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Research news in brief
Interdisciplinary team works to improve mental health care for people with aphasia
A team of researchers from Penn State’s colleges of Health and Human Development and Education recently completed a pilot program funded by a grant from the Schreyer Institute on Teaching Excellence.
Liza Conyers, professor of education (rehabilitation and human services), and Kristen Nadermann, assistant teaching professor of education (counselor education) and Herr Clinic coordinator, are part of the group that developed the training program, “Preparing clinical students to meet the unique counseling needs of individuals with aphasia.” The program was the first step of an ambitious plan to train undergraduate students, graduate students, practicing speechlanguage pathologists and practicing clinical rehabilitation and mental health counselors about the mental health concerns of individuals with aphasia, a condition that impairs people’s abilities to communicate.
Aphasia occurs when brain injury — most commonly due to a stroke — limits a person’s ability to understand or produce speech or written language. Despite being a little-recognized condition, aphasia affects twice as many people as Parkinson’s disease. The communication deficits resulting from aphasia lead to problems throughout myriad aspects of people’s lives, including mental health.
Learn more at https://bit.ly/aphasia_mental_health on Penn State News.
Liza Conyers
Kristen Nadermann
$4 million grant aims to prevent special education teacher burnout
Special education teachers are at heightened risk for stress and burnout, which negatively impacts their effectiveness and wellbeing. With a new five-year, $4 million grant from the Institute of Educational Sciences, Penn State and Georgia State University researchers are teaming up with school districts in Georgia to develop and test an adaptation of the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) professional development program to support special education teachers.
Jennifer Frank, associate professor of education, is primary investigator on the project, which also involves Deb Schussler, associate professor of education.
More than 220 special education teachers in elementary schools in the metropolitan Atlanta area will participate in a study involving three days of CARE training to practice skills such as mindfulness, caring and compassion for themselves and others, and managing classroom stress. They also will participate in monthly virtual check-in meetings during the school year. In addition to measuring teacher, student and classroom outcomes, the study will determine the cost-effectiveness of the CARE program in a special education setting. Frank suggested that reducing burnout could lead to more special education teachers staying in the profession, benefiting both students and the school system.
Learn more at https://bit.ly/CARE_grant on Penn State News.
Jennifer Frank
Deb Schussler
Framework could help teachers personalize professional learning
In a study recently published in Educational Technology Research and Development, Penn State researchers propose the conceptual framework of digital badging system components as cultural tools — which serve to mediate interactions between people and their goals — that allows learners to personalize their professional development by making decisions about what they want to learn and when.
Chris Gamrat, instructional designer in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology and lead author of the study, and Heather Toomey Zimmerman, professor of education, examined how teachers planned and navigated various learning modules, and collected data on their progress, as well as their intended and completed professional activities. The researchers also found that teachers’ navigation of the digital badging system differed from the intended design in terms of how they selected and completed learning activities.
The findings could inform design considerations for independent teacher professional development systems, making activity choice more flexible and encouraging learners to complete more professional learning activities. The work also encourages researchers to use sociocultural learning theory to consider the design of digital badges and how they can be used for personalized learning.
Learn more at https://bit.ly/learning_framework on Penn State News.
