Swinging The Pendulum Towards Social Emotional Support (A Position Paper)

This paper discusses how for 15 years mandated high-stakes testing took precedence as the prominent measure of student success. An unintentional consequence of this time was that social-emotional competencies were overlooked. Most recently, the Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) has developed and implemented an accreditation model that is based off of a more holistic look at student success. This new model broadens the scope of academic success, and uses the ideas of relationships, relevance, responsive culture, rigor, and results as key measurable components. This article posits that leveraging the expertise of school counselors in social and emotional development, and providing support for classroom teachers is paramount to the success of this accreditation model and initiative

The AMD Rome Memory Barrier

With the rapid growth of AMD as a competitor in the CPU industry, it is imperative that high-performance and architectural engineers analyze new AMD CPUs. By understanding new and unfamiliar architectures, engineers are able to adapt their algorithms to fully utilize new hardware. Furthermore, engineers are able to anticipate the limitations of an architecture and determine when an alternate platform is desirable for a particular workload. This paper presents results which show that the AMD "Rome" architecture performance suffers once an application's memory bandwidth exceeds 37.5 GiB/s for integer-heavy applications, or 100 GiB/s for floating-point-heavy workloads. Strong positive correlations between memory bandwidth and CPI are presented, as well as strong positive correlations between increased memory load and time-to-completion of benchmarks from the SPEC CPU2017 benchmark suites.Comment: Very, very early draft for IEEE SoutheastCon 2017, 9 pages (need to get down to 8), 6 figures, 7 table

“A Matter of Great Importance”: Interest Groups, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

As Senator Arlen Specter once explained, the Supreme Court confirmation process is a “matter of great importance” to the president, the nominee, senators, and the public at large. The public cares who sits on the Court, and interest groups play a key role in disseminating information about the nominee and his or her qualifications for the job. In this paper, we focus on one piece of interest groups’ involvement in Supreme Court confirmation hearings: their decision to send senators summarized information about the nominees via briefing books. We use a combination of archival research and text analysis to examine the briefing books that organized interests sent to Senator Specter during Robert Bork’s nomination, which we then compare with the information provided by “official” sources (the White House) as well as the less formal ones (constituents). Our research suggests that interest groups highlight the controversial areas of a nominee’s tenure, while official sources highlight qualifications and constituents speak about the nominee in more general, affective terms

Educating and advocating: A professional responsibility for school leaders and school counselors

While educators are tasked with many competing professional responsibilities, it is necessary that the focus of advocacy for student well-being stay at the forefront. In particular, for school counselors and school leaders, advocating has never been more important. This article will highlight the role of advocacy found within the professional standards for school counselors and school leaders, and shine light on the need to advocate for social-emotional learning

Understanding experiences disclosed by adults who were exposed to parental alienation in childhood

Parental alienation is a phenomenon where a child unjustifiably rejects one of their parents, often as an outcome driven by the manipulative behaviours of the other parent. These behaviours can include acts of denigration and the promotion of distorted perceptions of adult issues, which leads the child to form a strong alliance with one parent while vilifying the other. It is an increasingly scrutinised and controversial issue in family courts, child & family services, and academic research. There are challenges in researching this phenomenon, stemming from legal and ethical constraints, in addition to difficulties in obtaining accurate prevalence data, limiting research opportunities. Therefore, this literature review aims to evaluate research exploring the lived experiences of individuals who endured parental alienation during their childhoods. This literature review will critique primary empirical research which captures the lived experiences of parental alienation and its impacts on the childhood of children affected, through the theoretical lens of social cognitive learning theory (SCLT). This theoretical approach enables a nuanced examination of how alienating behaviours are internalized, what this means for resulting behaviour adaptions in children and psychological impacts on their well-being and development. Through this endeavour, this research aims to enrich understanding and provide unique insights into the psychological implications of this complex phenomenon. The findings reveal a range of adversities affecting children's psychological and mental well-being, which have not previously been considered in such theoretical light, revealing not only the profound emotional turmoil and long-enduring psychological effects, marked by confusion, sadness, anger, and other complex emotions but identifying how these emotions are intrinsically linked to their fractured self-identities and altered perceptions of parental roles. These insights highlight the complex interplay between learned behaviours and emotional and behavioural responses within alienated family environments. Furthermore, despite the considerable adversities faced, this study identifies pathways to resilience and recovery, offering hope for those impacted by parental alienation. This literature review contributes valuable perspectives to the field, illustrating the potential for overcoming these challenges posed by parental alienation, and informing future recommendations for social work practice and research

