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The consumption of technical and vocational education and training has increased exponentially over the past two decades. In terms of inclusion, it is without a doubt that today's TVET sector is a far cry from what it was before the democratic government took over the baton from the apartheid government. TVET has become a refuge to many hopefuls from the historically disadvantaged sectors of society who, due to a range of apparent reasons, would ordinarily not have managed to partake in tertiary education. To many South African youth, TVET presents an avenue for the acquisition of a skill that will give them a fighting chance at escaping the harsh recurrence of poverty, economic inactivity and resource deprivation they are subjected to almost on a daily basis. However, beneath this silver lining lies a growing public disgruntlement over the TVET system's ability to steadfastly deliver quality education and transform the lives of students, by instilling in them agency for self-regulated and collaborative innovation that will turn them into formidable and assertive role players in the knowledge societies, come the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). To understand the crux of public mistrust in TVET college education in South Africa, an extensive body of literature was reviewed. The findings of the paper point to strategic factors (which in the main are attributed to a lack of effective leadership and managerial skills) and contextual factors that occur at a campus level, as major causes of public mistrust in TVET education. The paper concludes by tabling a manifesto for changing the status quo ahead of the advent of 4IR.

This paper represents one of the most recent and pertinent studies conducted in Afghanistan, aiming to address the societal imperative of comprehending the factors behind the fall of the Republic government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban to power. Furthermore, the paper seeks to analyse public attitudes towards the current situation. Employing a quantitative approach, the research utilizes a descriptive-analytical method through questionnaires and the participants include social media activist, students and universities professors, the data collected by online survey according WhatsApp, Facebook messengers, telegram, email and other social media groups from different ethnic groups. The findings of this research have identified several pivotal factors contributing to the ascent of the Taliban to power, including the US-Taliban agreement in Doha, Qatar; political disparities; administrative and financial corruption within the Republic's administration; Pakistan's support for the Taliban; the previous government's accord with the Taliban; ethnic dominance; robust military morale of the Taliban; and proficient war management by the Taliban. Afghanistan, as a multi-ethnic society, witnesses political dynamics predominantly rooted in ethnic affiliations. The majority of respondents express dissatisfaction with the current Afghan situation, displaying significant concerns for the populace. Foremost concerns, in terms of prioritization, encompass poverty; closure of girls' schools; restrictions on women's education and employment; escalation of civil unrest; mono-ethnic rule; ethnic conflicts; emergence of ISIS; ethnic marginalization; violations of citizenship rights; political participation and legitimacy crises; and authoritarianism. Consequently, to address the political crisis and establish a viable system, the research concludes that while Pashtuns lean toward a centralized system, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmens evince greater interest in a decentralized structure.

A child's home environment has been shown to be related to the development of early numeracy skills in some countries. However, significant relationships between home learning environment and math achievement have not consistently been found, and likely vary across different cultural and socio-political contexts. Here we explored the home environment and early numeracy skills of 243 children (3-5 years), who were not attending preschool programmes in very low-income settings in Cape Town, South Africa. Caregivers completed a questionnaire including information regarding experiences of children in the home; children completed a number identification task, a counting task and the Give-N task. The amount of resources in the home learning environment (e.g. the number of books and toys), frequency of home learning activities caregivers did with their children, and caregiver levels of education and income were not associated with number knowledge. While the home learning environment has been shown to be important for developing early numeracy skills in previous research, this study suggests that factors other than the home learning environment may also be important targets to foster numeracy skills and school readiness in low-income settings in South Africa.

Child marriage in Tanzania is a critical human rights issue in Tanzania and around the globe. This article focuses on the legal structure of Tanzania to show that Tanzania's Law of Marriage Act, Sections 13 and 17, enacted in 1971, violates its constitution and obligations in international human rights treaties and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; mainly, they violate individuals' rights to equality, education, and their family's welfare. The reader will find that the legal and social structures within Tanzania are in conflict with global norms. In addition, the social structure that the government relies on to legitimize these sections of the Marriage Act continues to allow child marriage. This article resolves that child rights, precisely girls' rights, are inhibited through the enactment and continued application of the Law of Marriage Act, Sections 13 and 17. The article will conclude with some salient recommendations that assist Tanzania's government in resolving the issue.

