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Early childhood education contexts are complex and diverse and thus require leadership approaches that connect with the values and beliefs of that field. Currently the research on leadership in early childhood education is limited and it would benefit from research into innovative approaches employed in very different but comparable locations. This article presents findings from a cross-case analysis exploring the role of leadership in two early childhood education settings: a university laboratory school in the United States of America and a public school in Australia. Drawing on cultural models theory, we argue that co-constructing leadership in context is a useful alternative to traditional hierarchical approaches to leadership. Each site's co-construction of leadership provided an opportunity for leadership to be developed organically and to be shared amongst the community of learners. The findings demonstrate how co-constructed leadership promotes a democratic environment for all members of a learning community.

Limited private and public financing of home health care for children with medical complexity can have harmful and costly consequences. Little is known of how parents and professionals in the United States navigate coverage for these services or how payer restrictions are shaping service quality. Qualitative interviews were conducted with families and professionals (eg, prescribers, providers, administrators of pediatric home health care [PHHC]) caring for children with medical complexity. Interview transcripts were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. In total, 47 families and 45 professionals from across 31 states and the District of Columbia had experiences with the full range of PHHC services. Participants detailed the need to patch together multiple insurances and payment programs to cover a child's home health needs. They described nontransparent eligibility determinations that do not reflect the diagnostic uncertainty and static functional status that is common for many children. Coverage denials are common, leaving gaps in care that can potentiate downstream cost escalation. Evidence-based health care reform must ensure that children get the PHHC needed to maintain function and reduce the need for hospital-based services. Recommendations are offered to improve PHHC financing and care for the most medically vulnerable children and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Total returned National Woodland Owner Surveys on commonly sampled points was 2320. • 59% of responses were owned by the same person, as classified with a name matching procedure. • Around 20% of owners may have undergone a familial shift. Although a rich history of scholarship exists on the attitudes, past behaviors, and behavioral intentions of family forest owners, little is known about how these social factors change over time. Furthermore, linking behavioral intentions with actual behaviors of family forest owners will require a longitudinal design that re-measures behaviors of the same respondents over time to match with earlier surveys of intention to behavior. Previous attempts to measure behavioral and attitudinal change over time have been largely opportunistic and have not followed a true longitudinal study design. Additionally, previous attempts to measure change in family forest owner behavior have been limited in geographic scope. This research note briefly describes data management considerations for analyzing the U.S. Forest Service's National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) longitudinally for the past three iterations of the survey and describes the potential changes in family forest ownership to demonstrate the approach. Forty-one percent of commonly-sampled points remained in the same ownership type between the first two survey iterations, and interesting shifts in ownership type were observed. For example, 30% of resampled locations changed ownership between the two survey iterations. As the NWOS continues to be implemented, the value of this longitudinal dataset will continue increasing, even as respondents are lost to follow-up, or as land changes hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Knowledge is usually positively related to behavior, but seldom investigated. • Policy tools, when significant, are nearly always positively related to behavior. • Ownership objectives are usually not significantly related to behaviors. • Few reviewed studies focus on equity, access, or underserved populations. Family forest owners in the United States have an important role in providing social and ecological benefits across landscapes. Thus, a detailed understanding of their land management behavior is critical to determine whether or not these benefits will be realized. In this paper, we report on a vote-count meta-analysis of peer-reviewed quantitative studies in the U.S. to examine an array of forest landowner behaviors. We extend other reviews of this literature by including papers with any behavioral dependent variable, rather than only timber harvesting or land management behavior. We document the significance, direction, and frequency of independent variables examined with regard to 13 categories of behavior including participation in policy tools, cross-boundary cooperation, invasive species management, and wildlife management. Study-level characteristics are reported for the 128 published studies that met initial inclusion criteria for this analysis (quantitative studies within the U.S. modeling landowner behavior that were published between 2002 and 2016). Thirty-eight studies that statistically modeled landowner behavior were further analyzed. Studies examining intentions were excluded, as were qualitative explorations of landowner behavior. The most commonly studied behavior included in our analysis was participation in landowner incentive programs, and the least common was participation in cross-boundary cooperation. Among independent variables, owner characteristics and ownership objectives were most commonly included. Independent variables found to be significant across behaviors examined included: current/past landowner behaviors, knowledge, and parcel size/forested acres. Actions like cross-boundary cooperation and landowner interactions have not been quantitatively modeled as often as other actions, and represent key areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "medical model" is a term coined for a set of procedures in which American physicians are trained. For dentistry, the sequentially ordered set of procedures includes: (1) immediate concerns; (2) medical/ dental histories; (3) physical examination findings; (4) ancillary tests, if needed; (5) diagnosis; (6) risk assessment; (7) prognosis without treatment; (8) treatment-plan options/informed consent; (9) treatment; (10) post-treatment assessment and verification. This case report demonstrates a diagnostic system using the medical model via linear thinking-ie, step-by-step progression-to diagnose and conservatively treat a patient with a constricted chewing pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School social work licensure or certification has undergone dramatic policy shifts throughout the United States that have changed the eligibility requirements of the state credentialing agencies and influenced enrollment in school social work licensure education courses. These changes have affected the professional school social work workforce in several ways including a lack of school social work interns entering the trainee workforce and a decrease in the new population of school social workers to replace the previous generation. This article will examine some of the experiences faced by graduate school social workers and compare other state educational agency requirements with those of Illinois. Research and policy implications will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we hear more about violence committed by the police, violence against police officers is also a major problem in the United States. Using data collected from the Orlando, Florida Police Department files, this study examines situational variables, offender characteristics, and officer demographics that may correlate with violence directed at law enforcement officers. Logistic regression results indicate that battery against one or more police officers is significantly more likely when multiple officers are involved, when offenders are women, when offenders are larger than average as measured by body mass index (BMI), and when offenders are known to have recently consumed alcohol. We close with a discussion of policy implications and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign language teachers are in critical need in many parts of rural America. Using Bandura's conceptual framework of self-efficacy teaching languages as a theoretical lens, the researchers created a scale to measure foreign language teacher efficacy and administered alongside a well-known efficacy survey to in-service rural teachers (N = 167) in Georgia. Data analysis indicates that the new instrument is psychometrically sound and there are two dimensions to language teacher efficacy: Content Knowledge and Facilitating Instruction. Positive correlations between the two surveys suggest that teaching languages requires more than just strength of content knowledge and FL teachers may need assistance engaging students. Additionally, it appears female novice Spanish teachers are more prone to attrition than teachers of other languages. This research holds implications for professional development opportunities as well as teacher preparation programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on parents' involvement in safe driving education of their teenage children in the rural areas of the U.S. Most efforts in this regard focus on how to teach teenagers to drive or awareness of teenage drinking and driving. Parents' role as gatekeepers is not satisfactory, despite national support for increased parental involvement. Western rural states have teenage crash rates higher than the national average because of the greater percentage of miles traveled. Programmed efforts directed towards parental management of teenage driving could be integrated into education of drivers to increase parental involvement in young driver safety. This would include determining the conditions under which teenagers can drive, and when and where they should drive.

