achievement at school. In general, field-independent subjects perform better than field-dependent subjects, whether assessment is of specific disciplines or across the board. We discuss possible explanations for this difference in performance.