Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 (N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword ...syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis was correlated only with impaired handwriting. Parental ratings of inattention, but not hyperactivity, correlated with measures of written language but not oral language. Sustaining switching attention correlated with writing the alphabet from memory in manuscript or by keyboard and fast copying of a sentence with all the letters of the alphabet. Multiple regressions based on a principal component for composites of multiple levels of language (subword, word, and syntax/text) showed that measures of attention and executive function involving language processing rather than ratings of attention and executive function not specifically related to language accounted for more variance and identified more unique predictors in the composite outcomes for oral language, reading, and writing systems. Inhibition related to focused attention uniquely predicted outcomes for the oral language system. Findings are discussed in reference to implications for assessing and teaching students who are still learning to pay attention to heard and written language and self-regulate their language learning during middle childhood and adolescence.
There has been significant progress in our understanding of school-based social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) assessments since the last special issue on this topic a decade ago. This commentary ...provides a discussion of how each of the articles exemplifies the progress that has been made to advance the science of SEB assessment within multitiered systems of support as well as touching on other important innovations in this area of work. While there have been significant advancements in research, this commentary calls for efforts to translate the science of school-based SEB assessment into routine policy, procedures, and practices in schools. The research on SEB assessment is poised for thoughtful implementation research and practice that aims to translate the use of this research into actual practice so SEB data are used to drive decisions to improve SEB programming and student outcomes.
Schools, like other service sectors, are confronted with an implementation gap, with the slow adoption and uneven implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP) as part of routine service delivery, ...undermining efforts to promote better youth behavioral health outcomes. Implementation researchers have undertaken systematic efforts to publish taxonomies of implementation strategies (i.e., methods or techniques that are used to facilitate the uptake, use, and sustainment of EBP), such as the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) Project. The 73-strategy ERIC compilation was developed in the context of healthcare and largely informed by research and practice experts who operate in that service sector. Thus, the comprehensibility, contextual appropriateness, and utility of the existing compilation to other service sectors, such as the educational setting, remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to initiate the School Implementation Strategies, Translating ERIC Resources (SISTER) Project to iteratively adapt the ERIC compilation to the educational sector. The results of a seven-step adaptation process resulted in 75 school-adapted strategies. Surface-level changes were made to the majority of the original ERIC strategies (52 out of 73), while five of the strategies required deeper modifications for adaptation to the school context. Six strategies were deleted and seven new strategies were added based on existing school-based research. The implications of this study’s findings for prevention scientists engaged in implementation research (e.g., creating a common nomenclature for implementation strategies) and limitations are discussed.
School psychology research and practice has considerable room for growth to go beyond “did an intervention work?” to “what intervention worked for whom and how did it work?” The latter question ...reflects a more precise understanding of intervention, and involves strategic efforts to enhance the precision of services students with academic, behavioral, emotional, or physical health problems receive to enhance the degree to which interventions are appropriately tailored to and produce benefit for individual students. The purpose of this special issue is to advance the notion and science of precision education, which is defined as an approach to research and practice that is concerned with tailoring preventive and intervention practices to individuals based on the best available evidence. This introductory article provides context for the special issue by discussing reasons why precision education is needed, providing definitions/descriptions of precision education research, and outlining opportunities to advance the science of precision education. Six empirical studies and one methodological-oriented article were compiled to provide examples of the breadth of research that falls under precision education. Although each of the article focuses on students with different needs (literacy deficits, math deficits, emotional and behavior problems, and intellectual disability), there is a common thread that binds them together, and that is each one captures the heterogeneity among students with particular problems or deficits and highlights the need to select and deliver more precise interventions to optimize student outcomes.
A substantial literature has established the role of the inner organizational setting on the implementation of evidence-based practices in community contexts, but very little of this research has ...been extended to the education sector, one of the most common settings for the delivery of mental and behavioral health services to children and adolescents. The current study examined the factor structure, psychometric properties, and interrelations of an adapted set of pragmatic organizational instruments measuring key aspects of the organizational implementation context in schools: (1) strategic implementation leadership, (2) strategic implementation climate, and (3) implementation citizenship behavior.
The Implementation Leadership Scale (ILS), Implementation Climate Scale (ICS), and Implementation Citizenship Behavior Scale (ICBS) were adapted by a research team that included the original scale authors and experts in the implementation of evidence-based practices in schools. These instruments were then administered to a geographically representative sample (n = 196) of school-based mental/behavioral health consultants to assess the reliability and structural validity via a series of confirmatory factor analyses.
Overall, the original factor structures for the ILS, ICS, and ICBS were confirmed in the current sample. The one exception was poor functioning of the Rewards subscale of the ICS, which was removed in the final ICS model. Correlations among the revised measures, evaluated as part of an overarching model of the organizational implementation context, indicated both unique and shared variance.
The current analyses suggest strong applicability of the revised instruments to implementation of evidence-based mental and behavioral practices in the education sector. The one poorly functioning subscale (Rewards on the ICS) was attributed to typical educational policies that do not allow for individual financial incentives to personnel. Potential directions for future expansion, revision, and application of the instruments in schools are discussed.
