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Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is distinguishable from suicide attempts (SAs) on a number of psychological and motivational factors. However, in corrective services settings, NSSI and SA are not clearly distinguished in assessment impacting on intervention. The purpose of this paper is to examine if any attributes differentiate lifetime history of SA+NSSI, NSSI and SA presentations in inmates who had recently been assessed in custody by a risk intervention team.

A comprehensive clinical assessment and file review was conducted with 87 male inmates (including a no self-injury control group) in two large correctional centres in New South Wales, Australia, to determine if three self-injury groups differ from the control group and if the three self-injury groups differ from each other across a range of static, trait, environmental and clinical characteristics.

The SA+NSSI group was most different from the control group (27/59 variables), and from the SA group (10/59 variables), predominantly across trait and clinical correlates. The SA group was least different from the control group (2/59 variables: suicide ideation, childhood physical abuse).

It was found that the presence of SA+NSSI history is an indicator of increased psychopathology. A history of SA only appears not readily associated with psychopathology. The self-injury subgroups reflected different clinical profiles with implications for risk assessment and treatment planning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictors of self-harm in male inmates.

Male inmates with and without a background of self-harm (i.e. suicidal and non-suicidal) were compared across two distal (static and trait) and two proximal (environmental and current/state psychological) domains. The factors from the four domains which may accurately classify self-harm history were also examined.

The two groups were significantly different across the four domains, particularly on psychological characteristics. The self-harm group was associated with childhood trauma, violent offences, institutional misconducts and lower levels of social support significantly more than the non-self-harm group. Being single, childhood abuse, impulsivity, antisocial personality disorder and global psychopathology were the five key predictors that contributed to 87.4 per cent of all cases being correctly classified.

The high levels of psychiatric morbidity and childhood trauma in the self-harm group indicated a need for interventions that address emotional and interpersonal difficulties and optimization of adaptive coping skills. Also, interventions may require a focus on the behavioural functions.

A novel approach was taken to the grouping of the variables. A comprehensive range of variables, was assessed simultaneously, including some not previously considered indicators, and in an understudied population, Australian male inmates. The lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness and generalized anxiety disorder which distinguished the self-harm and non-self-harm group, were newly identified for self-harm.

By introducing three specialized web portals, the Department for Work and Pensions facilitated a skills cascade, which transformed the HR department and gave line managers responsibility for the training needs of their teams. Maxine Clark, DWP and Clare Roberts, Academee explain how changes were made.

Describes how HR at the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) became leaner, fitter and more focused after the department was required to reduce employee numbers from 131,000 in 2003 to 101,000 in 2008, with a further 10,000 being moved to front‐line services.

Explains that the 50,000 line managers in the businesses were required to be more involved with HR issues and decisions, and required the skills and information to be able to do this effectively. A need to review the overall learning and development (L&D) strategy to meet this scale of change became evident. Traditional classroom‐based training methods would not enable the DWP to achieve what was required flexibly, efficiently or cost‐effectively.

Shows how the DWP embraced technology to deliver self‐managed learning to 50,000 line managers, 120 HR business partners and 2,500 L&D specialists. The organization dramatically changed HR delivery in four months (from brief to launch date) for 50,000 line manager and eight months for the 2,500 strong L&D community. DWP expanded its skill set by sharing this vision and working with an external partner that could help it to deliver what it wanted, rather than what its internal tools allowed. With Academee's knowledge and expertise in learning portals, the DWP delivered the project on time and to budget.

Investing in technology to streamline and standardize L&D across three core areas, along with breaking programmes down into modules for flexible learning, has enabled the L&D offering to be tailored to each individual.

Gives a clear exposition of the benefits for HR and for the organization as a whole.

Barton and Simko argue that the balance sheet information would serve as a constraint on accrual‐based earnings management. This paper aims to extend their argument by examining whether the balance sheet constraint increases managers' propensity to use either downward forecast guidance or real earnings management as a substitute mechanism to avoid earnings surprises.

