Impact of the provision of safe drinking water on school absence rates in Cambodia:a quasi-experimental study

Education is one of the most important drivers behind helping people in developing countries lift themselves out of poverty. However, even when schooling is available absenteeism rates can be high. Recently interest has focussed on whether or not WASH interventions can help reduce absenteeism in developing countries. However, none has focused exclusively on the role of drinking water provision. We report a study of the association between absenteeism and provision of treated water in containers into schools

Explorations of Creativity

Much of the creativity research thus far has been academic, with few immediate applications. One reason has been the complexity of concepts. It is difficult to generalize findings to the entire population, or even to clearly defined groups of people. Furthermore, most research has originated in North America and has been conducted on conveniently available samples of people rather than representative populations. • Additional research is needed to validate prominent findings and disentangle cultural from biological and from memory-related variables. • Research should also aim to understand better the advantages and limitations of lower-income populations in creativity and innovation. • One of the many issues that must be researched is the progression from the different levels of creativity, from ‘little-c’ to ‘Pro-c’ and to ‘Big-C’ for instance. Though ‘Big-C’ appears to be qualitatively different, certain educationally accomplished people probably perform at the level of ‘Big-C’ in earlier centuries. • Certain studies have shown that it is possible to enhance fluid intelligence* through practice. However, much more research is needed to understand the conditions under which the effect will be sustainable and available to users. Advances in neuroimaging and the biological mechanisms related to creativity will probably drive significant research in the future and result in more specific recommendations

Perceptual Enhancement for Arabic Reading: an Intervention to Support Fluency and Automaticity in Grade One

This study, conducted in the United Arab Emirates, piloted a curriculum to increase early grade reading fluency. A curriculum with enhanced perceptual features, such as font size and spacing was used with grade one students in four schools to detect any significant difference in students' reading speed and reading accuracy after one year. Three hundred forty-five grade one students participated in the pilot—174 in the intervention group and 171 in the control group (ds= 0.33 0.47). At the end of the year, students in the intervention group read more letters and words correctly on average in one minute (p < .01) and in an entire text (p < .01 for letters; p < .001 for words) than those in the control group. These results suggest that curriculum with perceptual enhancement may be useful in facilitating early Arabic reading fluency