Recognizing the role of cultural audits in identifying a school's organizational and cultural characteristics, this article offers insight about developing school improvement plans. The multiple cultures that shape the "null curriculum" of a school, in which certain concepts and skills are left out of students' scope of…

This qualitative, narrative study explored experiences of six successful African American male high school students. Findings suggested that barriers prior to high school were negative elements in the home and community. To be successful in high school, they overcame barriers of absent fathers, disruptive homes, negative community, and peers, and…

Physical assault against school personnel is a serious problem, although not highly publicized. This workplace violence can result in debilitating injury to school employees along with major monetary costs. This article looks at legal issues that address physical assault against school personnel as well as the roles professional associations have…

The United States has experienced several mass killings by firearms in the recent past, but none has stirred the passions of the nation's citizens like the killing of innocent schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut. Debates immediately began regarding proposed solutions for making students safer in schools. One recommendation for promoting…

This paper studies the situated meaning given to a so-called "welcome" service for international students at a Catalan university. The official business of the service is to offer support with bureaucratic procedures and information about available services, including those for learning Catalan. However, the complex range of overlapping…

This commentary explores the role that academic developers (ADs) play in universities. Three case studies illustrate the roles that ADs may enact as agents of change. They reflect an emergent shift from acting as the institutional teaching and learning "'expert" (i.e. agent of change) to a more adaptive, collaborative partnership…

This paper investigates the users and uses of a centralised customer relationship management (CRM) system at a regional Australian university to improve the understanding of the staff experience of interacting with this customised technology. How and why the software is used by a cross section of university departments is explored through…

Portugal was the first country decreeing the mandatory use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Child and Youth (ICF-CY) framework for guiding special education assessment process and to base eligibility decision-making on students' functioning profiles--in contrast with traditional approaches centred on…

Background: Influenza can spread among students, teachers, and staff in school settings. Vaccination is the most effective method to prevent influenza. We determined 2012-2013 influenza vaccination coverage among school employees, assessed knowledge and attitudes regarding the vaccine, and determined factors associated with vaccine receipt.…

Objective: Stress impacts college students, faculty, and staff alike. Although meditation has been found to decrease stress, it is an underutilized strategy. This study used the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) to identify beliefs underlying university constituents' decision to meditate. Participants: N = 96 students, faculty, and staff at a…

Background: Currently, there is great enthusiasm surrounding place-based initiatives for school reform, such as the Harlem Children's Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and other initiatives that attend to the multiple contexts that influence child development. However, past efforts to bridge schools, families, and communities have been undermined…

This action research project considered whether significant improvements in child and young person behavioural and emotional mental health could be achieved using school-based play workers as opposed to qualified therapists. This was seen as being an important practice question as access to qualified play therapists was severely restricted with…

The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a "discipline gap," in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level,…

As noted in other papers in this volume, a group of health and education researchers and practitioners came together to further develop their understanding of the situation of young people, who were clients of The Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. The resultant research project, funded by the…

Deficit ways of speaking about educationally displaced young people are a dominant feature in the language educators draw on to make sense of particular young people. This language can have debilitating effects on the lives of those young people it is applied to. Despite well over 20 years of critique, deficit truths have remained dominant.…