Following Barton and Simko, the paper uses the beginning balance of net operating assets relative to sales as a proxy for the balance sheet constraint. The argument is that because of the articulation between the income statement and the balance sheet, previous accounting choices that increase earnings will also increase net assets and therefore the level of net assets reflects the extent of previous accrual management. Models from Matsumoto and Bartov et al. are used to measure forecast guidance. Following Rochowdhury and Cohen et al., a firm's abnormal level of production costs and discretionary expenditures are used as proxies of real earnings management. The empirical analysis is conducted based on the 1996‐2006 annual data for a sample of nonfinancial, nonregulated firms.

The paper finds that firms with higher level of beginning net operating assets relative to sales are more likely to guide analysts' earnings forecasts downward, and more likely to engage in real earnings management in terms of abnormal increases in production costs and abnormal reductions in discretionary expenditures.

Overall, the paper's evidence suggests that managers turn to real earnings management or downward forecast guidance as a substitute mechanism to avoid negative earnings surprises when their ability to manipulate accruals upward is constrained by the extent to which net assets are already overstated in the balance sheet.

This study adds to prior literature that examines how managers trade off different mechanisms used to meet or beat analysts' earnings expectations. It also contributes to the extant literature by providing further insights on the role of balance sheet information in the process of managing earnings and/or earnings surprises.

Museum visits provide opportunities for students to learn content in engaging and interactive ways. In social studies, museums may be spaces where students can increase their historical and civic understanding through exposure to artifacts and narratives unavailable in classrooms. Yet, research suggests teachers are insufficiently prepared to integrate museum visits into classroom curriculum effectively. In this project, the instructors of the two secondary social studies methods course sections organized a visit to a natural history museum. The instructors modeled pre- and post-visit lesson activities during class and provided a guide for pre-service teachers to complete during their museum visit. While pre-service teachers reported they better understood the importance of connecting museum visits to classroom curriculum, they also raised questions about how methods course faculty might introduce pre-service teachers to museum visits. This article discusses what was learned during the project, as well as approaches social studies methods course instructors might reflect upon when considering museum visits as a component of social studies teacher education.

This article presents the findings of a study that sought to gain an insight into social studies preservice teachers’ reported reasons for selecting a primary source document they believe will be at the heart of their curriculum. Their selections included founding documents, historical speeches, inspirational sources, as well as personal mementos. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for social studies teacher education.

The emphasis on primary sources and disciplinary literacy skills in not only the Common Core State Standards, but other national curricula (i.e. College Board exams and the NCSS C3 Framework) requires that teachers continue to find ways to integrate these skills into their elementary and secondary classrooms. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper introduces a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates primary source reading skills and the arts to cultivate student literacy and creativity though the writing of found poems.

Found poetry activities based on social studies primary sources allow students to practice literacy skills, engage more deeply with social studies content, and also may encourage the development of historical empathy toward the experiences and perspectives of distant peoples and events.

After reading and analyzing primary sources, students can create and present their found poems in diverse formats which allows for student expression and creativity in the classroom. Teachers can easily modify found poetry activities to meet the needs of diverse learners.

This paper fulfills the identified need to increase literacy skills and incorporate more student participation in the classroom. Using the strategy of student-inspired found poems, primary sources become more tangible and meaningful to students. Found poems offer yet another way to integrate the arts into social studies education.

There is a tacit understanding among social studies teachers and educators that incorporating primary source documents in planning and teaching is desirable for many reasons, most prominent among them the ways in which it challenges students to think at higher levels. This study is a descriptive study of public school teachers’ uses of primary source documents in social studies planning, in which we review lesson activities of various grade level teachers to evaluate their use of primary documents for higher order cognitive purposes. Given the salient theme of critical thinking in the literature, we established a baseline continuum of uses that served as our framework for evaluating these activities. We asked the following questions: When history teachers incorporate the use of primary source documents in their planning, to what degree do they promote development of higher level critical thinking? What might a planned activity look like when they do? We found that the majority of the activities examined here employ primary source documents for lower order purposes but held the promise of easy transition to higher order uses.