Driving is a very complex social or cultural system. As such, solutions must span the matrix of the system. Driver Education or Training is the foundation upon which a safe driving culture and crash reduction interventions are built. Further, building a new foundation for a safe driving culture through education and training is a long-term commitment for and with a long-term solution. Up to this point most highway safety measures have focused on relatively short term but quick-return fixes like installing airbags and straightening out corners. Therefore, solutions for the necessary educational foundation must address both driver education for teens and lifelong education for the parents and neighbors who define and perpetuate the culture.

In recent years, the Logical Observation Identifiers, Names, and Codes (LOINC) Database has been expanded to include assessment items of relevance to nursing and in 2002 met the criteria for “recognition” by the American Nurses Association. Assessment measures in LOINC include those related to vital signs, obstetric measurements, clinical assessment scales, assessments from standardized nursing terminologies, and research instruments. In order for LOINC to be of greater use in implementing information systems that support nursing practice, additional content is needed. Moreover, those implementing systems for nursing practice must be aware of the manner in which LOINC codes for assessments can be appropriately linked with other aspects of the nursing process such as diagnoses and interventions. Such linkages are necessary to document nursing contributions to healthcare outcomes within the context of a multidisciplinary care environment and to facilitate building of nursing knowledge from clinical practice. The purposes of this paper are to provide an overview of the LOINC database, to describe examples of assessments of relevance to nursing contained in LOINC, and to illustrate linkages of LOINC assessments with other nursing concepts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Describes a partnership between a college of health and human sciences in a major urban university and an inner-city middle school in the U.S. Problems that traditional approaches to health care failed to reduce among children and adolescents; Risk factors that cause health problems among the youth; Effective efforts to promote health behaviors.

Examines the effects of a long fire-return interval on forest development, composition and tree age structure in the west slope of the Olympic Mountains, Washington. Fire patterns; Forest succession; Fire replacement sequence; Applying tree size to age; Management considerations.