Implementation strategies are methods or techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, and sustainment of a new program or practice. Recent studies have facilitated implementation strategy ...prioritization by mapping strategies based on their feasibility and importance, but these efforts have not been replicated across distinct service delivery contexts. The aim of the current project was to evaluate the feasibility and importance of an education-adapted taxonomy of implementation strategies and to directly compare feasibility and importance ratings to the original Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) taxonomy, the leading compilation of implementation strategies in healthcare. A sample of 200 school-based consultants who support social, emotional, and mental health services provided ratings of feasibility and importance for each of the 75 strategies included in the adapted School Implementation Strategies, Translating ERIC Resources (SISTER) compilation. Results identified strategies rated as: (a) both feasible and important, (b) important but not feasible, (c) feasible but not important, and (d) neither feasible nor important. When mapped onto scatterplots using feasibility and importance ratings, comparison of ERIC and SISTER ratings indicated that approximately one third of the strategies shifted from one quadrant of the feasibility and importance axis to another. Findings demonstrate the value of efforts to adapt and generalize existing implementation products to novel service settings, such as schools. Additionally, findings assist implementation researchers and practitioners in prioritizing the selection of actionable and practically relevant implementation strategies to advance the quality of school mental health services.
THE NSF GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Cook, Susan B.; Muller-Parker, Gisèle; Cook, Clayton B.
Oceanography (Washington, D.C.),
09/2022, Volume:
35, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The information published annually by the National Science Foundation on its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) awardees was used to create an Awardees in Ocean Sciences (AOS) data set. This ...data set shows that women have been successful in receiving the fellowship award in the ocean sciences, receiving an overall 69% of the awards from 1996 through 2021 (458 women among 659 awardees). Women comprised at least 50% of awardees in the six ocean sciences disciplines listed as GRFP subfields of study. The highest percentages of awards to women (72%) were in biological oceanography and marine geology/geophysics, followed by marine biology and chemical oceanography (69%), physical oceanography (67%), and ocean engineering (61%). Women were successful both as undergraduate applicants (69% of undergraduate awardees) and as graduate applicants (71% of graduate awardees). We estimate that GRFP women awardees made up 17.8% of the women obtaining doctoral degrees in oceanography from 2017 to 2021, compared with GRFP men awardees comprising 8.5% of the male doctoral recipients for the same period. Our analysis suggests future directions for study of GRFP awardees and highlights the need for data that would help inform community outreach to underserved student populations.
Over 60 years of research reveal that informants who observe youth in clinically relevant contexts (e.g., home, school)—typically parents, teachers, and youth clients themselves—often hold discrepant ...views about that client's needs for mental health services (i.e., informant discrepancies). The last 10 years of research reveal that these discrepancies reflect the reality that (a) youth clients' needs may vary within and across contexts and (b) informants may vary in their expertise for observing youth clients within specific contexts. Accordingly, collecting and interpreting multi-informant data comprise “best practices” in research and clinical care. Yet, professionals across settings (e.g., health, mental health, school) vary in their use of multi-informant data. Specifically, professionals differ in how or to what degree they leverage multi-informant data to determine the goals of services designed to meet youth clients' needs. Further, even when professionals have access to multiple informants' reports, their clinical decisions often signal reliance on one informant's report, thereby omitting reports from other informants. Together, these issues highlight an understudied research-to-practice gap that limits the quality of services for youth. We advance a framework—the Needs-to-Goals Gap—to characterize the role of informant discrepancies in identifying youth clients' needs and the goals of services to meet those needs. This framework connects the utility of multi-informant data with the reality that services often target an array of needs within and across contexts, and that making decisions without accurately integrating multiple informants' reports may result in suboptimal care. We review evidence supporting the framework and outline directions for future research.
•Service professionals assess youth mental health using multiple informants.•Multiple informants’ reports commonly result in discrepant outcomes.•This paper describes the Needs-to-Goals Gap framework.•This paper links work on informant discrepancies to implementation science.•The framework describes how informant discrepancies impact individual clients.
Psychosocial functioning plays a key role in students' wellbeing and performance inside and outside of school. As such, techniques designed to measure and improve psychosocial functioning factor ...prominently in school-based service delivery and research. Given that the different contexts (e.g., school, home, community) in which students exist vary in the degree to which they influence psychosocial functioning, educators and researchers often rely on multiple informants to characterize intervention targets, monitor intervention progress, and inform the selection of evidence-based services. These informants include teachers, students, and parents. Across research teams, domains, and measurement methodologies, researchers commonly observe discrepancies among informants' reports. We review theory and research—occurring largely outside of school-based service delivery and research—that demonstrates how patterns of informant discrepancies represent meaningful differences that can inform our understanding of psychosocial functioning. In turn, we advance a research agenda to improve use and interpretation of informant discrepancies in school-based services and research.
Research has consistently linked social–emotional skills to important educational and life outcomes. Many children begin their school careers, however, without the requisite social and emotional ...skills that facilitate learning, which has prompted schools nationwide to adopt specific curricula to teach students the social–emotional skills that enable them to maintain optimal engagement in the learning process. Second Step® is one of the most widely disseminated social–emotional learning (SEL) programs; however, its newly revised version has never been empirically evaluated. The purpose of this study was to conduct a randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of the 4th Edition Second Step® on social–behavioral outcomes over a 1-year period when combined with a brief training on proactive classroom management. Participants were kindergarten to 2nd grade students in 61 schools (321 teachers, 7300 students) across six school districts. Hierarchical models (time×condition) suggest that the program had few main effects from teacher-reported social and behavioral indices, with small effect sizes. The majority of significant findings were moderated effects, with 8 out of 11 outcome variables indicating the intervention-produced significant improvements in social–emotional competence and behavior for children who started the school year with skill deficits relative to their peers. All the significant findings were based on teacher-report data highlighting a need for replication using other informants and sources of data. Findings provide program validation and have implications for understanding the reach of SEL programs.
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