Using a readiness scale for reintegrating pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties from a Nurture Group into their mainstream classroom — a pilot study

The development of a Nurture Group can help a whole school to become 'a more inclusive, nurturing establishment', according to Rebecca Doyle. In this article she describes the evolution of a detailed Reintegration Readiness Scale, building on Nurture Group principles and practices. Two case studies illustrate the kinds of progress that can be made by individual pupils. This article goes on to note the benefits that nurturing approaches can bring to the whole school community and to indicate further developments for the future. Rebecca Doyle runs the Nurture Group at Canterbury Infant School in Thetford and used a DfEE-funded Best Practice Research Scholarship to develop the approaches she details in this practical and thought-provoking report.     

'I Hate You. Please Help Me': A Case Study From A Classic Boxall Nurture Group

This article is a case study of a five year old boy, Peter, and his entry and development within a classic Boxall Nurture Group. The author explores nurture groups in general as well as describing Peter's assessment, his challenging behaviour, the support he received and the final outcomes of the work.     

Contents of Volume 24

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 24     

Fostering Supportive Teacher–Child Relationships: Intervention Implementation in a State-Funded Preschool Program

Research Findings: Banking Time is a set of techniques designed to promote positive, supportive relationships through 1-on-1 interactions between teachers and children. Web-based training resources were made available to 252 preschool teachers who received different levels of support as a component of a professional development intervention, and the purpose of this study was to examine teachers' implementation of Banking Time. Teachers with greater levels of professional development support were more likely to implement Banking Time with children in their classes. Teachers were more likely to choose to implement Banking Time with children who had lower social-emotional skills (e.g., more problem behaviors). Teachers developed greater relational closeness with children who participated in Banking Time than with children who did not participate. Practice or Policy: The implications of these preliminary findings for fostering supportive teacher–child relationships are discussed.     

Depression and Anxiety in the Postnatal Period: An Examination of Infants’ Home Language Environment,Vocalizations, and Expressive Language Abilities

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants’ home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother–infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants’ 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers’ emotional health influences infants’ language environment and later language ability.