Special Education Evaluation Considerations in a Post-pandemic Era.

While disruptions to typical education, special education, and psycho-educational service delivery practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have dissipated, their impact magnified educational systems' overreliance on evaluations to determine eligibility for special education and related services. Given that the potential for future disruptions is now ever-present, it is imperative that service providers learn from these recent experiences to improve typical policies, procedures, and practices under normal service delivery circumstances as well as to respond efficiently and effectively to any future disruptions, should they arise. To this end, this work presents several reminders and considerations for multidisciplinary teams related to assessment, testing, special education evaluations, and closely related processes exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding preferences of general educators for supporting classwide behavior.

Innovations, such as novel evidence-based practices, are not likely to diffuse to practice without explicit effort and design (Rogers, 2003). In an effort to understand how interventions should be designed to meet teacher preferences, the present study utilized a full-profile two-alternative forced-choice experiment to examine teacher preferences when selecting a classwide intervention to address student disruptive behavior. Attributes and levels for the experiment were derived in response to four characteristics from Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory. Results from 266 general education teachers of Grades K-5 indicated that nearly all theorized characteristics influenced teacher preference, with the exception of the observability of the intervention (i.e., receiving feedback from others). Specific findings of levels within attributes suggest that, for instance, short online video trainings are preferable to full-day workshops and specific details on adaptations for inclusivity are highly preferred. Given school psychologists' roles in consultation and behavior support, knowledge of teacher preferences may be utilized to support intervention uptake and more general dissemination efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Positive Effects of Digital Technology Use by Adolescents: A Scoping Review of the Literature.

This study examines the research literature published from 2012 to 2022 on the relationship between increases in adolescent consumption of digital technologies and its impact on multiple areas of development, with a focus on how adolescent immersion in an increasingly ubiquitous digital world engenders positive outcomes in terms of brain, cognitive, and social-emotional development. The literature search yielded 131 articles, 53 of which were empirical studies of the relationship between increases in consumption of digital technology and brain development, cognitive development, or social-emotional development among adolescents. Overall, these studies identify positive outcomes for adolescents who use different types of digital tech, including the internet, social media, and video games.