Children with epilepsy in school: Special service usage and assessment practices

Special services usage and related assessment procedures were investigated for 50 students with epilepsy. Fifty‐six percent of students with epilepsy received special education services, with mental retardation designation and self‐contained placement common, especially among individuals with epilepsy plus a coexisting neurological diagnosis. Sixteen percent of participants had an “other health impairment” designation, and several of these were deemed eligible in at least one other special education category. The majority of students who had been evaluated were administered IQ, adaptive behavior, speech/language, and sensorimotor components, whereas few were assessed for executive or memory functions. Little information about antiepileptic drugs, their effects, or the actual manifestation of students' seizures appeared in special services school documents. Additional empirical information regarding services for children with chronic health conditions, such as epilepsy, is necessary to improve school psychologists' practice. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 169–181, 2006.     

Do corporate management tools inevitably corrupt the soul of the university? Evidence from the implementation of responsibility center budgeting

The use of corporate management tools in universities has been widely critiqued in recent decades, as it is viewed as undermining academic goals and promoting marketization and corporatization. Responsibility center budgeting (RCB) is one popular management tool that has been decried as promoting market logics, internal competition and institutional fragmentation. This comparative case study investigated four North American universities that employed RCB for several years, to investigate the relationship between unit autonomy and coordination. Site visits and interviews with key informants were conducted at the four universities, supplemented by document analysis. The analysis identifies widely different experiences between two sets of universities. Findings show that the ability of the central administration to promote vertical coordination is critical to mitigating the adverse consequences of RCB.     

The ethical perspective of British and American preservice teachers

As society increasingly expects schools to teach about moral issues and stress character development, educators are faced with a series of new challenges. One of these challenges is how to assist perspective teachers in understanding their own ethical orientation, and helping them realize how that orientation affects their teaching. This short report presents the results of a study which compares and assesses the ethical orientation of British and American preservice teachers. The study addresses a number of ethical positions which are denned in the paper. Forsyth's Ethical Position Questionnaire was employed to develop the data. The report closes with conclusions and suggestions based on the findings described.     

Preparing to teach diverse student populations: a British and American perspective

Demographic changes in Britain and the USA have resulted in schools that are more culturally diverse than they were a generation ago. In response to these changes, colleges and departments of education are attempting to prepare teachers who are able to work with students from a wide range of ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. Teacher preparation programmes face the challenge of measuring the cultural sensitivity of their students. They must also grapple with the problem of designing programmes to enhance their students’ cultural sensitivity. This study compares and contrasts the cultural sensitivity of British and American students in teacher preparation programmes, and underscores the difficulties these programmes face when they attempt to alter students’ long‐held beliefs.     

Financial management of Canadian universities: adaptive strategies to fiscal constraints

Decreasing government funding and regulated tuition policies have created a financially constrained environment for Canada’s universities. The conventional response to such conditions is to cut programme offerings and services in an attempt to lower costs throughout the institution. However, we argue that three Canadian universities have reacted with a different response. Instead of cutting costs, the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and the University of Lethbridge have chosen to implement decentralized budgeting and management structures in an attempt to increase efficiency and seek out new revenues. Using interview data and document analysis, this paper discusses the responses of these institutions and what they tell us about the strategies universities employ to cope with financial challenges that are likely to persist.     

An ethnographic study of norms of inclusion and cooperation in a multiethnic middle school

This study used ethnographic methods to examine cultural norms regarding inclusion and cooperation at Banner Middle School, in a western U.S. metropolitan area. Banner's students were predominantly working-class Caucasians and Chicanos. Much middle-school and multicultural educational literature calls for the inclusion of students of diverse abilities and race or ethnicity in school and classroom contexts, and for cooperative rather than competitive norms. There was generally powerful and consistent support at Banner for inclusive and cooperative norms at the sociocultural levels of the school as an institution, peer groups, and parents. Two factors stand out in explaining the high degree of inclusion and cooperation: the strong, effective leadership provided by the principal and the cultural congruity of these norms. This study supports the theoretical compatibility of middle-school and multicultural educational philosophy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, April 1992.     

Electrophysiological correlates of dyslexic subtypes.

The construct validity of Boder's typology of dyslexia was investigated using quantified EEG. Thirty-nine children, ranging in age from 7-0 to 10-11, were recorded during a contextual reading task and at rest. During reading, children with dyslexia were expected to show increased theta and beta amplitude compared to nondisabled readers. These differences were expected in regions of presumed strength for each subtype as a sign of overengagement in task. Children with phonological deficits (dysphonetic dyslexia) were expected to adopt visuospatial processing strategies (right occipital-parietal activation), those with orthographic deficits (dyseidetic dyslexia) to emphasize phonetic strategies (left temporal-parietal activation). Results supported beta frequency differences in anticipated regions by subtype during the reading task. However, the direction of difference hypothesis was not supported. Decreased amplitudes in both groups with dyslexia compared to normally achieving readers suggest reconceptualization of the theoretical base for the Boder subtyping system.