The experience of participating in a mobility program is both enriching and shocking. While facing different identities and asymmetrical relations of power, the international student from the Global South is forced to reanalyze his or her identity in the world. The politics of racialization and the dichotomy between the politics of belonging and of bordering make those who study abroad realize the stereotypes of the country they are nationals of and the prejudice their co-citizens may suffer. As such, this text is my narrative as a Brazilian student in the Middle East living in a community predominantly constituted by Europeans, describing the process of realization of my identity as a Global South and Latin American citizen.

Purpose: Civic education is a central mission of public schools, and deeper learning of civics--learning that is complex and adaptive--is the goal. However, assessment of deeper civic learning is limited. Therefore, we aimed to develop an assessment model and test of deeper learning in the common high school civics course taught across the U.S. Design/methodology/approach: Using Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR), the assessment model and test were iteratively researched and revised by a team of researchers and teachers across seven years and multiple settings. Findings: Results of validity and reliability studies show that the model and test are promising tools for assessing deeper civic learning. Research limitations/implications: Additional research is warranted to refine the test-development process, design alternative test forms, and adapt the model to other social studies courses. Practical implications: We suggest ways to use this assessment model to assess learning in civics and other social studies subjects.

School violence plays a significant role in shaping a school's culture and climate, which can have an impact on the participation and performance of learners in secondary education. In many instances, school violence can hinder the educational aspirations of learners. This paper investigates the impact of school violence on learners through the lenses of social justice theory and an interpretive paradigm. The sample of this qualitative research included three secondary schools in the Vhembe District in the Limpopo Province, South Africa, and are from advantaged and disadvantaged communities, representing a varied sample. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with 27 purposively selected teachers, including three principals, three heads of department, and 21 teachers. Data were analysed and interpreted using the constant comparative method of data analysis. The findings revealed corporal punishment, bullying, and sexual harassment as the major forms of violence perpetrated at the three schools. These are the direct result of the low socioeconomic status of parents, crime in the communities, and cultural and traditional beliefs of the community members. The study found that teachers spend most of their time solving challenges associated with various forms of school violence instead of focusing on teaching and learning. School violence also affects learners' concentration, thus increasing poor academic performance, classroom chaos, bunking of classes and depression. The study suggests that the victims of any form of school violence are encouraged to report the perpetrators to the school teachers and principals immediately. In addition, the school must conduct awareness seminars and workshops on various forms of school violence. If not monitored, these causes and effects may contribute to the widening gap of unequal educational outcomes of learners in the country.

This study examines whether family income in early childhood is related to achievements of Israeli students in standardized tests at primary school. We analyzed data from the Israeli censuses of 1995 and 2008, which include information on family income and socio-economic background of children along with data pertaining to their achievements in standardized tests taken in fifth-grade. The findings show that belonging to the lowest quintile of family disposable income in early childhood had a negative and significant effect on future educational achievements, controlling for family income in late childhood and other socio-demographic variables. Furthermore, the effect of family income was stronger when measured at birth -- age two, than at ages 3-5. These findings are consistent with the claim that child development is most sensitive to environmental influences in the very first years of life.

This paper focuses on a group of young people in Singapore connected by the love for their communities and their desire to use drama for social change. In particular, we investigate how a participatory arts-based approach can enable young people to reflect on the importance of solidarity. We draw on Freire's pedagogy of solidarity, arguing for the importance of 'small' acts of solidarity that foreground the experiences of systematically excluded communities, such as young people living in social housing. Understanding this experience of solidarity and activism is particularly important in a country like Singapore, where civic and political participation is highly circumscribed.

This article looks at the meaning of solidarity as related to the Egyptian uprising of January 2011. Through participant interviews, field notes, and observations, the author examines the role of grassroots theatre in enabling the aspirations of the revolution to live on amongst its players, and despite more stringent state control over the arts and freedom of expression. The author examines how solidarity can take different forms through silence, witnessing, and embodied creative works.

