Did that Professional Education about Mental Health Promotion Make Any Difference? Early Childhood Educators' Reflections upon Changes in Their Knowledge and Practices

This item is under embargo for a period of 12 months from the date of publication, in accordance with the publisher's policy.Educators are at the heart of educational reforms, such as the introduction of mental health promotion initiatives into early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Good quality implementation of reforms requires educators to engage in high quality professional learning: If educators have not had opportunities to gain appropriate knowledge and expertise, new initiatives may be poorly implemented and may consequently achieve limited outcomes. This article reports ECEC educators’ perspectives about the impact on their knowledge and practices of the professional education component of the KidsMatter mental health promotion initiative. Educators from 111 ECEC services across Australia contributed a range of types of data, including questionnaires about their knowledge and self-efficacy, feedback about each professional education session, and photo stories about their changed professional practices. Participants indicated that their professional learning led to changed practices in areas such as interpreting children's behaviours, interacting with children, approaching parents, and collaborating with colleagues. Participants’ photo stories illustrate how professional education that focuses on content, active learning, coherence, and collaboration can positively influence knowledge and practices. However, if such gains are to last beyond relatively highly resourced start-up phases of initiatives, professional education needs to integrate with, and draw from, the ongoing availability of other professionals such as guidance and counselling staff, who have complementary knowledge and expertise; be recognised and embedded as a core component of ECEC educators’ roles and their workplace practices; and be culturally and contextually situated. Staff accounts of the impact of their professional learning on their practices can highlight to policy-makers the practical outcomes of strong investments in professional education. Awareness by other professions of the affordances and constraints faced by ECEC educators may contribute to interdisciplinary synergies among the range of professions involved in mental health promotion in educational setting

Sustainable professional learning for early childhood educators: Lessons from an Australia-wide mental health promotion initiative

Author Version made available in accordance with the Publisher's PolicyNew policy initiatives, such as those concerned with promoting young children’s positive mental health, highlight the need for good quality professional education in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. However, although a wealth of literature exists from the school sector, little is known about professional education in ECEC settings. This paper presents an analysis of ECEC educators’ perspectives about their professional learning during an initiative to promote young children’s mental health in 111 ECEC centres in Australia. Questionnaires and feedback forms were collected from educators on four occasions over two years. In addition, program facilitators rated the quality of implementation of the initiative in each centre. Thematic analysis indicated that the professional education was instrumental in building ECEC educators’ knowledge about children’s social-emotional learning and mental health, increased educators’ self-efficacy for mental health promotion, and encouraged a more collegial and collaborative workplace. Hierarchical linear modelling supported the learning gains identified in the qualitative analysis, but showed that the effect sizes for positive change depended on the quality of program implementation. The findings highlight important synergies between opportunities for professional learning and workplaces that are conducive to transformation and renewal. Recommendations from participants for improvement included the need to ensure the relevance of content to local contexts, more extended learning opportunities, translation of unfamiliar language, and more accessible timetabling of professional learning sessions. Issues concerning the need to advocate for, and sustain, professional education in ECEC settings are discussed

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Student Concerns in the Teaching Practicum

There is general consensus in the literature that students consider the practicum to be a highly valued component of their teacher education degree. Nevertheless, there are wide ranging concerns reported by students related to their teaching practice. This paper reports on these concerns in the form of a cross-cultural comparison of an Australian and a Singaporean sample of students. Singaporean and Australian students completing their first practicum independently responded to a questionnaire based on the Survey of Practicum Stresses (D'Rozario & Wong, 1996). The psychometric properties of their 7-factor model were tested using the Australian data. This resulted in a 4-factor model, which was confirmed using structural equation procedures. Details of effective but under-employed analysis techniques are presented. This model was employed subsequently to provide cross-cultural comparisons of student concerns in the teaching practicum. Significant differences between the stresses experienced by Singaporean and Australian students point to the need to understand student stress within a cultural context

Responding to Foreign Competition: Overcoming Government Barriers

For a variety of reasons, governments erect barriers to international trade. In order to survive in the global marketplace, companies, therefore, need to overcome these barriers, whether by exporting, acquiring other firms, or entering strategic alliances with other businesses.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mlw_papers/1161/thumbnail.jp

LASED: A Laser-Atom Interaction Simulator using Quantum Electrodynamics

A laser-atom interaction simulator using quantum electrodynamics (LASED) is presented, which has been developed in the python programming language. LASED allows a user to calculate the time evolution of a laser-excited atomic system. The model allows for any laser polarization, a Gaussian laser beam profile, a rotation of the reference frame chosen to define the states, and an averaging over the Doppler profile of an atomic beam. Examples of simulations using LASED are presented for excitation of calcium from the 4$^1$S$_0$ state to the 4$^1$P$_1$ state, for laser excitation from a D-state excited by electron impact to a P-state, and for laser excitation of caesium via the D$_2$ line.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, for source code go to https://github.com/mvpmanish/LASED. Changes in V2: added Sec. III D detailing the visualisation of angular shape, replaced Fig. 6 and Sec. IV B with new results from modelling a realistic 3D to 10P transition in He with the evolution of angular shap

Extracting and re-using research data from chemistry e-theses: the SPECTRa-T project

Scientific e-theses are data-rich resources, but much of the information they contain is not readily accessible. For chemistry, the SPECTRa-T project has addressed this problem by developing data-mining techniques to extract experimental data, creating RDF (Resource Description Framework) triples for exposure to sophisticated Semantic Web searches. We used OSCAR3, an Open Source chemistry text-mining tool, to parse and extract data from theses in PDF, and from theses in Office Open XML document format. Theses in PDF suffered data corruption and a loss of formatting that prevented the identification of chemical objects. Theses in .docx yielded semantically rich SciXML that enabled the additional extraction of associated data. Chemical objects were placed in a data repository, and RDF triples deposited in a triplestore. Data-mining from chemistry e-theses is both desirable and feasible; but the use of PDF, the de facto format standard for deposit in most repositories, prevents the optimal extraction of data for semantic querying. In order to facilitate this, we recommend that universities also require deposition of chemistry e-theses in an XML document format. Further work is required to clarify the complex IPR issues and ensure that they do not become an unwarranted barrier to data extraction and re-use

Extending teacher education students' mental models of teaching and learning through Problem Based Learning

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.This paper reports student teachers’ reflections on changes in their mental models of teaching and learning following their experiences of a problem based learning (PBL) topic. Students develop robust mental models of teaching and learning during their school years. Mental models inform intentions and plans, which in turn inform actions. As such, teachers often teach as they were taught—possibly perpetuating practices that limit intellectual inquiry in classrooms. PBL was introduced to our Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) to challenge and extend students’ mental models about teaching and learning, with a view to influencing their prospective teaching actions. We created an analytical framework and identified key-word descriptors of change to guide categorisation of 105 students’ focussed written reflections on their PBL experiences. Results provide evidence that students do report changed mental models in areas such as, 1) the value of case studies for engaging with subject content, motivating learning and connecting theory with practice, 2) self-reflection and peer collaboration for cognitive and professional growth, and 3) PBL processes of inquiry for developing self-regulated learning practices