OBJECTIVES:To investigate whether high-lethality suicide attempters align to the demographic and clinical features observed in completed suicide in the national and international literature, and whether low-lethality attempters more closely align with the clinical profile of non-attempter ideators. METHODS:A retrospective chart review of adult suicide ideators and attempters presenting to an urban tertiary care hospital was performed. Suicide ideators (n = 50) and attempters (n = 50) were coded for variables including demographics and clinical characteristics (e.g. psychiatric diagnosis and previous suicide attempt). Method and lethality of suicide attempt were coded using the medical Lethality Rating Scale. RESULTS:High-lethality attempters were more likely to be younger in age than low-lethality attempters (p = 0.026) and ideators (p = 0.041). The lethality scores of suicide attempts were significantly inversely correlated with age (p = 0.017). CONCLUSIONS:Our study adds to the small but increasing body of literature investigating the characteristics of high-lethality suicide attempters and suggests younger adult age is a risk factor for a high-lethality attempt. Further understanding of this unique group would be aided by widespread agreement on the definition of a high-lethality suicide attempt and longitudinal studies of this cohort.

This case study explores the process of putting on a retreat for programme development purposes. It starts by considering the often targeted nature of Programme Leadership development and how this does not always include consideration for the programme team. The rationale and approach to the retreat are explored first before moving on to consider the event itself. The piece closes with reflective thoughts on the development of such activities including the importance of including opportunities for relationship building and creating a participant-centred space.

We describe the adaptation of services to allow flexible and practical responses to the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) public health crisis by four Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (CLP) services; Galway University Hospital (GUH), Beaumont Hospital, University Hospital Waterford and St Vincent's University Hospital (SVUH) CLP services. This article also illustrates close collaboration with community adult mental health services and Emergency Department (ED) colleagues to implement effective community diversion pathways and develop safe, effective patient assessment pathways within the EDs. It highlights the high levels of activity within each of the CLP services, while also signposting that many of the rapidly implemented changes to our practice may herald improvements to mental health patient care delivery in the post-COVID-19 world, if our psychiatry services receive appropriate resources.

There is a significant number of adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) who are struggling in school.Tutoring programs are being implemented to help ELLs.This case study examines three practices tutors used when working with adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) in one-on-one sessions.The practices used, modeling, translation, and partnership proved to effectively support academic progress within the session.The research work contributes significantly to the work of tutors and educators who work with struggling ELLs.

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an interventionQuality English and Science Teaching 2designed to help English language learners (ELLs) and their English proficient classmates develop academic language in science, as required by the Common Core State Standards. The intervention consisted of supplementary instructional materials and professional development. Participants included 1,309 students, of whom 353 were ELLs. Sixty sections taught by 15 teachers in seven middle schools were randomized within teacher to the intervention or the control condition. Treatment effects were tested separately for academic language and science knowledge. For the whole group, results indicated posttest differences favoring the treatment group sections were statistically significant for academic language and science. For ELLs however, posttest differences favored the treatment group for academic language only. Follow-up analyses investigating implementation found that treatment fidelity was related to gains in both academic language and science knowledge for the group as a whole and for ELLs. Effect sizes suggest the intervention was promising in promoting the academic language in science of both ELLs and their English proficient classmates.

PurposeThis study aims to utilize two key psychoanalytical concepts – individuation and congruence – in order to analyze individual responses to organizational change and to propose a tentative framework for considering psychoanalytical dynamics when organizational change is proposed, or underway.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyzed 146 responses to an open‐ended survey, which focused on respondents' attitudes to the introduction of learning technology in a higher educational context. The authors asked organizational members to share their views about the proposed organizational change, and clustered these anonymous responses into meaningful categories, based on the psychoanalytically relevant notions of congruence and individuation.FindingsAs well as generating a proposed list of archetypes associated with individual responses to organizational change, the authors emphasize how strongly their own tentatively generated categories align with the notion of authentic individuation as an important aspect of motivated organizational behavior.Originality/valueThis tool could provide a useful analytical backdrop for organizational change in general, and it could help to focus organizational attention on the importance of a psychoanalytically informed discussion on change by paying attention to privately held views, and partially articulated feelings about change.

First-year university students are a diverse group of individuals with various abilities and needs. Failure of the university and its teaching faculty to meet the needs of first-year students may result in abandonment of the pursuit of a degree. This project informs instructors about the practices that strengthen a learning-centred approach and maximize inclusion of first-year students. The principles and teaching methods of Universal Instructional Design are learner-centred and have shown to improve academic achievement and benefit the campus community. Thus, it is suggested that the principles of this method be applied uniformly across university-level instruction.

In the dynamic global economy that exists today the operation and structure of organisations have had to adapt to the reality of the information revolution which has taken place. This has been the case within the software industry where global software development (GSD) has become a popular strategy and software development has become a globally sourced commodity. Given the requirement for graduates to operate in this type of environment, we as educators considered how our teaching methods could be developed and enhanced to instil GSD competencies within our graduates. We provided students with the opportunity to take part in a learning experience that transcended geographical and institutional boundaries, giving them first-hand experience of working within globally distributed software teams. Two separate projects were undertaken. One was with Siemens Corporate Research which was part of a larger project. The focus of this project was the shadowing of the development of an actual geographically distributed software product. The second project was carried out in collaboration with Ball State University, and the focus of this endeavour was virtual team software testing. Extensive qualitative research was undertaken on the data provided by the students. We identified three specific forms of learning which had taken place: (1) pedagogical, (2) pragmatic, and (3) the achievement of specific globally distributed competencies. Our findings would confirm that mimicking real-work settings creates the possibility of giving rise to the range of learning benefits that are associated with truly problem-based learning environments.