While the co-production of knowledge through community-engaged research is intended to be a reciprocally beneficial process, academic institutions have often devalued community expertise by treating community organizations as subjects rather than co-creators of knowledge. Drawing from Black Feminist Epistemology, this ethnographic study examines how one community-based organization, Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), partners with academic researchers, including their discourse around partnerships and how they challenged power dynamics between community and their university partners. This paper discusses key themes from their partnerships, including centering community members' expertise through their lived experience and forming long-term mutual relationships rooted in abolition and the Black Radical Tradition. Drawing on an analysis of LA CAN's organizing and research processes with academic partners, we discuss how the centering of community expertise and forming relationships with academics aligned on these values can help to challenge the traditional power dynamics in community-university partnerships, resulting in different ways of knowing or what LA CAN referred to as "the real data set."

While well-being of school principals is becoming an increasing concern in public education, the understanding of well-being and its manifestation is still lacking in research. This research tackles the nuances and complexities surrounding the notion of well-being and sheds light on its conceptualisation, manifestation, and contributing factors. Data for this research come from an online survey among public school principals in the province of British Columbia, Canada. This survey research utilised reliability, factor, correlation analysis, and structural equation modelling (SEM) and examined how well-being of school principals is manifested along different well-being dimensions and what underlying relationships exist between each dimension in relation to principals' overall well-being and their demographics. The results reaffirm that well-being is a multidimensional construct, encompassing dimensions that speak to different but interrelated aspects of a principal's well-being state, among which emotional and psychological well-being has been revealed as a vital component in principals' overall well-being. The findings have significant implications on health and well-being related support for school principals in order to prepare them for the increasingly demanding job.

Research on trauma in education has primarily focused on the student experience while the prevalence and scope of educator trauma remains largely unexplored, especially through an identity-conscious lens. This study addresses the gap in our understanding of educator trauma through a national survey of United States educators. Results indicated that most educators have experienced primary trauma and a majority have also experienced secondary trauma as a result of their students' traumatic experiences. Results further revealed that educator primary trauma differs across age, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation, while educator secondary trauma differs by school context. Implications for educational leaders and administrators are considered, as well as directions for further research centering identity-conscious approaches to educator trauma.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has the potential to enhance both cognitive and affective engagement but has been criticised for being unsuitable for learners with low levels of knowledge and skills, such as South African learners from poor backgrounds. In such cases, guided problem-based learning (GPBL), which includes direct instruction and teacher prompting, may be more effective. However, little is known about the extent to which GPBL can replicate the cognitive and affective benefits of PBL for such learners in the context of middle-school mathematics problem-solving. It is also not clear what the optimal granularity of teacher prompting should be within GPBL. To address these issues, this instrumental case study was conducted with 26 higher-achieving Grade 8 and 9 learners from schools serving poor communities. These learners participated in a GPBL week-long extracurricular holiday mathematics programme in which they were guided to use trigonometry to determine the maximum height reached by a water rocket. Data were collected through video recordings, field notes, written work, and audio-recorded group discussions, and were coded using the multidimensional problem-solving (MPS) framework to identify cognitive and affective behaviors. The learners' affective responses suggested general positivity towards effortful problem-solving. Their cognitive responses suggested successful engagement in some, but not all, aspects of problem-solving. Although fine-grained prompting did not promote exploratory discussion, it was found to be necessary to guide productive mathematical activity. Medium-grained prompting, which did lead to exploratory discussion, did not appear to be directly productive, although it did appear to enhance learners' receptivity to subsequent fine-grained prompting.

This article brings together a number of key issues that emerge in research around the problem of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools. It offers a broad overview of the hard-to-staff schooling sector as discussed in recent academic literature and provides a context-specific overview of the literature around workforce shortages in hard-to-staff schools with relevancy for high poverty contexts. In line with Williams et al. (2022) position on "Local Strategies, Global Inspiration," this paper focuses on the problem of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools in Australia while looking to both Australian and broader Anglosphere literature (p. 120) to reconsider responses to teacher recruitment and retention. The paper begins with a survey of the current state of this issue of workforce shortages in hard-to-staff schools in Australia. Turning our attention to literature from both Australia and Anglosphere countries, the summary then focuses on the specific initiatives and mechanisms employed for recruiting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools, particularly the organisational contributions of Initial Teacher Education that support recruitment into hard-to-staff schools. The article concludes by highlighting limitations and critiques of hard-to-staff initiatives in the literature to inform policy and organisational considerations when addressing the issue of teacher shortages going forward.

