Infusing social emotional learning into the teacher education curriculum

Research supports the importance of policies and interventions to infuse social emotional curricula in schools. The role of teachers in supporting young children’s social and emotional readiness for classroom learning has been recognized, but instruction in children’s well-being and social emotional competence is a low priority in teacher preparation programs. In this study we, used qualitative methods to examine whether we could successfully infuse an undergraduate curriculum and instructional course with social emotional learning content. The article reports on this effort, and considered the following questions: How can courses infused with SEL content impact prospective teachers’ views on the overall role of emotions in the classroom? What is the influence of the course on preservice teachers’ conceptions of SEL and its association with children’s classroom learning and behavior? How can teacher preparation programs encourage prospective teachers to consider children’s social emotional skills once they enter the classroom as teachers? At course end, the 15 enrolled students responded to predetermined questions as part of a self-reflection assignment. Using grounded theory methods, three themes were identified from participants’ reflections, including the connection between SEL and academic learning, shifting from teacher- to student-centered pedagogy, and the desire for continued learning related to SEL. An in-depth examination of these themes revealed that SEL concepts can be successfully infused in an undergraduate course on curriculum and instruction. Implications for teacher training are discussed and future avenues for research are presented.peer-reviewe

A qualitative meta-synthesis: public health nurses role in the identification and management of perinatal mental health problems

Aim: To report findings of a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies exploring public health nurses’ perceptions and experiences of identifying and managing women with perinatal mental health (PMH) problems. Background: Public health nurses play a key role in supporting women who experience PMH problems and several qualitative studies have explored their role. Design: Systematic review and meta-synthesis. Data sources: A comprehensive search was developed and multiple databases were searched from 2000–2015. Review methods: Studies that employed qualitative methods to explore experiences of public health nurses in identifying and managing women with PMH problems were included. Two reviewers independently assessed the methodological quality of studies. Themes, concepts and interpretations were extracted and synthesized using the process of thematic analysis. Results: Fifteen papers including 14 unique qualitative studies were included. Two overarching themes were identified: ‘conceptualization and detection of PMH problems’ and ‘barriers and facilitators to management’. The former of these comprised several subthemes including the use of formal screening tools vs. clinical intuition and challenges encountered in detection. The latter theme, barriers to management included availability of referral pathways and time. In terms of facilitators, training, public health nursing interventions, support groups and referral pathways were identified as factors that optimize management. Conclusions: Public health nurses use a variety of methods to identify women with PMH problems. However, several support structures are needed to optimize management including access to appropriate referral pathways, support groups and relationship continuity

Lack of Institutional Control: An Analysis of NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Public Infractions Case Decisions

Division I college athletics is a billion-dollar industry where success or scandal can impact the entire university. This research endeavored to identify the characteristics of infractions cases at the Division I, Football Bowl Subdivision level resulting in lack of institutional control violations and how those have changed over time. Lack of institutional control is the most serious NCAA violation for an institution; therefore this finding can have the most detrimental impact on a university. Despite that, lack of institutional control is not defined and there is no safe harbor for universities seeking to demonstrate sufficient control over their athletics programs. The data for this project was NCAA public infractions case decisions including a finding of a lack of institutional control violation for Division I, Football Bowl Subdivision institutions. This qualitative study employed inductive analysis to categorize the data. In addition, content analysis was used to quantify frequency of some data for context and support for those categories. Three themes emerged from the data. First, a legalization of public infractions case decisions occurred over time making the case decisions more resemble court decisions. Second, there has been a dilution of lack of institutional control cases since the inception of the NCAA enforcement process. Both the number of lack of institutional control violations and the penalties associated with a lack of institutional control have tapered. Finally, the third theme to emerge was duplicitous association value meaning the stated values of the NCAA do not align with the lack of institutional control findings. These themes can inform universities on how to structure compliance operations to provide insurance against a lack of institutional control violation. As the financial rewards of athletics success have increased, and the prevalence and athletics penalties associated with lack of intuitional control eased, athletics departments may be more risk tolerant. Therefore, knowing factors that lead to lack of institutional control and understanding that the current enforcement procedure resembles a legal process, universities can be equipped to appropriately structure athletics compliance operations, articulate qualifications necessary for their athletics compliance staff members, and prioritize compliance monitoring systems

Prevalence of traumatic brain injury amongst children admitted to hospital in one health district : a population-based study

