'Talking about my generation': a state-of-the-art review of health information for men in the andropause

The focus of this article is the availability and use of information in the UK about the male menopause or as it's beginning to be known by the general public and health professionals, the andropause. The experiences of men suffering from the andropause today are reflective of menopausal women some 20 or 30 years ago. Ignorance and fear of the andropause condition abounds in the general public and amongst health professionals. There is a paucity of information in the literature about the symptoms and condition of the andropause. The review considers the provision and use of information available for men in the andropause in the public domain, examining both NHS and condition specific sources. The use of electronic sources is specifically reviewed, including an online forum. The use of electronic sources is indicative of other health information users. The reviewer concludes by suggesting that increased knowledge sharing is required by health professionals and the general public about the symptoms and condition of the andropause. It is recommended that men in the andropause identify a 'champion' to assist their cause. This will help in gaining greater recognition and understanding of the condition and attract the most appropriate treatment.     

The impact of professional development on early childhood educators’ confidence,understanding and knowledge of education for sustainability

In recent times, Australia has recognised and enacted a range of initiatives at service, system and community levels that seek to embed sustainability into the early childhood sector. This paper explores the impact of a professional development (PD) session that provided opportunities for early childhood educators to learn and share ideas about the theory and practice of sustainability generally and early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) specifically. The PD was entitled ‘Living and Learning about Sustainability in the Early Years’ and was offered on three occasions across Tasmania. A total of 99 participants attended the three PD sessions (one 5 hour; two 2 hour). The participants had varying levels of experience and included early childhood teachers, centre based educators and preservice teachers. At the start and end of the PD, participants were invited to complete a questionnaire that contained a series of likert scale questions that explored their content knowledge, level of understanding and confidence in regards to ECEfS. Participants were also asked at the start and end of the PD to ‘list five words you think of when you consider the word sustainability.’ A model of teacher professional growth was used to conceptualise the results related to the changes in knowledge, understanding and confidence (personal domain) as a result of the PD related to ECEfS (external domain). The likert-scale questions on the questionnaire revealed significant positive changes in levels of knowledge, understanding and confidence from the start to the end of the PD. Differences as a function of length of PD, level of experience and role are presented and discussed. The ‘5 words’ question showed that participants widened their understandings of ECEfS from a narrow environmental focus to a broader understanding of the social, political and economic dimensions. The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector has been characterised as having a pedagogical advantage for EfS suggesting that early childhood educators are well placed to engage with EfS more readily than might educators in other education sectors. This article argues that PD is necessary to develop capability in educators in order to meet the imperatives around sustainability outlined in educational policy and curriculum documents in ECEC.     

Helping Head Start Parents Promote Their Children's Kindergarten Adjustment: The Research‐Based Developmentally Informed Parent Program

Head Start enhances school readiness during preschool, but effects diminish after children transition into kindergarten. Designed to promote sustained gains, the Research‐based Developmentally Informed (REDI) Parent program (REDI‐P) provided home visits before and after the kindergarten transition, giving parents evidence‐based learning games, interactive stories, and guided pretend play to use with their children. To evaluate impact, two hundred 4‐year‐old children in Head Start REDI classrooms were randomly assigned to REDI‐P or a comparison condition (mail‐home math games). Beyond the effects of the classroom program, REDI‐P promoted significant improvements in child literacy skills, academic performance, self‐directed learning, and social competence, demonstrating the utility of the approach in promoting gains in cognitive and social‐emotional skills evident after the transition into kindergarten.     

Precision of age norms in tests used to assess preschool children

This study investigated normative precision in 14 preschool tests representing four domains: cognitive, language, adaptive behavior, and early academic skills. The purpose was to explore the consequences of using tests with more‐ vs. less‐precise age norms to identify disabilities in preschool children. As expected, on tests with more precise norms, standard scores associated with the same raw score shifted gradually across age groups. On the other hand, tests with less precise norms showed more dramatic standard score shifts across age groups. Examination of the degree of shift found in each test indicated that many preschool tests have norm tables that are potentially problematic for diagnosing disabilities, particularly for children near norm group cut‐off ages. On high stakes tests, an optimal span is one to three months. This standard can be achieved by using interpolation and/or increasing the size of norming samples at the preschool level. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Teacher Perspectives of School Management Teams

This study is intended as a resource and a tool for those involved in the evaluation, monitoring, or self-review of school management teams. The information presented is based on first-hand experiences of n = 838 elementary and middle school teachers from 55 schools who were directly involved with the implementation and operations of school management teams over a 2-year period. The insight reported by these teachers, who represent both management team members and nonmembers, brings to light many of the contextual issues facing management team implementation, operations, and power distribution. These issues are discussed in terms of implications for evaluation and team self-review.     

Infants’ Mapping of New Faces to New Voices

The ability to identify individuals by voice is fundamental for communication. However, little is known about the expectations that infants hold when learning unfamiliar voices. Here, the voice-learning skills of 4- and 8-month-olds (N = 53; 29 girls, 14 boys of various ethnicities) were tested using a preferential-looking task that involved audiovisual stimuli of their mothers and other unfamiliar women. Findings reveal that the expectation that novel voices map on to novel faces emerges between 4 and 8 months of age, and that infants can retain learning of face-voice pairings via nonostensive cues by 8 months of age. This study provides new insights about infants’ use of disambiguation and fast mapping in early voice learning.     

COMPASS-AIM: A University/P–12 Partnership Innovation for Continuous Improvement

COMPASS-AIM is a set of processes and tools used by participants in a research–practice partnership (RPP) to improve organizational capacities and individual and team competencies for organizational learning and improvement. The “COMPASS” team includes teams of teachers and school leaders who work with a university researcher and expert professional developers. Improvement teams begin by COMParing practices in their own setting to those in higher performing schools identified through research. The next few phases involve Assessing priorities based on those comparisons, Selecting levers (i.e., drivers) to improve a priority area, and Setting a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal or goals designed to address the priority area. Once a “COMPASS” team establishes a goal or goals, the process has it take AIM at Action planning, Implementation, and Monitoring progress through periodic “check the pulse” meetings. Throughout these phases, participants use self-assessment tools, case studies, and a variety of other research reports to inform their work. This research utilization-focused approach bridges research and practice, while accommodating for variability in desired outcomes, affordances, and constraints for change in different school and district contexts.     

Learning essential terms and concepts in Statistics and Accounting

This paper describes a terminological approach to the teaching and learning of fundamental concepts in foundation tertiary units in Statistics and Accounting, using an online dictionary-style resource (TermFinder) with customised termbanks for each discipline. Designed for independent learning, the termbanks support inquiring students from non-English-speaking backgrounds – including international students – in their understanding of the key concepts of their discipline. Two quasi-experimental studies of the use of these termbanks are reported here, showing the difference that they made in the performances of first-year students studying Statistics and Accounting, when compared with those from the previous year before the termbanks were available. In both units, the exam results for the experimental cohorts were significantly better than those of the cohorts in the preceding year. Higher success rates and raised levels of engagement with terminological questions were registered for all students, Australian domestic and international. Individual study patterns emerged in the trial of the accounting termbank, with international students making early use of the termbank with its translation equivalents in Mandarin Chinese, and Australian students more inclined to use it close to the final exam. The testing of the customised termbanks, developed collaboratively by lexicographers and academic staff, vindicates their use in large, diverse classes and their value to students as resources for independent learning. That apart, the research affirms the value of focusing on terminology and the nexus with disciplinary concepts in introductory courses.