In education, low-income and racially minoritized students in urban districts are often constructed as 'dependent' -- weak in their social positions but deserving of educational opportunity. This social construction of 'urban' students has been central to school choice politics and policymaking in the United States. In this study, I interrogate one particular aspect of this social construction: the way low-income and racially minoritized students are represented in quantitative data. I use school choice in Detroit, Michigan as an illustrative case; I conduct a critical discourse analysis of exchanges between former United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and members of Congress about school choice, and the quantitative research referenced during those exchanges. The study demonstrates how dominant conceptions of 'urban' education in the United States influence the production of data and research on school choice, and in turn the role those quantifications play in school choice discourse.

This study sought to understand the influence of participation in a physical activity-based, social and emotional learning-focused after-school. Undergraduate students (N = 25) from a variety of ethnic backgrounds participated in semi-structured interviews and regular journaling. Data were analyzed inductively and deductively through the lens of occupational socialization theory. Four themes were developed: (a) career confirmation, refinement, and reevaluation that occurred from volunteering; (b) career development through hands-on experiences; (c) personal and interpersonal development through working with others; and (d) development in relationships and emotional health. The participants found the program to be valuable for their career choices, whether it was confirming their career choice or changing it. It also increased their ability to use social and emotional strategies to deepen relationships and navigate stress within and outside of the program. Implications for research and practice are discusses in relation to the findings.

This article highlights the inequality in the Flemish education system, which disproportionately affects youngsters with low socioeconomic status. This inequality is attributed to the human capital approach characterising current educational policies, putting emphasis on educational outcomes. This results in education that homogenises and limits acceptable student behaviour and in which deviations from the norm are met with exclusionary and punitive approaches, consequently pushing vulnerable youngsters with a differing cultural capital out of education. Drawing on the capability approach, this article argues the importance of navigational agency in education, investigating the space students have to enter and exit education, resolving conflicts between education and other social practices, and reforming education by voicing their opinions. By analysing 66 Flemish secondary school policies, it is concluded that young people's navigational agency is limited in the current educational landscape. Furthermore, most school policies lack inner consistency, highlighting the fact that there is no coherent pedagogical vision within, which raises questions about how thought through these policies really are.

Background: Children living in poverty often are exposed to situations that negatively affect various aspects of their development. So, it is important to propose interventional programs that minimize the negative effects of living in poverty on these children. Objective: To verify the impact of a mastery climate cognitive-motor skills school-based intervention on academic and motor performance, body mass index, and perceptions of competence and self-worth in children living in poverty. Method: 280 children (50% girls), 7- to10-years-old, from Ceará state -- Brazil, participated in this study. Intervention (IG, N = 140) and comparison (N = 140) groups were composed. The Test of Gross Motor Development -- 2, the Self-Perception Profile for Children, the School Performance Test (reading, writing, math), and the Body Mass Index (BMI) were used. Children in the IG participated in a mastery climate intervention and children in the CG in a recreational sports program for 12 weeks (36 sessions /140 min each session/ three times a week) with 60 min of academic activities, 20 min recess and snacks, and 60 min of motor practices. Results: The intervention group showed significant improvement from pre- to post-test, and higher motor, academic (reading, math), perceived competence, social acceptance, and self-worth scores than the comparison group at pos-test (p from 0.031 to <0.001). Conclusion: Mastery climate cognitive-motor intervention positively impacts the motor and academic performance and the self-perceptions of the children living in poverty, reinforcing the need for these interventions to helping children become more proficient and assured about their competences.

This paper describes how eight London nurseries examined whether better use of bicycles would strengthen children's physical activity as a step to reducing child obesity. The nurseries are part of a social enterprise which offers one-third of the 4200 nursery places to children from poor and disadvantaged families/communities where rates of child obesity are high and increasing. The research was instigated because the nurseries built a partnership with Bikeworks which provided free bikes and staff wanted to ensure they were using them effectively to benefit children. Parents were involved but also asked a specific question about interest in a bike lending scheme. The paper concluded that staff became more observant of how they could enhance their practice using bikes to support children's physical and sociolinguistic development. It heightened the importance of observation of the children but also in identifying barriers such as poor cycling surface and state of bike repairs. Parents considered bikes to be a key part of their children's nursery life especially extending physical skills but were divided evenly about the value of introducing a bike lending scheme.