The article focuses on the custodial aspects of federal parole in the U.S. The procedure of federal parole begins when the sentence is imposed. First, information is obtained to show to which community the prisoner comes from and what is known about his background. If the prisoner's family is well established in the community, the prisoner, at his return, will have a reasonably favorable family situation to hold him to the community. The active reputable citizen (one for each parolee) is a community representative who is allowed free access to the official supervisor for such assistance as he may need and to report for a warrant if necessary. Before a prisoner is shifted from prison to parole supervision, the community has been prepared for his return. The contacts of the prisoner with his community during imprisonment have continued. An advisor is chosen, investigated and certified. Employment is found and the employer is investigated and certified. The parolee and the residence of his family is proved.

The article reports that education-testing young drivers warrants as much attention and investment as crash-testing new vehicles. Researchers Allan Williams and Susan Ferguson of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have weighed in on their position regarding driver education. The facts cited by Williams and Ferguson overlook new emerging reports coming out of Washington and Oregon that indicate teens whose learning experience includes a standards-based, state-approved driver education program are safer drivers than those who do not take a state-approved driver education program. According to the author, those who would define the agenda on teen driver education should be able to offer something more positive than to make driver education less convenient to the general public. Perhaps the driver education agenda should be defined by experts in education, learning development and human behavior who have explored the nuances of the human mind and know the heartbeat of the education and training process.

The article presents information on the presentation to the National Transportation Safety Board's Forum on Driver Education and Training: The Role of Driver Education. It questions whether the U.S. society prefer a driving culture characterized by survival of the fittest or a culture marked by civil adherence to agreed norms? Driving is a very complex social and cultural system. As such, solutions must span the matrix of the system. Driver Education and Training is the foundation upon which a safe driving culture and crash reduction interventions are built.

Pyrethroids are a class of widely-used insecticides that can be transported from terrestrial applications to aquatic systems via runoff and tend to sorb to organic carbon in sediments. Pyrethroid occurrence is detrimental to stream ecosystems due to toxicity to sediment-dwelling invertebrates which are particularly at risk of pyrethroid exposure in urban streams. In this work, 49 streams located in watersheds in the northeastern United States were surveyed for nine current-use pyrethroids using two extraction methods. Total sediment concentrations were determined by exhaustive chemical extraction, while bioaccessible concentrations were determined by single-point Tenax extraction. Total and bioaccessible pyrethroid concentrations were detected in 76% and 67% of the sites, and the average sum of pyrethroids was 232 ng/g organic carbon (OC) for total and 43.8 ng/g OC for bioaccessible pyrethroids. Bifenthrin was the most commonly detected pyrethroid in streambed sediments. Sediment toxicity was assessed using 10-d Hyalella azteca bioassays, and 28% and 15% of sediments caused a decrease in H. azteca biomass and survival, respectively. A temperature-based focused toxicity identification evaluation was used to assess pyrethroids as the causal factor for toxicity. The concentrations of pyrethroids was only weakly correlated with the degree of urban land use. Sediment toxicity was predicted by total and bioaccessible pyrethroid concentrations expressed as toxic units. This work suggests that bioaccessibility-based methods, such as Tenax extraction, can be a valuable tool in assessing sediment toxicity. Image 1 • 49 sediments were sampled in the northeastern U.S. for the presence of pyrethroids. • Total and bioaccessible pyrethroids were detected in 76% and 67% of the sediments. • 28% of the sediments sampled were toxic to Hyalella azteca in 10-d bioassays. • Bioaccessible and total pyrethroids both predicted sediment toxicity. • Pyrethroids were weakly correlated with urban land use. A survey of urban streambed sediments collected from the northeastern U.S. showed that pyrethroid insecticides were present and bioaccessible at the majority of sites, and most of the sediments were not toxic according to 10-d amphipod bioassays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author addresses the issue of drunken driving accidents in the U.S. He cites a statistics showing that in every two minutes, 254,000 people are injured in such accident while one dies in every 30 minutes. He notes that when a drunken driver takes the road, one may be risking his or her own life, other passengers, and the bystanders. He emphasizes that one must not give in to peer pressure and drink.

The article presents the author's views on a research on graduated driver license (GDL) and automobile driver training in the U.S. The author believes that a research on GDL gives driver educators and trainer advocates a window to validate the best driver educational and training practices. According to him, classically trained educators have less respect for training and more respects for education as education involves a higher order of comprehension and skill.