Perceptions of Assistant Principals’ and Principals’ of Bahrain Government Schools about the Impact of the Bahrain Teachers College Educational Leadership Program on Their Performance

This article examines the perceptions of school assistant principals and principals who completed the Bahrain Teachers College higher diploma of education leadership program about its impact on their performance. The study sample consisted of 141 program graduates from 9- cohorts. A multilevel concept in measuring the impact of the educational leadership program on the graduates’ performance was employed. The framework consisted of 4 levels: self-learning, changing others, embedding changes in school practices and sustainability of change and scaling up the school performance. The study questionnaire was designed on the basis of this framework. Results show that the Educational Leadership program positively affected its graduates’ performance in the 4 levels. The majority of the program graduates agreed that the program positively affected their personal qualities, leadership styles and practices to support school development, school staff, students’ performance and school ranking. The majority of the program graduates also agreed that the program positively affected their skills in dealing with curriculum innovations, professional development, research, strategic planning, staff appraisal, communication with community, using ICT, improving students’ learning and applying educational ethics.     Keywords: Education Leadership, School Principals’ Performance, Leadership Styles, School Practices, Leadership Skill

Performance on a probabilistic inference task in healthy subjects receiving ketamine compared with patients with schizophrenia

Evidence suggests that some aspects of schizophrenia can be induced in healthy volunteers through acute administration of the non-competitive NMDA-receptor antagonist, ketamine. In probabilistic inference tasks, patients with schizophrenia have been shown to 'jump to conclusions' (JTC) when asked to make a decision. We aimed to test whether healthy participants receiving ketamine would adopt a JTC response pattern resembling that of patients. The paradigmatic task used to investigate JTC has been the 'urn' task, where participants are shown a sequence of beads drawn from one of two 'urns', each containing coloured beads in different proportions. Participants make a decision when they think they know the urn from which beads are being drawn. We compared performance on the urn task between controls receiving acute ketamine or placebo with that of patients with schizophrenia and another group of controls matched to the patient group. Patients were shown to exhibit a JTC response pattern relative to their matched controls, whereas JTC was not evident in controls receiving ketamine relative to placebo. Ketamine does not appear to promote JTC in healthy controls, suggesting that ketamine does not affect probabilistic inferences

Population Pharmacokinetic Study of Benzylpenicillin in Critically Unwell Adults

Pharmacokinetics are highly variable in critical illness, and suboptimal antibiotic exposure is associated with treatment failure. Benzylpenicillin is a commonly used beta-lactam antibiotic, and pharmacokinetic data of its use in critically ill adults are lacking. We performed a pharmacokinetic study of critically unwell patients receiving benzylpenicillin, using data from the ABDose study. Population pharmacokinetic modelling was undertaken using NONMEM version 7.5, and simulations using the final model were undertaken to optimize the pharmacokinetic profile. We included 77 samples from 12 participants. A two-compartment structural model provided the best fit, with allometric weight scaling for all parameters and a creatinine covariate effect on clearance. Simulations (n = 10,000) demonstrated that 25% of simulated patients receiving 2.4 g 4-hourly failed to achieve a conservative target of 50% of the dosing interval with free drug above the clinical breakpoint MIC (2 mg/L). Simulations demonstrated that target attainment was improved with continuous or extended dosing. To our knowledge, this study represents the first full population PK analysis of benzylpenicillin in critically ill adults

Perceptions of Assistant Principals' and Principals' of Bahrain Government Schools About the Impact of the Bahrain Teachers College Educational Leadership Program on Their Performance

This article examines the perceptions of school assistant principals and principals who completed the Bahrain Teachers College higher diploma of education leadership program about its impact on their performance. The study sample consisted of 141 program graduates from 9- cohorts. A multilevel concept in measuring the impact of the educational leadership program on the graduates' performance was employed. The framework consisted of 4 levels: self-learning, changing others, embedding changes in school practices and sustainability of change and scaling up the school performance. The study questionnaire was designed on the basis of this framework. Results show that the Educational Leadership program positively affected its graduates' performance in the 4 levels. The majority of the program graduates agreed that the program positively affected their personal qualities, leadership styles and practices to support school development, school staff, students' performance and school ranking. The majority of the program graduates also agreed that the program positively affected their skills in dealing with curriculum innovations, professional development, research, strategic planning, staff appraisal, communication with community, using ICT, improving students' learning and applying educational ethics.     Keywords: Education Leadership, School Principals' Performance, Leadership Styles, School Practices, Leadership Skill