Purpose: This paper will identify and further explore the ideals versus realities of learning poverty and the consequential effects on our moral obligations and responsibilities. The wealthy nations are now under further pressure to recognise and realise their moral obligations to enabling social justice in the context of access, and distribution, of vaccines for the poorer nations. Learning poverty has always been a feature of our global economic, and institutional order, and has become an increasingly important factor in achieving justice. Design/methodology/approach: The study focusses on a human rights approach to learning poverty and the ideals versus the realities of what we are beginning to see in the times of a global pandemic. The major challenges to justice is inherent to the recognition that wealthy nations continue to have a pivotal role in the reduction of poverty. The identified major challenges in the context of learning poverty are: "nation states and the global pandemic", "international interactions and learning poverty" and "global institutions and learning inequalities". In particular, the authors explore the concept of ideals versus realities through three "challenges", which continues to challenge any semblance of justice in the current global vaccine distribution. Nation states and borders, international interactions and global institutions remain barriers in overcoming what is becoming a reality of learning poverty. Findings: This paper seeks to look beyond the economics of vaccine trade and seek a way to accept a moral claim of justice for all. The authors consider how wealthy nations are active participants in the emergence of learning poverty for many nations. Originality/value: By exploring the ideals versus realities of learning poverty, and human rights, the authors highlight some of the challenges, and wealthy nations moral obligations, through the emergence of a new dimensional indicator of poverty, learning poverty.

Teacher education in the United States operates within the same politically polarized and tense contexts as schools. Research predominantly relies on the voices and experiences of scholars and professionals, despite the importance of community-engaged pedagogies and learning approaches. Collective work that bridges the roles of scholars and community activists requires a shift in how teacher education is conceptualized for a new generation of intersectionality-focused anti-racist and anti-ableist teachers and teacher educators. Centering the knowledge of disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars in partnership with educational professionals, we introduce Disability Centered Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (DCCSPs), a conceptual framework and pedagogical application integrating Disability Critical Race Theory and culturally sustaining pedagogies in teacher education. We outline the critical need for this theory in teacher education in the United States and globally, opportunities for practical integration, and conclude with future directions.

Research Findings: Families need access to early care and education programs, both to ensure parents' ability to work and support children's development. Subsidies through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) are a set of policies aimed at assisting families living in poverty with accessing early education. However, the number of early education centers that accept subsidies is declining. Using observational data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education and state subsidy policies from the CCDF Policies Database, we use an innovative application of propensity score methods to estimate causality and provide actionable findings regarding the effect of state-specific policies on centers' subsidy participation. We create comparable groups of centers that accept subsidies and centers that do not, based on research-supported program- and community-level predictors of subsidy participation. Logistic regression models using the matched sample demonstrated state-specific subsidy policies impacted subsidy participation. Specifically, as the state subsidy reimbursement rate increased, centers were more likely to accept subsidies. Practice or Policy: Findings point to meaningful state-level actions and policies that may incentivize centers' subsidy participation. In general, state policies that increase revenue for centers accepting subsidies (e.g. reimbursement for child absences) may result in higher rates of subsidy participation.

Background: Research suggests that many educators hold inaccurate or incomplete perceptions of poverty leading to stereotyping of students living in poverty. It is important for future teachers to understand more about the complexities of poverty so they can bridge gaps between misconceptions and understanding for their students, families, and school communities. Purpose: This study examined teacher candidates' preconceived thoughts and changes in perceptions toward poverty based on participation in an experiential learning activity (i.e., a poverty simulation). Methodology/Approach: The participants (n = 94) were in their final term of a 2-year teacher education program in Ontario, Canada. This mixed-method study used a Community Action Poverty Simulation combined with the quantitative presurvey Undergraduate Perception of Poverty Tracking Survey and qualitative postgroup discussions. Findings/Conclusions: Results indicated that the poverty simulation was an effective tool for disrupting poverty perceptions and myths among teacher candidates and provided insight into further areas to increase understanding. Implications: Based on the findings, poverty simulations are a promising experiential learning process for teacher education programs as a cost-effective, consciousness-raising exercise that can prompt deeper levels of learning for teacher candidates and better prepare them to teach students living in poverty.

