Editorial

Welcome to issue 25 (2) of the journal. These are worrying times. I write at a moment when many of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people in the country find themselves in very challenging circumstances, often without access to the support that they desperately need.

This issue does not speak to the Covid-19 issues, these issues will appear in the publication in the coming months.

In paper one Geraldine Scanlon, Ciara McEnteggart, and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes explore one aspect of the implications of the attitudes of teachers towards pupils. They set out to measure the implicit attitudes of teachers in training (N = 20), primary school teachers (N = 20), and post-primary teachers (N = 20) and a group of controls (N = 20) towards pupils with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD), versus the implicit attitudes of primary school teachers (N = 20) and post-primary teachers (N = 20) towards typically-developing pupils. They suggest that teachers possessed greater negative implicit and explicit attitudes towards pupils with EBD, when compared to typically-developing pupils. Doubtless this issue is of greater significance when teachers are highly stressed, as many of them will be when schools fully reopen.

In the second paper John McMullen, Sharon Jones, Rachel Campbell, Judith McLaughlin, Barbara McDade, Patricia O’Lynn, and Catherine Glen discuss mental health and wellbeing among newcomer pupils in Northern Irish schools. They draw on data from a study commissioned by The Education Authority (NI) that investigated the mental health needs of newcomer pupils in schools in NI according to newcomer pupils themselves, as well as school staff and youth workers who support them, and to make recommendations for future development. Their results suggest that, while many newcomer pupils have adapted well and display average levels of emotional well-being, many have experienced a range of adversities that may negatively impact mental health. They raise some important suggestions for practice.

Marie Galle-Tessonneau and David Heyne engage with an issue that is receiving an increasing amount of attention: the range of forms and causes of school refusal. In the third paper they discuss the development of a descriptive model of school refusal and its application in the production of a questionnaire for identifying manifestations of school refusal (the SChool REfusal EvaluatioN – SCREEN). The results of the implementation of the survey device support the common notion that school refusal manifestations are not limited to absence from the school context, and are likely to occur outside this environment.

Alicia Blanco-Bayo writes about the interpretation of Behaviour Classification Tables and Positive Behaviour Support models. In this, the fourth paper in the issue, she discusses the strengths and limitations of both and again makes recommendations for practice

In paper five Bairbre Teirnan, Dolores McDonagh, and Ann Marie Casserly discuss replacing care support with teaching provision for students with emotional disturbance/behavioural disorder in Irish post-primary schools. Importantly, they highlight the importance of their finding that schools require effective guidance and support, particularly in terms of planning and implementing bio-psychosocial approaches. Furthermore, a significant gap in their findings was the lack of evidence of multi-disciplinary interventions as reported by the participants.

In the sixth and final paper Adeela Ahmed Shafi, Sian Templeton, Tristan Middleton, Richard Millican, Paul Vare, Rebecca Pritchard, and Jenny Hatley discuss a dynamic interactive model of resilience (DIMoR) for education and learning contexts. They argue that this model recognises individual agency and its complex reciprocal interactions both with other individuals but also with the wider system within which the individual is situated. They offer a means of understanding resilience in a range of educational contexts.

I hope you all remain healthy and safe in the challenging times ahead.