Preparing Instructional Leaders: Evaluating a Regional Program to Gauge Perceived Effectiveness

An instructional leadership program (ILP) has offered education and support to three cohorts of educational leaders in Nova Scotia, Canada, amounting to approximately 130 participants. Quantitative and qualitative feedback from a convenience sample (n = 90) suggests that the ILP offers an extremely useful practical program; in fact, 95 percent of the sample indicates advances in the categories of professional growth, improved instructional leadership, and tangible progress in administrative effectiveness. Systemic and school environment trends have dictated that educational leaders need a skill set that positions them to respond more aptly to issues of poverty, socioemotional health, and mental health while attending to improved community building both within the school and in the greater public. This study uses surveys, interviews, and focus groups to identify emerging and impending challenges

Education Research in the Canadian Context

This special issue of the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership (IJEPL), Research in the Canadian Context, marks a significant milestone for the journal. Throughout our twelve-year history, we have sought to publish the best research in leadership, policy, and research use, allowing authors to decide the topics by dint of their research. While this model still serves as the foundation for IJEPL content, we decided to give researchers a chance to engage in deeper conversations by introducing special issues. In our first special issue, researchers discuss their work within the scope of education policy, leadership, and research use within the Canadian context. While many aspects of leadership, teaching, and learning can be seen as similar across contexts, there are also issues of particular concern within national, regional, provincial, or local spheres, particularly when looking at policy and system changes. The researchers featured in this issue provide an important look into education in Canada.PolicyIn the policy realm, Sue Winton and Lauren Jervis examine a 22-year campaign to change special education assessment policy in Ontario, examining how discourses dominant in the province enabled the government to leave the issue unresolved for decades. Issues of access and equity play out within a neoliberal context focused on individualism, meritocracy, and the reduced funding of public services. While Winton and Jervis highlight the tension between policy goals and ideological contexts, Jean-Vianney Auclair considers the place of policy dialogues within governmental frames, and the challenge of engaging in broadly applicable work within vertically structured governmental agencies. One often-touted way to move beyondResearch useWithin the scope of research use, Sarah L. Patten examines how socioeconomic status (SES) is defined and measured in Canada, the challenges in defining SES, and potential solutions specific to the Canadian context. In looking at knowledge mobilization, Joelle Rodway considers how formal coaches and informal social networks nserve to connect research, policy, and practice in Ontario’s Child and Youth Mental Health program.LeadershipTurning to leadership, contributing researchers explored the challenges involved in staff development, administrator preparation, and student outcomes. Keith Walker and Benjamin Kutsyuruba explore how educational administrators can support early career teachers to increase retention, and the somewhat haphazard policies and supports in place across Canada to bring administrators and new teachers together. Gregory Rodney MacKinnon, David Young, Sophie Paish, and Sue LeBel look at how one program in Nova Scotia conceptualizes professional growth, instructional leadership, and administrative effectiveness and the emerging needs of administrators to respond to issues of poverty, socioemotional health, and mental health, while also building community. This complex environment may mean expanding leadership preparation to include a broader consideration of well-being and community. Finally, Victoria Handford and Kenneth Leithwood look at the role school leaders play in improving student achievement in British Columbia, and the school district characteristics associated with improving student achievement.Taken together, the research in this special issue touches on many of the challenges in policy development, application, and leadership practice, and the myriad ways that research can be used to address these challenges. We hope you enjoy this first special issue of IJEPL

Variability in COVID-19 in-hospital mortality rates between national health service trusts and regions in England: A national observational study for the Getting It Right First Time Programme

Background A key first step in optimising COVID-19 patient outcomes during future case-surges is to learn from the experience within individual hospitals during the early stages of the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent of variation in COVID-19 outcomes between National Health Service (NHS) hospital trusts and regions in England using data from March–July 2020. Methods This was a retrospective observational study using the Hospital Episode Statistics administrative dataset. Patients aged ≥ 18 years who had a diagnosis of COVID-19 during a hospital stay in England that was completed between March 1st and July 31st, 2020 were included. In-hospital mortality was the primary outcome of interest. In secondary analysis, critical care admission, length of stay and mortality within 30 days of discharge were also investigated. Multilevel logistic regression was used to adjust for covariates. Findings There were 86,356 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 included in the study, of whom 22,944 (26.6%) died in hospital with COVID-19 as the primary cause of death. After adjusting for covariates, the extent of the variation in-hospital mortality rates between hospital trusts and regions was relatively modest. Trusts with the largest baseline number of beds and a greater proportion of patients admitted to critical care had the lowest in-hospital mortality rates. Interpretation There is little evidence of clustering of deaths within hospital trusts. There may be opportunities to learn from the experience of individual trusts to help prepare hospitals for future case-surges

Mapping genomic loci implicates genes and synaptic biology in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has a heritability of 60-80%1, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles. Here, in a two-stage genome-wide association study of up to 76,755 individuals with schizophrenia and 243,649 control individuals, we report common variant associations at 287 distinct genomic loci. Associations were concentrated in genes that are expressed in excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the central nervous system, but not in other tissues or cell types. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we identify 120 genes (106 protein-coding) that are likely to underpin associations at some of these loci, including 16 genes with credible causal non-synonymous or untranslated region variation. We also implicate fundamental processes related to neuronal function, including synaptic organization, differentiation and transmission. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in neurodevelopmental disorders. We identify biological processes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology; show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders; and provide a resource of prioritized genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

Background Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. Results Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. Conclusions Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

Plasma glutamine and upper respiratory tract infection during intensified training in swimmers

The purposes of this study were to determine the effects of 4 wk of intensified training on resting plasma glutamine concentration, and to determine whether changes in plasma glutamine concentration relate to the appearance of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in swimmers during intensified training. Resting plasma glutamine concentration was measured by high performance liquid chromatography in 24 elite swimmers (8 male, 16 female, ages 15-26 yr) during 4 wk of intensified training (increased volume). Symptoms of overtraining syndrome (OT) were identified in eight swimmers (2 male, 6 female) based on decrements in swim performance and persistent high fatigue ratings: non-overtrained subjects were considered well trained (WT). Ten of 24 swimmers (42%, 1 OT and 9 WT) exhibited URTI during the study. Plasma glutamine concentration increased significantly (P = 0.04, ANOVA) over the 4 wk, but the increase was significant only in WT swimmers (P < 0.05, post-hoc analysis). Compared with WT, plasma glutamine was significantly lower in OT at the mid-way timepoint only (P < 0.025, t- test with Bonferroni correction). There was no significant difference in glutamine levels between athletes who developed URTI and those who did not. These data suggest that plasma glutamine levels may not necessarily decrease during periods of intensified training, and that the appearance of URTI is not related to changes in plasma glutamine concentration in overtrained swimmers