Dominican-born children of Haitian descent are frequently excluded from the public education system in the Dominican Republic. Barriers to participation include poverty, discriminatory government policies, and structural barriers within school settings. Females of Haitian descent face additional barriers due to gender discrimination. The current study used modified grounded theory to analyze qualitative interviews from 32 Dominican females of Haitian descent to explore factors that promote and impede educational resilience. Barriers to school participation included: the economics of school integration and persistence, poor cultural and learning climate within school, and limited structural supports for female students who want to pursue education while pregnant, or raising children. Factors described as promoting educational resilience included: successfully balancing work and study from an early age, having supportive social networks, and holding strong beliefs about the future value of education. Findings challenge and inform dominant discourses about factors that impede and support educational resilience.

Educators and caregivers can foster emotional wellbeing, growth, and resilience, contributing to a fulfilling and balanced adulthood by providing positive childhood experiences (PCEs). PCEs protect the brain and promote healing for people who have experienced adverse childhood environments (ACEs). In the presence of PCEs, adverse experiences in childhood do not always result in lifelong poor mental health. Knowing that PCEs can prevent ACEs, block toxic stress, and promote healing, the HOPE framework incorporates PCEs alongside ACEs. HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) is a framework that changes the way service providers engage with children and families. This article examines how the HOPE National Resource Center is transforming systems to create a research-based structured approach to care through PCEs.

Research Findings: Immigrant families who represent a growing share of the early schooling population face unique challenges related to involvement in their children's education. This study examined whether and to what extent home-based parent involvement and parental warmth are associated with the socio-emotional and academic outcomes of children of immigrant mothers during the kindergarten year -- a critical and sensitive period for later school success. The study sample included 9,187 children from the base year of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11. Among the major findings, the study revealed that Hispanic and Asian immigrant parents, on average, were less frequently involved in home-based activities and reported less warmth than U.S.-born parents. Additionally, greater frequency of home-based parent involvement was associated with better interpersonal skills for both children of Hispanic immigrant mothers and children of Asian immigrant mothers, but home-based involvement was also positively associated with reading and math scores for children of Asian immigrant mothers. Moreover, the association between home-based involvement and socio-emotional outcomes was manifested broadly among poor children of immigrant mothers. Practice or Policy: The findings highlight the importance of understanding cultural differences in parent involvement and parenting styles to enhance immigrant children's educational experiences.

Research Findings: Research with older children and adults reliably demonstrates that individuals raised in poverty tend to evaluate concerns related to moral concerns (i.e., related to harm, welfare, and justice) differently than do wealthier individuals. However, little work has examined these patterns in young children. Children (N=214, Mage = 53.30 months, SD = 18.3 months) completed tasks regarding accidental and prototypic moral transgressions, and a standard verbal assessment. Parents reported family size and household income, which were used to compute individuals' income-to-needs ratio (INR) compared to federal standards. Using generalized linear mixed modeling (GLMM), a repeated-measure analysis, results indicate that children in low-income families (INR < 2.0) were more lenient in how they evaluate both accidental and prototypic issues, compared to more affluent children. Moreover, they were more likely to evaluate issues based on communal welfare (e.g., equitable resource distribution), whereas more affluent children were more likely to reference psychological harm. Practice or Policy: Practitioners and researchers of early childhood should be cognizant and sensitive to differences in children's social understanding. We encourage scholars to use a strength-based, adaptive approach in future research on children's cognition, particularly involving SES, class, and the like.

"Pashe Achhi" is a telecommunication model that emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh to provide support to 0- to 5-year-old children and their caregivers through mobile-to-mobile phone calls. It is a caregiver-child facing and/or only caregiver focused, low-resource, low-tech model that constitutes a 20-minute phone call. The phone calls include a 10-minute psychosocial support segment to caregivers and a 10-minute stimulation segment to their children through play. After the initial intervention period during the pandemic, this model has been tested further and evaluated based on two modalities: 5-month and 9-month interventions. An experimental study design using randomized assignment of the treatment and comparison group was used for this evaluation. The improvement in cognitive development scores among children has been found to be higher after 5 months than after 9 months of intervention. The model has implications for further research as an early childhood development (ECD) solution during crisis situations and ECD access to children of ultra-poor households.

