No description available.

No description available.

Swedish school law stipulates that the work of student health teams in schools should be mainly health promoting. However, earlier scientific studies and reports from authorities show that most schools work aren’t. The aim of this study is to investigate how principals in five upper secondary schools organize and lead the health promoting work and what challenges they experience in their leadership with regards to health promoting work. The study is qualitative, based on a content analysis of semi-structured interviews with five upper secondary principals in Sweden. The results of the study show that even though the principals have access to interprofessional health teams and good organizational structures the student health work in four out of five schools mainly focus on remedial work and that more must be done in order develop their health promoting work. More focus must be appointed to developing teaching and teachers and student health team personnel must work closely together. In addition, principals must integrate their health promoting work in the systematic quality work of the school.

This study examined the effect of sustained principal development through membership in the BYU Principals Academy on collaborative activities and teamwork in schools. Principals who participated in the BYU Principals Academy received preparation and training to assist in the development and maintenance of professional learning communities in their schools. A 39-item online survey that focused on attitudes and experiences with teamwork and collaboration was disseminated to 12 teachers at each school where the principal was a member of the Principals Academy and where e-mail addresses were available. In addition, a control group of teachers from schools where the principal had no prior exposure to the academy also received the survey. Different cohorts were created depending on the year when principals joined the academy, ranging from 2002 to 2006. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to investigate the dimensionality of the survey variables. The resulting variables were analyzed using a one-way ANOVA test followed by Fisher's post-hoc test. Open response data was subjected to themes-based content analysis. The factor analysis revealed several variables. Once these factors were analyzed further, significant differences for the derived variable Experiences with Teamwork were located between the 2002 and the 2003 cohorts and between the control group and four of the five cohorts. Content analysis of data generated by the open-ended questions revealed mixed experiences with teamwork and collaboration. Teachers reported either exclusively positive or negative experiences with teamwork and collaboration and teaming were most often connected to the every day tasks linked to teacher survival rather than student learning and assessment. Some differences in variables between the 2002 cohort and the 2003 cohort may be attributed to the unique composition of these cohorts. In the 2003 cohort, several teachers were from the Carbon School District, and in the 2002 cohort several teachers were from schools where the principal was a member of the Principals Academy steering committee. Differences between the 2002 cohort and the control group may be attributed to the longevity of exposure to professional learning community principles and ideas in the 2002 cohort and a lack of this knowledge in the control group. A follow-up study could concentrate on focused interviews of principals in the 2002 cohort to investigate how this cohort may be different from the other cohorts.

This study is a summary of themes found in the meeting notes of school teams implementing school-wide Positive Behavior Support. Positive Behavior Support (PBS) is a systems change process of reorganizing a school's discipline structure to put in place a positive, teaching and reinforcing focus for the improvement of student behavior (Sugai & Horner, 2006). In recent years, education researchers have established that school-wide PBS is an effective way to deliver research- based interventions to improve student behavior (Colvin & Kameenui, 1993, Gottfredson, Gottfredson, & Hybl 1993; Taylor-Green & Kartub, 2000). This study focused on the implementation process in order to gain insights on successes and difficulties encountered by school teams during implementation of PBS. This study utilized meeting notes from 22 school teams that received implementation support from Utah's Academic, Behavior and Coaching Initiative (ABC-UBI). These school teams had at least 3 years of implementation support from ABC-UBI and 3 years of data from the School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET). The SET provided data indicating the fidelity of implemenation of PBS. From these 22 school teams, 628 total meeting notes were examined using grouded theory and an open-coding process. School teams were divided into 3 implementation patterns according to their SET data: consistently high implementing schools, increasing implementation schools and inconsistently implementing schools. A total of 13 themes were established, through multiple measures of inter-rater reliability, as being present in the meeting notes. According to prevalence rates, there were 2 major themes and 4 minor themes indicated in the meeting notes. The major themes indicated that making assignments and data collection were important to successful school teams. The minor themes indicated that meaningful individual rewards for students, regular staff professional development, utilization of tools provided by ABC-UBI and teaching and posting expectations were important to successful schools. Difficulties with data collection were indicated as being associated with inconsistently implementing schools. From the themes it was inferred that public accountability and the creation of professional learning communities were important factors in consistent and successful PBS implementation.

Attitudes of Adolescent Students with Disabilities Regarding "Flextime" in a Response to Intervention Model Julie Daye Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, BYU Educational Specialist in School Psychology One of the stumbling blocks to implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) in a secondary school is finding time for students to receive second level instruction. Evidence of effective implementation of RTI in elementary schools is more prevalent than in secondary schools. There is limited information on how to restructure school time and other resources in order to successfully implement RTI in secondary schools. Evidence is also limited regarding the impact of second level instruction on unique populations within a school. One population in particular includes students that are disabled and already receiving special education services. A junior high in a mountain west state; has implemented an element of RTI where schedules have been realigned in order to provide all students with intervention time. They call this 30-minute segment flextime, and students use this time to either attend required interventions or enrichment activities for those students who are not in need of an intervention. Students receiving special education services at this junior high were interviewed for the study. The students were selected by a special education teacher as participants likely to provide insightful responses. Data for this study were collected by open interviews with these students and the qualitative data were then analyzed with an inductive analysis approach. Participants reported that flextime was effective in helping them to improve and maintain good grades. All participants agreed that if they were in charge of the school, they would keep flextime. They also offered suggestions for improvement in flextime, which included possible scheduling changes to increase flextime and the time allotted to get from class to flextime. They also recommended changes be made in order to improve their ability to access the help needed during academic interventions.

This study investigated the impact of a media literacy education plan on the reading test scores of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) at an urban high school in Central Florida. A team of 9th and 10th grade teachers created a professional learning community and developed a treatment to enhance language arts instruction with various forms of media. This media literacy education plan included four lessons utilizing media such as television commercials, magazine photographs and the Internet; the lessons were taught during the four months leading to the administration of the 2007 FCAT. Data were gathered from the 2006 and 2007 FCAT scores of students in a control and treatment group. Using these pre test and post test data, statistical analysis comprised two independent t-tests and one repeated measures ANOVA. The data revealed statistical significance at the 9th and 10th grade level, but did not show statistical significance at any particular reading level (Levels 1-5). Implications from this study included strong professional learning communities produce effective teachers and that student achievement increases when a media literacy education plan is included in English Language Arts instruction. Furthermore, this study illustrates the need to embrace modern media as viable classroom instructional tools. Recommendations were made for further research utilizing different materials, different forms of media, different student populations. This study also concluded that further qualitative research be conducted. Ultimately, this study makes a strong argument for the inclusion of media and media literacy education in the secondary English Language Arts classroom.

The purpose of this phenomenological, qualitative research study was to examine teachers’ perceptions of school administrators’ support of collaborative planning in small rural schools. Although there has been much research conducted on teacher collaboration through Professional Learning Communities, there has been little documentation of teacher collaboration in small rural schools (DuFour et al., 2020; Hansen, 2015; Moore, 2018). This research study examined teachers’ perceptions of collaboration and the role that school administrators play in the work to establish, support, and maintain collaborative teaming structures. Data collection strategies included individual interviews of practicing teachers, serving in small rural schools. Analysis of data occurred in three phases: transcribing interviews, line-by-line coding, and member checking. Analysis of the data revealed the following themes that highlight the need for school administrators to (a) establish teaming structures, (b) provide needed resources, and (c) create a culture of collaboration. Recommendations are provided for school administrators’ practice of supporting professional collaboration and suggestions for future research are provided.

No description available.

No description available.