Venturing into schools : locating mental health initiatives in complex environments

Schools provide viable settings for mental health promotion initiatives, such as programs to develop students’ social and emotional capabilities (SEC). Complexity in the school environments into which initiatives are introduced, such as diverse student capabilities, school structures, and teachers’ knowledge and confidence, will play an integral role in the success of those initiatives. This paper investigates the environments of schools about to receive the KidsMatter mental heath promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative in Australia, using information sourced from questionnaires about 2598 students and their teachers in 50 Australian primary schools. The focus of the report is on the status of the schools’ work in one of the key focus areas for the intervention, namely students’ SEC. Analysis showed relatively high levels of students’ SEC across the whole sample, but with sub-group differences. Teachers’ attitudes towards SEC learning were highly positive. Teachers’ self-rated knowledge and approaches in dealing with SEC were moderate, and point to requirements for additional pre-service and professional development. The extent of regular and sustained delivery of SEC programs and mental health initiatives in general showed variability, suggesting the need to attend to school systems and structural supports. Implications of these areas of diversity in school environments on the selection and methods of delivery of mental health promotion programs in schools are discussed.peer-reviewe

Study of the history, aims, catalogs and curricula of eight private girls' schools

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1936. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

A Correspondence Analysis of Child-Care Students' and Medical Students' Knowledge about Teaching and Learning

This paper describes the application of correspondence analysis to transcripts gathered from focused interviews about teaching and learning held with a small sample of child-care students, medical students and the students' teachers. Seven dimensions emerged from the analysis, suggesting that the knowledge that underlies students' learning intentions and actions is multi-dimensional and transactive. It is proposed that the multivariate, multidimensional, discovery approach of the correspondence analysis technique has considerable potential for data analysis in the social sciences. [Author abstract

Changes in Students' Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy Use over Five Years of Secondary Schooling

This chapter appears in 'Transforming the Future of Learning with Educational Research' edited by Helen Askell-Williams. Copyright 2015, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.As students progress through school, we expect that their knowledge about the various subject matters, such as biology or maths, becomes more extensive, well structured, and readily available for application in diverse contexts. This chapter reports the authors’ enquiry about whether students’ cognitive and metacognitive knowledge and strategies do grow during secondary school. Questionnaires were administered to students in three South Australian secondary schools in each of five consecutive years. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to investigate changes in students’ responses over time. Results showed little change in students’ reports of their cognitive and metacognitive strategy use. The disappointing growth trajectories suggest that cognitive and metacognitive strategies for learning are not subject to the explicit teaching and evaluation processes applied to other school subjects. Questions are raised about whether schools and teachers value and recognise the importance of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for good quality learning across subject domains

Framing the features of good quality knowledge for teachers and students

Article reproduced here with permission from the publisher.In this paper we have two concerns. First we consider the features used to describe good quality learning actions and knowledge representations. Our second concern is the need to develop students’ knowledge of how to act, during teaching-learning transactions, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations. There is a convergence of views, at a broad level, about the character of good quality knowledge. Although there are frequent specifications of the features of good quality learning these discussions mostly do not build on one another so that a coherent representation of such learning is built up. There is therefore a need to consider further the characteristics of learning that are regarded as being of good quality. For this purpose we set out a framework based around six dimensions of good quality knowledge, namely, extent, well-foundedness, structure, complexity, generativity, and variety of representational format. In the final section of the chapter we advance arguments that point to the need to attend to the state of students’ and teachers’ knowledge about how to act, in strategic cognitive and metacognitive ways, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations

Identifying quality in teacher-education students' models of self-regulation processes in learning: A case study

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publishe

Measuring the Efficiency Effect of Banning Anti-Microbial Growth Promoters: The Case of Danish Pig Production

This study examines the effect of banning antimicrobial growth promoters on efficiency in the production of weaned and slaughter (finishing) pigs. We focus on the reaction of producers and production efficiency. We evaluate the estimated output and input shadow prices relative to market prices to analyse producer reactions and capture the impact on production efficiency by evaluating the effects of the ban changes on total factor productivity. To this end we model a multi product shadow profit function and incorporate output and input related shadow prices by using a second order flexible functional form. The development in total factor productivity is subsequently measured by calculating the Malmquist index on the farm level. To make infer-ences on the effect of banning growth promoters over time we regress in a second estimation step the changes in total factor productivity on potential explanatory factors by applying a bootstrapped censored regression procedure. Our results suggest that there was no effect of the ban on total factor productivity due to outputs and inputs substitution. Breeding pigs are pro-duced at the expense of weaned and finisher pigs. Feed input is over utilised relative to other inputs. The high shadow prices for substituting outputs are associated with better export mar-ket prices. These findings may have critical implications for the slaughtering plants with over capacity.animal health economics, food economics, shadow prices, efficiency, antimicrobial growth promoters, pig production, Livestock Production/Industries, Q1, Q11, Q12, Q24,

Teachers' knowledge and confidence for promoting positive mental health in primary school communities

This paper reports an investigation into Australian primary school teachers’ knowledge and confidence for mental health promotion. Questionnaires were delivered to 1397 teachers. In-depth interviews were held with 37 teachers. Quantitative results showed that half to two thirds of teachers felt efficacious and knowledgeable about selected components of mental health promotion. Independent judgments by staff about students’ mental health status concurred with students’ scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in about 75% of cases, indicating a good level of staff awareness about students’ mental health status. Exposure to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion initiative was associated with improvements in teachers’ efficacy, knowledge and pedagogy, with small to medium effect sizes. Qualitative analysis indicated that teachers’ subject-matter and pedagogical knowledge were heavily reliant on curriculum resources. Implications of the findings for the implementation of school-based mental health promotion initiatives are discussed