Brain age, a measure of biological aging in the brain, has been linked to psychiatric illness, principally in adult populations. Components of socioeconomic status (SES) associate with differences in brain structure and psychiatric risk across the lifespan. This study aimed to investigate the influence of SES on brain aging in childhood and adolescence, a period of rapid neurodevelopment and peak onset for many psychiatric disorders. We reanalyzed data from the Healthy Brain Network to examine the influence of SES components (occupational prestige, public assistance enrollment, parent education, and household income-to-needs ratio [INR]) on relative brain age (RBA). Analyses included 470 youth (5-17 years; 61.3% men), self-identifying as White (55%), African American (15%), Hispanic (9%), or multiracial (17.2%). Household income was 3.95 ± 2.33 (mean ± SD) times the federal poverty threshold. RBA quantified differences between chronological age and brain age using covariation patterns of morphological features and total volumes. We also examined associations between RBA and psychiatric symptoms (Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL]). Models covaried for sex, scan location, and parent psychiatric diagnoses. In a linear regression, lower RBA is associated with lower parent occupational prestige (p = 0.01), lower public assistance enrollment (p = 0.03), and more parent psychiatric diagnoses (p = 0.01), but not parent education or INR. Lower parent occupational prestige (p = 0.02) and lower RBA (p = 0.04) are associated with higher CBCL anxious/depressed scores. Our findings underscore the importance of including SES components in developmental brain research. Delayed brain aging may represent a potential biological pathway from SES to psychiatric risk.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an acutely challenging time for families and parents of young children. Periods of lockdown, and the economic and social dislocation associated with the pandemic, will have far-reaching consequences for children's education, life chances and social relationships. This article extends our understanding of these issues by drawing on extensive qualitative data from a study that investigated the work of children's centres across a major UK city during the pandemic. Empirically, the article extends research on the interconnections between parenting, the early years, and the pandemic by outlining the interlocking range of problems facing families who used children's centres. These include social isolation, domestic violence, poverty and destitution associated with unemployment and changes to Universal Credit, food insecurity and mental health. This constellation of factors reflects not only the impact of the pandemic but also enduring and entrenched patterns of inequalities. The data provides a starting point for the more conceptual and normative part of the article. Drawing on scholars such as E.O Wright and Michelle Jackson, we consider the scale and scope of the social, economic and political transformations required to build an education system that can support the needs of all.

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing and unresolved problem. Schools serving vulnerable communities often fail to meaningfully engage their students who are often exposed to significant family and environmental adversities. However, where the educational landscape is overwhelmed with neoliberal processes of accountability and testing, education generally comes to be understood as a cognitive process with little attention to the bodily or affective dimensions of learning. This paper draws on new theoretical ideas in affect and embodiment to build a case for an embodied, affective and creative pedagogy for students who live with poverty and adversity. Specifically, I report on research that investigates how two teachers utilised "Creative and Body-based" (CBL) provocations to redesign curriculum for disadvantaged students in their sites. In utilising the analysis of two narrative portraits, I highlight examples of bodily affectivity as well as affective pedagogical practices that impact on students' capacity to learn and teachers' capacity to teach. Analysis suggests that embodied and creative approaches enable new forms of communication and learner identities through bodies, senses and imaginings. Such approaches provide much needed affective conditions that 'hook' students in, encourage dialogue and help them to realise their potential as learners. Outcomes of this work signal an epistemological and pedagogical shift toward understanding bodies and creativity as agents of learning and knowledge production. By engaging with notions of a 'learning body' potential exists to challenge neoliberal practices in complex classrooms and support young people to foster stronger connections, hope and a re-inspired aspiration to learn.

Background: States are often ranked on a range of different indicators. In this study, states were ranked for each of the leading actual causes of death. Purpose: This study ranks states on how hazardous they are to the health of the citizenry in terms of the actual causes of death as identified in the seminal article by McGinnis and Foege. and later updated by Pilar et al. Methods: We ranked states for actual cause of death using multiple data sources. We also calculated an overall state ranking across all actual causes of death using the percent weightings attributable to each actual cause from the Pilar et al. study. States were ranked based on their overall score. Results: Significant differences were noted in actual cause ranking both within and across states. A different profile was found for the top and lowest ten ranking states. Discussion: Results suggest a comprehensive approach grounded in the socio-ecological model combining health promotion/education and health policy to affect change. Translation to Health Education Practice: Health professionals may use these rankings to determine methods for improving health services, programs, and behaviors in their communities.