There is a dearth of information regarding the prevalence of brain injury, serious enough to require hospital admission, amongst children in the United Kingdom. In North Staffordshire a register of all children admitted with traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been maintained since 1992 presenting an opportunity to investigate the incidence of TBI within the region in terms of age, cause of injury, injury severity and social deprivation. The register contains details of 1553 children with TBI, two thirds of whom are male. This population-based study shows that TBI is most prevalent amongst children from families living in more deprived areas, however, social deprivation was not related to the cause of injury. Each year, 280 per 100,000 children are admitted for ≥24 hours with a TBI, of these 232 will have a mild brain injury, 25 moderate, 17 severe, and 2 will die. The incidence of moderate and severe injuries is higher than previous estimates. Children under 2 years old account for 18.5% of all TBIs, usually due to falls, being dropped or non-accidental injuries. Falls account for 60% of TBIs in the under 5s. In the 10-15 age group road traffic accidents were the most common cause (185, 36.7%). These findings will help to plan health services and target accident prevention initiatives more accurately

Sperm Pairing and Measures of Efficiency in Planar Swimming Models

Sperm of certain species engage in cooperative swimming behaviors which result in differences in velocity and efficiency of swimming, as well as ability to effectively fertilize the egg. In particular, Monodelphis domestica is a species of opossum whose sperm often swim cooperatively as a pair, with heads fused together. In order to understand the empirical effects of cooperative swimming behaviors, we propose a simple preferred-curvature-based model to model individual and paired sperm using the method of regularized Stokeslets to model the viscous fluid environment. The effects of swimming freely versus paired swimming, phase relationship, and the angle at which sperm heads are fused are investigated. Results are consistent with previous modeling work for free swimmers. Paired (fused) swimming results also compare well with experimental work, and provide evidence for optimal geometrical configurations. This indicates that there may be a fluid mechanical advantage to such cooperative motility behaviors in sperm swimming

Populous: A tool for populating ontology templates

We present Populous, a tool for gathering content with which to populate an ontology. Domain experts need to add content, that is often repetitive in its form, but without having to tackle the underlying ontological representation. Populous presents users with a table based form in which columns are constrained to take values from particular ontologies; the user can select a concept from an ontology via its meaningful label to give a value for a given entity attribute. Populated tables are mapped to patterns that can then be used to automatically generate the ontology's content. Populous's contribution is in the knowledge gathering stage of ontology development. It separates knowledge gathering from the conceptualisation and also separates the user from the standard ontology authoring environments. As a result, Populous can allow knowledge to be gathered in a straight-forward manner that can then be used to do mass production of ontology content.Comment: in Adrian Paschke, Albert Burger begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Andrea Splendiani, M. Scott Marshall, Paolo Romano: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Semantic Web Applications and Tools for the Life Sciences, Berlin,Germany, December 8-10, 201

Survey of midwives' perinatal mental health knowledge, confidence, attitudes and learning needs

BackgroundMidwives have a primary role in facilitating the first stage of perinatal mental health risk reduction through inquiring about perinatal mental health, identifying risk factors and current perinatal mental health problems, providing support or crisis intervention, referring for treatment and decreasing stigmatisation.AimsThe aims of this study were to determine midwives’ (a) knowledge of and confidence to identify and manage perinatal mental health problems, (b) attitudes towards women who experience severe mental illness and (c) perceived learning needs.DesignA cross-sectional survey design.MethodsThe study was conducted between September 2016 and April 2017 in seven Maternity services in the Republic of Ireland with a purposeful non-random convenience sample of midwives (n = 157). Data was anonymously collected utilising the Perinatal Mental Health Questionnaire, the Mental Illness: Clinician’s Attitudes scale and the Perinatal Mental Health Learning Needs questionnaire.FindingsMidwives indicated high levels of knowledge (71.1%) and confidence (72%) in identifying women who experience depression and anxiety however, they reported less confidence in caring (43.9%) for women. Only 17.8% (n = 28) of midwives felt equipped to support women whilst 15.3% (n = 24) reported having access to sufficient information. Midwives desire education on the spectrum of perinatal mental health problems. The mean score for the Mental Illness: Clinician’s Attitudes scale was 36.31 (SD = 7.60), indicating positive attitudes towards women with severe mental illness.ConclusionMidwives require further education on perinatal mental health across cultures with a skill focus and which explores attitudes delivered in a study day format