Math Magician: A Study on Distraction and Testing Ability

The problem with distraction in schools today could be affecting student’s learning. Our hypothesis is that students who are confronted with a distraction do not do as well as students who are not confronted with distractions while doing homework. There was a total of thirty five participants. The procedure was for participants in the experimental group would begin doing a math worksheet and a distraction (cell phone ring tone) would be introduced. For participants in the control group they would do the math worksheet in silence with out distraction. The results showed that the distraction did not affect the participant’s scores on the math worksheet in comparison to the control group

The Admiral Nurse Competency Framework: Encouraging Engagement and Putting it into Practice

BACKGROUND: Admiral Nurses undertake complex work with families living with dementia. Dementia UK commissioned The Association for Dementia Studies to refresh the Admiral Nurse Competency Framework and enable Admiral Nurses to articulate and critically reflect on their own practice progression. The Admiral Nurses were involved throughout the process to refresh the framework to ensure it was evidence based. METHOD: To encourage engagement with the framework, The Association for Dementia Studies worked with the Admiral Nurses during a roll-out phase. An exercise was developed to initiate critical reflective discussion. Critiquing a colleague's practice is a skill, provoking defensiveness if not facilitated thoughtfully. RESULTS: An exercise combining art cards with case study analysis worked well, promoting critical reflective dialogue between Admiral Nurses as peers. Engagement and feedback were positive, and the neutrality of the exercise provided a safe environment with the flexibility to allow in-depth and meaningful discussions. CONCLUSION: This technique could benefit work-based learning, facilitating creative critical reflection within practice

Navigating Uncertainty: Health Professionals' Knowledge, Skill and Confidence in Assessing and Managing Pain in Children with Profound Cognitive Impairment

There is limited evidence to underpin the assessment and management of pain in children with profound cognitive impairment and these children are vulnerable to poor pain assessment and management. Health professionals working with children with profound cognitive impairment from a single paediatric tertiary referral centre in England were interviewed to explore how they develop and acquire knowledge and skills to assess and manage pain in children with cognitive impairment. The interviews were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. Nineteen health professionals representing different professional groups and different levels of experience participated in the study. A metatheme “navigating uncertainty; deficits in knowledge and skills” and two core themes “framing as different and teasing things out” and “the settling and unsettling presence of parents” were identified. Uncertainty about aspects of assessing and managing the pain of children with cognitive impairment tended to erode professional confidence and many discussed deficits in their skill and knowledge set. Uncertainty was managed through engaging with other health professionals and the child’s parents. Most health professionals stated they would welcome more education and training although many felt that this input should be clinical and not classroom oriented

Developing a Sense of Knowing and Acquiring the Skills to Manage Pain in Children with Profound Cognitive Impairments: Mothers' Perspectives

Children with profound cognitive impairment (PCI) are a heterogenous group who often experience frequent and persistent pain. Those people closest to the child are key to assessing their pain. This mixed method study aimed to explore how parents acquire knowledge and skills in assessing and managing their child's pain. Eight mothers completed a weekly pain diary and were interviewed at weeks 1 and 8. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis and the quantitative data using descriptive statistics. Mothers talked of learning through a system of trial and error ("learning to get on with it"); this was accomplished through "learning to know without a rule book or guide"; "learning to be a convincing advocate"; and "learning to endure and to get things right." Experiential and reflective learning was evident in the way the mothers developed a "sense of knowing" their child's pain. They drew on embodied knowledge of how their child usually expressed and responded to pain to help make pain-related decisions. Health professionals need to support mothers/parents to develop their knowledge and skills and to gain confidence in pain assessment and they should recognise and act on the mothers' concerns

The absent-present researcher: data analysis of pre-recorded parent-driven campaign videos

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of sophisticated, user-friendly and accessible instruments of video data collection (e.g. mobile/cell phones and tablets) which facilitate video-based research and analysis. This paper reports on the opportunities and challenges of undertaking video analysis by reporting on the qualitative video analysis of a subset of 30 purposively selected videos from #notanurse_but, a parent-driven video campaign initiated by WellChild, a UK charity. This paper provides insight into one way of conducting video analysis, appreciating that a variety of approaches exist and that methodological reflections on analytical work with video recordings are limited. The authors critically consider researcher subjectivity; the everydayness of video data; making assumptions; and the incomplete picture provided by video data. Despite notable limitations to the approach of video analysis as a standalone method, the authors conclude that video analysis is capable of eliciting data that may not otherwise be obtained

Evidence for a Single-Spin Azimuthal Asymmetry in Semi-inclusive Pion Electroproduction

Single-spin asymmetries for semi-inclusive pion production in deep-inelastic scattering have been measured for the first time. A significant target-spin asymmetry of the distribution in the azimuthal angle φ of the pion relative to the lepton scattering plane was formed for π^+ electroproduction on a longitudinally polarized hydrogen target. The corresponding analyzing power in the sinφ moment of the cross section is 0.022±0.005±0.003. This result can be interpreted as the effect of terms in the cross section involving chiral-odd spin distribution functions in combination with a chiral-odd fragmentation function that is sensitive to the transverse polarization of the fragmenting quark

On the Use of Finite-Size Scaling to Measure Spin-Glass Exponents

Finite-size scaling (FSS) is a standard technique for measuring scaling exponents in spin glasses. Here we present a critique of this approach, emphasizing the need for all length scales to be large compared to microscopic scales. In particular we show that the replacement, in FSS analyses, of the correlation length by its asymptotic scaling form can lead to apparently good scaling collapses with the wrong values of the scaling exponents.Comment: RevTeX, 5 page