The social and economic value of wheelchair user homes

People who use wheelchairs can benefit in many ways from living in homes which are designed to meet their needs. They can enjoy a much greater independence and ability to do everyday tasks such as showering, cooking, using all areas of the house and garden, being able to work, and using all the amenities of their home. This can lead to an overall increase in their confidence and wellbeing, including engagement in social and community life. Accessible homes can also be much safer, reducing risks of accidents or falls at home, and considerably reduce the need for other people to be regularly available to assist with everyday life – including family members, informal carers, or local authority care and support staff. Recent proposals to change planning regulations will mean, once implemented, that all new homes are required to meet an inclusive design standard called the ‘accessible and adaptable design standard’, which is set out in building regulations in ‘Approved Document M’. This has been widely welcomed by many disabled people and others, as it will provide homes that can be adapted to meet many of the changing needs of households over time. But there are still no regulations which require the building of a basic proportion of new homes to a standard which meets the needs of wheelchair users. LSE Housing and Communities were commissioned by Habinteg Housing Association to review the existing evidence around the potential benefits to individual wheelchair users and the public purse of increasing the availability of wheelchair accessible housing to meet current needs, and compare those benefits to the additional costs of building to that accessible standard. We also interviewed 17 wheelchair users about their experiences of living in, or their lack of, accessible housing

Evaluation of the Whānau Ora Wellbeing Service of Te Whakaruruhau: Final report

Domestic violence and child abuse represent significant threats to whānau ora. Conversely, the weakening or loss of whānau ties can increase the vulnerability of whānau members to domestic violence and child abuse. Thus enhancing whānau ora in the context of domestic violence and child abuse is both a high priority and a significant challenge. Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge has been providing safe housing, support and advocacy to women and children for over two decades and has become a key agency in family violence networks in Kirikiriroa. The development of the Whānau Ora Wellbeing Service, the focus of this evaluation, was a logical extension of Refuge services. The Māori and Psychology Research Unit was commissioned in mid‐2011 to conduct this evaluation. It is based on ten case studies of clients in the programme, interviews with Te Whakaruruhau staff and key informants in allied agencies, and participant‐observation of Refuge activities. The case studies provide insights into the lived experience of women dealing with violence, their attempts to protect themselves and their children, and their experiences of – and reflections upon – the Whānau Ora Wellbeing programme

Assessing the Viability of the EQ-5D as Part of a Battery of Outcomes in Elderly Total Knee Arthroplasty Patients: A Comparison of Generic, Condition-Specific, and Preference-Based Patient-Reported Outcome Measures

Background In the current economic climate it has become increasingly important to evaluate the effectiveness of expensive procedures such as total knee arthroplasties (TKAs). Patient-reported outcome measures, such as generic and condition-specific profile measures, are popular ways of determining outcomes. However, these cannot be used reliably for the purpose of economic evaluations. The EQ-5D, designed for cost-utility analysis, could offer potential advantages to outcome measurement; however, little is known about the viability and performance of this measure in more elderly (_ 75 years) patient cohorts. Aims The aim of this study was to assess the viability of the EQ-5D for use in the evaluation of TKA and to provide justification for its continued inclusion in the clinical audit of patients undergoing arthroplasty in a large general hospital. Methods Seven-hundred and seventy-nine consecutive patients undergoing TKA participated in this study. Self-report audit questionnaire booklets were administered at baseline (during a pre-admission clinic appointment) and six months post-operatively (postally). Booklets comprised of the Oxford Knee Scale (OKS;), 12-dimension Short Form (SF-12;), and the EQ-5D (). Results Two-hundred and forty-six subjects completed both the baseline and follow-up audit surveys. Correlations were strongest between the EQ-5D and OKS instruments (baseline: Tb=-0.58; p0.01; follow-up: Tb=-0.41; p0.01),.. The EQ-5D displayed large effect sizes (d=0.94) and was able to detect clinically important HRQoL improvements (ROC P-value=0.65; CI0.08; p0.001), discriminate those patients who were experiencing poorer pre-operative health (p0.001), and detect those who deteriorated post-operatively (p0.001). Adequate reliability (Cronbach's =0.79) of the EQ-5D instrument was seen post-operatively as well. Conclusions Results from this study reveal that the EQ-5D instrument shows good responsiveness to health changes in elderly TKA patients post-operatively. Its correlations with the OKS, detection of poorer pre-operative health, and detection of deterioration post-operatively also suggest good validity for the EQ-5D in this cohort. Finally, the relatively large reliability statistic post-operatively supports the use of the EQ-5D in audits. Together, these findings support the continued use of the EQ-5D instrument in future arthroplasty audits and provide evidence that it is viable for the use in cost-utility analysis.sch_phyunpub2424unpu

Helping the helpers: Tending to Kansas educators’ social-emotional needs and self-care during a pandemic

On a typical day, pre-COVID 19, educators are pulled in many directions, making hundreds, if not thousands, of quick decisions. Today those dynamics are heightened with varied and additional competing needs. However, what has not changed is the essential role of an educator. Caring for students in a time of such uncertainty seems critical. However, while there is serious and necessary demand for caring for the students and families, one population that is gravely being overlooked are the helpers. The educators. Less emphasis is being placed on the wellness and self-care of those who are offering those needed social-emotional supports. For a myriad of reasons, it is clear that emphasis must be placed on tending to the needs of Kansas educators’ well-being. In an effort to maintain educator passion and performance, messages around self-care, building social-emotionally competent classrooms and school climates are addressed