Despite the pressure to write and to publish in academia, many faculty do not. This is not because of the absence of their potential contribution to knowledge and thinking. Many of them have been silenced, or are never given a chance to find their academic voices, because the academic writing process is often experienced as destructive, mysterious, daunting and unsupported (e.g. Boice & Jones, 1984; Murray & Moore, 2006). This paper describes the features and principles of writers' retreats, a professional development intervention for academics that is being utilised increasingly frequently in academic environments to provide writing-related support. It provides evidence showing that the effects are potentially very positive both in the immediate and in the longer term. We briefly explain that writers' retreats are encountered and evaluated differently by men and women academics, with women seeming to derive clearer benefits from the experience. The longer-term effects of writers' retreats on academics are explored in some detail and we analyse reflective evidence from previous participants. Overall the evidence suggests that retreats are useful mechanisms for helping to increase written academic output and for supporting career development, particularly for women academics. Writers' retreats involve bringing a group of academic faculty and/ or graduate students away from their normal environments to help them work on their academic writing for several days. The retreats that we have organized are typically between three and five days' duration. During the retreat time, participants live, work and write in the same residential spaces, away from their work and home contexts. Retreats are designed to provide an environment in which participants can develop and progress their academic writing skills and tasks. There seems to be a growing trend among some universities to offer these retreats as an optional part of faculty professional development opportunities (Antoniou & Moriarty, 2008). It has already been argued that offering writers' retreats can help academics to gain confidence, to feel more positively orientated towards writing and to develop more constructive writing strategies than would be likely without such support (e.g. Grant and Knowles, 2000; Moore, 2003). Furthermore, it seems clear, based on feedback received from many who have attended retreats, that the residential, off-campus, live-in nature of the experience affords development opportunities that are difficult to provide at on-campus workshops or on other writing development programmes, notwithstanding how useful such alternatives may be (Murray and Moore, 2006). The almost unanimously positive testimonials typically received from retreat participants in our universities are not just statements of the potential benefits of retreats. They also indicate that something fundamental may be amiss in many academic environments. Our own experiences with running retreats often cause us to be struck by evaluative statements by participants who typically say things like: ' I wish I had had an experience like this early in my career' or 'if only I had gone on a retreat BEFORE doing my PhD ' or Tve never been able to write so much, so well, in such a short space of time'. We suspect that such reactions are not primarily or exclusively related to the skills of facilitators. Rather they hint at the absence of a writing supportive dynamic within participants' own work contexts. Given that academic writing is an activity that should arguably be as close to the heart of academic life as research and teaching, such an absence provides a continued rationale for exploring the potential and impact of writing-supportive interventions. Criticial Questions and Perspectives on the Provision of Writers' Retreats Notwithstanding such assertions, the process of offering and running writers' retreats is not without its critics. As facilitators and champions of the retreat concept, we have often been asked whether this initiative contains any real benefits to academics or their organisations. …

Low retention rates in third-level computing courses, despite continuing research into new and improved computer teaching methods, present a worrying concern. For some computing students learning programming is intimidating, giving rise to lack of confidence and anxiety. The noncognitive domain of anxiety with regard to learning computer programming is investigated in this paper and programming anxiety, a constituent component of computer anxiety, is defined. The paper describes a longitudinal research study that has been conducted, which investigates the variance of anxiety amongst undergraduate computing students, with specific emphasis upon their learning programming during their first year in higher education.

This article describes and analyses a specific mechanism, the writing consultation, designed to help academics to prioritise, reconceptualise and improve their writing practices. It makes the case for its potential to stimulate consideration of writing practices and motivations, a possible precondition for creating time for writing in academic contexts. This article proposes that the process of revealing and developing writing practices in a specific form of regular, structured, collegial discussion has potential to prompt academics to reconceptualise their writing practices and, perhaps crucially, to find different ways to write. In addition, it demonstrates, in a new way, how recognised behaviour change strategies might be embedded in the academic writing process. The writing consultation draws on principles established in other contexts. This article makes the case for adapting them to the context of academic writing, in order to support and improve academic writing output.

The delivery of ‘quality’ in transfusion medicine is addressed by considering how safe and efficacious blood, blood components, reagents, and services can be provided through the application of an effective quality assurance management system. The creation of such a system in the UK is reviewed through the development of the UK Guide to Good Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Practice from 1971 to the present. It provides simple practical guidance and standards. The UK experience shows how quality assurance has evolved, it is not offered as a model to be followed. The UK approach merged with that of the European Union from the early 1990s. The use of such a quality management system to support the application of licensing and accreditation standards relevant to the work of a modern Blood Service is considered, as are processes to learn about the effective and efficacious use of blood and blood components.