Learning from Other Communities

This paper reflects a synopsis of the work in person/family-centered planning representative of its implementation across a variety of disability service systems, including prisons, schools, community-based service agencies and institutional settings. The authors who have contributed to this paper have direct experience in the field working with individuals who have disability labels of severe and persistent mental illness, mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and learning disabilities. It is their hope that this paper will serve to guide the emerging best practice in the design and delivery of person-centered service delivery systems

Comparing the MAMS framework with the combination method in multi-arm adaptive trials with binary outcomes

In multi-arm adaptive trials, several treatments are assessed simultaneously and accumulating data are used to inform decisions about the trial, such as whether treatments are dropped or continued. Different methodological approaches have been developed for such trials and research has compared the performance of different subsets of these. One particular approach, for which we use the acronym MAMS(R), has generally not been included in these comparisons because control of the family-wise error rate (FWER) could not be guaranteed. Recently, the MAMS(R) approach has been extended to facilitate the generation of efficient designs which strongly control the FWER. We consider multi-arm two-stage trials with binary outcomes and propose parameterising treatment effects using the log odds ratio. We conduct a simulation study comparing the extended MAMS(R) framework with the well-established combination method both for trials where a different outcome is used for mid-trial analysis and for trials where the same outcome is used throughout. We show how the MAMS(R) framework compares favourably only in scenarios where the same outcome is used. We propose a hybrid selection rule within MAMS(R) methodology and demonstrate that this makes it possible to use the MAMS(R) framework in trials incorporating comparative treatment selection

Methodological aspects of multi-arm adaptive clinical trials

In the present healthcare climate, there is an urgent need to increase the efficiency with which novel therapies are evaluated. Multi-arm adaptive trials allow multiple treatments to be tested within a single protocol and offer the facility to respond to emerging data. Such trials allow treatment arms to be dropped or even added partway through the trial, directing resources to promising treatments. In this thesis, methodologies for two-stage adaptive trials with binary outcomes are explored, focussing on those approaches in which an intermediate outcome may be used for the purposes of treatment selection. Methodology for the multi-arm multi-stage approach developed by Royston et al. (2003, 2011), here denoted MAMS(R), is extended so that feasible and admissible trial designs may be obtained under the log odds ratio parameterisation. A simulation study suggests that these MAMS(R) designs perform favourably compared with the well-established combination method when a common outcome is monitored, but not when an intermediate outcome is incorporated. A proposal is made for increasing the efficiency and flexibility of MAMS(R) methodology by implementing conditional error calculations within a closed testing procedure. This approach allows the trial design to be updated at the interim analysis, resulting in gains in efficiency, particularly in trials where an intermediate outcome is used and where some promising treatments are dropped. The conditional error approach is then extended to offer the facility of adding a new treatment arm to an ongoing multi-arm adaptive trial. The procedure achieves good power, ensures Type I error rate control and performs particularly well if a new treatment arm is added when promising treatments have been dropped from the trial. Recommendations for using the new developments are given. It is hoped that this research will widen the use of MAMS(R) methodology in practice

The cycle of student and staff wellbeing: Emotional labour and extension requests in Higher Education. A Practice Report

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.This paper suggests that the sociological theory of emotional labour is a useful way to interpret how teaching practices in Higher Education often involve the simultaneous management of both staff and student wellbeing. This paper applies Berry and Cassidy’s Higher Education Emotional Labour model (2013) to the management of extension requests. We put forward a case study of processing a significant number of extension requests in a short space of time in a large, first year Health Sciences topic. We consider the responsibilities and risks for staff and students in this scenario, and ponder the implications for future practice and pedagogy. We argue that student and staff wellbeing must always be considered as interrelated, and that academic administrative procedures need to be developed with this mind

Teaching in Focus: The value of implementing a program-specific teaching support project for staff wellbeing and student success

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.This paper reports on a program-level teaching support initiative that was implemented in a Health Sciences undergraduate degree with a large and highly casualised teaching team. It has been argued that to improve student retention and success, universities need to consider implementing comprehensive teaching support models that address institutional, program, and individual level needs. We report on the implementation of our project and reflect on participant feedback, which demonstrated the value of the program for improving staff wellbeing. We argue that introducing support strategies for staff at a local level is essential not only for delivery of high quality learning experiences, but also for staff wellbeing which, in turn, has important implications for student success and retention

Educational practices and strategies that promote inclusion: Examples from the U.S.

In this article, the authors review promising practices and strategies that have been demonstrated to support and promote inclusive education in the U.S. at school, in classrooms, in small groups, and at individual levels. Selected strategies that promote instructional, social, and psychological inclusion (e.g., response to intervention, inclusive service learning, guided reading, and incremental rehearsal) are discussed in detail. Potential adaptions and adoption of these strategies are suggested in order to assist in promoting inclusion within the Czech education system