Views of Coaching Practice Expressed by School-Based Coaches

This study reports on the views of coaching expressed by school-based coaches and coaching experts in response to observing the practice of a novice coach featured in a video. Researchers hypothesized that a coach participant\u27s observations about another coach\u27s practice would be a useful tool for examining participants\u27 beliefs about coaching. Researchers compared responses from school-based coaches to the responses of coaching experts and views expressed in leading coaching literature in order to examine the variation in school-based coaches\u27 views. Analysis of responses from both practicing coaches and coaching experts revealed eight themes that describe components of the videotaped coaching cycle: 1) coaching relationships; 2) the use of praise by the coach; 3) discussions of student learning; 4) how coaches respond to teachers\u27 questions; 5) how coaches prompt reflection; 6) how coaches address teacher knowledge and learning; 7) discussions of mathematics content; and, 8) facilitation of the coaching session. The analysis also revealed that these themes correspond to accepted domains of coaching knowledge reported in the coaching literature

Disease and psychological status in ankylosing spondylitis.

Objectives. Psychological factors may be important in the assessment and management of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Our primary objective was to describe associations between disease and psychological status in AS, using AS-specific assessment tools and questionnaires. Our secondary objectives were to identify patient subgroups based on such associations and to determine the stability of the measures over time. Methods. A total of 110 patients were assessed at 6-monthly intervals up to four times using tools to measure disease [Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index (BASFI) and the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Metrology Index (BASMI)], psychological [Hospital Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire (HADS), Health Locus of Control—Form C Questionnaire (HLC-C)] and generic health [Short form (SF)-36] status. Results. Eighty-nine participants completed all four assessments. Throughout the study, BASDAI, BASFI and BASMI scores correlated significantly with anxiety, depression, internality and health status, but not with levels of belief in chance or powerful others. Clinically anxious or depressed subgroups had significantly worse BASDAI and BASFI, but not BASMI, scores. BASMI scores were the least closely linked to psychological status. Mean scores for disease, psychological and health status were clinically stable over the 18 months period. Conclusions. Disease status scores in AS correlated significantly with anxiety, depression, internality and health status. Interpretation of AS disease scores should take an account of psychological status and the choice of measures used. These findings have important potential applications in AS management and monitoring, including the identification of patients for biological therapies

Children's opinions on effective strategies to cope with bullying: the importance of bullying role and perspective

In order to find out what children would suggest as useful interventions to stop bullying, we designed a questionnaire administered to 311 children (155 boys and 156 girls; mean age = 11 years). Thirty-six items were employed to ask children how effective, in their opinion, retaliation, nonchalance and assertiveness could be in stopping bullying. Items were presented to children from three different perspectives (imagine you are the victim, the bully or a witness). We used peer reports to assess children's role in bullying. Children were grouped into bullies, followers of the bully, defenders of the victims, outsiders, victims and those not involved. The strategy most frequently chosen by all children was to cope with bullying through assertiveness. Bullies considered retaliation effective more often than their classmates, especially when they adopted the perspective of the victim or witness. Bullies did not consider assertive strategies as efficient in stopping the bully. Defenders, outsiders, victims and children not involved, on the other hand, were very much in favour of strategies aimed at solving the conflict through nonchalance or assertiveness, especially when they imagined being the bully. Girls chose assertive strategies more often than boys and younger children preferred nonchalance more often than older children, who tended to choose retaliation more often. Suggestions for intervention are made. © 2005 NFER

Modelling alternative strategies for delivering hepatitis B vaccine in prisons : the impact on the vaccination coverage of the injecting drug user population

Since 2001 hepatitis B vaccination has been offered to prisoners on reception into prisons in England and Wales. However, short campaigns of vaccinating the entire population of individual prisons have achieved high vaccination coverage for limited periods, suggesting that short campaigns may be a preferable way of vaccinating prisoners. A model is used that describes the flow of prisoners through prisons stratified by injecting status to compare a range of vaccination scenarios that describe vaccination on prison reception or via regular short campaigns. Model results suggest that vaccinating on prison reception can capture a greater proportion of the injecting drug user (IDU) population than the comparable campaign scenarios (63% vs. 55 . 6% respectively). Vaccination on prison reception is also more efficient at capturing IDUs for vaccination than vaccination via a campaign, although vaccination via campaigns may have a role with some infections for overall control

Synthesizing Program Input Grammars

We present an algorithm for synthesizing a context-free grammar encoding the language of valid program inputs from a set of input examples and blackbox access to the program. Our algorithm addresses shortcomings of existing grammar inference algorithms, which both severely overgeneralize and are prohibitively slow. Our implementation, GLADE, leverages the grammar synthesized by our algorithm to fuzz test programs with structured inputs. We show that GLADE substantially increases the incremental coverage on valid inputs compared to two baseline fuzzers