Identifying Curriculum Components for Classroom Management Training for School Counselors: A Delphi Study

The Delphi Study was conducted to determine recommended curriculum components to be used in training school counselors to be effective classroom managers when conducting (large-group counseling) classroom guidance. Thirty-five participants, including nationally certified school counselor practitioners and prominent school counselor educators, were the two expert groups in the study. Eighty-nine initial curriculum items were identified, both knowledge and skill items included. After three rounds of the survey, the 40 items that remained were the final recommendations of the expert panel. In further analyses, no statistically significant differences were found when examining responses by expert group, gender, years of experience, or educational level. Specific recommendations are made to incorporate the findings into school counselor preparation programs

Identifying Curriculum Components for Classroom Management Training for School Counselors: A Delphi Study

The Delphi Study was conducted to determine recommended curriculum components to be used in training school counselors to be effective classroom managers when conducting (large-group counseling) classroom guidance. Thirty-five participants, including nationally certified school counselor practitioners and prominent school counselor educators, were the two expert groups in the study. Eighty-nine initial curriculum items were identified, both knowledge and skill items included. After three rounds of the survey, the 40 items that remained were the final recommendations of the expert panel. In further analyses, no statistically significant differences were found when examining responses by expert group, gender, years of experience, or educational level. Specific recommendations are made to incorporate the findings into school counselor preparation programs

Land assembly in Amsterdam, 1832–2015

Inner city redevelopment frequently involves the assembly of small lots into bigger ones. We analyze joint lot development and the influence of coordination and transaction costs of land assembly on the exercise of the redevelopment option, using Amsterdam micro housing information for 1832, 1860 and 2015. In all, we have a complete set of building structure and household characteristics for dwellings on almost 30,000 lots for each of these years. We estimate a logit model to predict joint lot redevelopment, based on structural characteristics of lots and dwellings and on social characteristics of their occupants. The results show that both types of characteristics significantly explain land assembly, and the regression coefficients adhere to the theoretical land assembly literature. This paper contributes importantly to our knowledge of the specific land parcel and structural physical characteristics that impact redevelopment. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to study the joint characteristics of the potentially combinable lots, and to document and quantify the role of social characteristics in land assembly

Risk measures for direct real estate investments with non-normal or unknown return distributions

The volatility of returns is probably the most widely used risk measure for real estate. This is rather surprising since a number of studies have cast doubts on the view that volatility can capture the manifold risks attached to properties and corresponds to the risk attitude of investors. A central issue in this discussion is the statistical properties of real estate returns—in contrast to neoclassical capital market theory they are mostly non-normal and often unknown, which render many statistical measures useless. Based on a literature review and an analysis of data from Germany we provide evidence that volatility alone is inappropriate for measuring the risk of direct real estate. We use a unique data sample by IPD, which includes the total returns of 939 properties across different usage types (56% office, 20% retail, 8% others and 16% residential properties) from 1996 to 2009, the German IPD Index, and the German Property Index. The analysis of the distributional characteristics shows that German real estate returns in this period were not normally distributed and that a logistic distribution would have been a better fit. This is in line with most of the current literature on this subject and leads to the question which indicators are more appropriate to measure real estate risks. We suggest that a combination of quantitative and qualitative risk measures more adequately captures real estate risks and conforms better with investor attitudes to risk. Furthermore, we present criteria for the purpose of risk classification

Investment decision-making under economic policy uncertainty

It is widely established that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects investment decisions and performance, yet research in this area has overlooked the direct property investment market. This article seeks to rectify this and proposes a multistage multilevel analytical framework to offer new insights and a richness of findings. Using a news-based measure of EPU in the United Kingdom, and controlling for economic conditions, a national-level analysis reveals some evidence of Granger-Causality between EPU and total returns, indicating that pricing is responsive to uncertainty. These findings suggest that EPU is an important risk factor for direct property investments, with pricing implications. Differences in data and performance measure are important, however, with income returns unresponsive. A micro-level investigation begins to reveal some of the asset-pricing decisions underpinning the national results, indicating investors’ concerns for income streams are consistently high, regardless of varying EPU. Pricing can also cause changes in EPU, such as in the retail and industrial markets (increasingly linked through logistics) reflecting sector-specific stakeholder groups and newsworthy issues. This evidence highlights how important it is for policy-makers to understand the complex and bi-directional relationship, that indecision can undermine investment confidence and cause investment market volatility, in turn raising EPU

Financial viability appraisals for site-specific planning decisions in England

In England, appraisals of the financial viability of development schemes have become an integral part of planning policy-making, initially in determining the amount of planning obligations that might be obtained via legal agreements (known as Section 106 agreements) and latterly as a basis for establishing charging schedules for the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). Local planning authorities set these policies on an area-wide basis but ultimately development proposals require consent on a site-by-site basis. It is at this site-specific level that issues of viability are hotly contested. This paper examines case documents, proofs of evidence and decisions from a sample of planning disputes in order to address major issues within development viability, the application of the models and the distribution of the development gain between the developer, landowner and community. The results have specific application to viability assessment in England and should impact on future policy and practice guidance in this field. They also have relevance to other countries that incorporate assessments of economic viability in their planning systems