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This chapter provides a review of the literature regarding the challenges found in leading and delivering instruction for online teaching and learning. The chapter describes how the principal of a rural high school in eastern North Carolina and her team modified Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to provide five support levels for students to help prepare them to learn in an unconventional environment. The chapter describes a study to determine the impact of the support by reviewing school and state data. The authors review summative testing, school-made survey, and Cognia Climate Survey data to share timely results indicating student and staff wellness and school academic health. In turn, practitioners and researchers may shape current practice and future studies with as much agility, flexibility, and resilience as educators have mustered during these extraordinary times.

This is the first of three articles which describe some ideas which have been developed by us during the years in which we have been engaged in social skills training. By social skills training we mean, ‘Any form of training which is designed to help people understand themselves, learn about how others see them, and make choices about their behaviour’. It therefore covers a variety of activities where, for example, trainees might engage in role play interviews, building toy brick towers whilst others analysed their behaviour, or exploring their relationships with one another in a group. The three topics covered by these articles are firstly the spectrum of approaches to social skills training, secondly, the management of feedback and finally the qualities required of the social skills trainer.

‘IT MIGHT BE SUGGESTED’, wrote George Blake in 1956, introducing the BBC radio‐drama series Annals of Scotland, ‘that Robin Jenkins is potentially the most interesting of the younger Scottish novelists’. Nor has the potential gone unrealized: in October 1969 he received a Scottish Arts Council publication award of £300 for his most recent book, The Holy Tree. On that occasion the Scotsman critic remarked that Jenkins ‘should need less introduction than one feels he does’, and this summarizes the paradox which must for long enough now have been troubling his admirers. Jenkins, besides being a prolific and highly praised novelist, is a remarkably neglected one.

Transactional analysis began about 20 years ago as a form of psychological therapy. Eric Berne, its creator, wrote that the method was aimed at improving human behaviour by making the person aware of the psychological forces which tended to influence his behaviour when he was interacting with others. The technique was simplified and has been used in management training for a number of years. Using this method, the Bank of New York, for instance, has trained about 500 managers since 1970; the American Airlines have followed suit and the United Nations Headquarters in New York has held several transactional analysis seminars as part of their regular training programmes.

For many years it has been speculated that some learning and attention problems in children are related to underlying problems in neurological functioning. In fact, the IDEA (1997) definition of learning disabilities utilizes terminology that specifically includes neurological processes and conditions: Specific learning disabilities means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.This chapter begins with a review of the role of neuroimaging in advancing an understanding of the basis and nature of learning and attention problems. The ever-increasing sophistication of neurodiagnostic technology has made it possible to obtain more precise information about neuroanatomical and neurophysiological bases of behavior, including learning and attention. Advances in technology have greatly increased the ability to study the functioning of the brain during the performance of relatively complex mental activities. With this advanced technology it is becoming increasingly possible to visualize normal and abnormal brain functioning, including important components of basic academic skills. The chapter includes a discussion of the recent evidence about the neurological basis of learning and attention problems.

This paper aims to study the specific factors causing suburban-dwelling elderly American women to patronize different soup kitchens in Pennsylvania and investigate how non-profit and government agencies could better meet the needs of this food-insecure population, to fill a significant gap in the growing literature on food insecurity in high-income countries.

The authors conducted observational visits and structured interviews with over 200 patrons and staff of soup kitchens in two counties in the US state of Pennsylvania over visits spanning two years.

Elderly American women have very distinct soup kitchen needs and usage patters that differ from other patrons in eight key ways the authors identify. From these, the authors identify four central themes that food assistance reform in the US must address to improve the wellbeing of this subpopulation.

The authors find that significant structural changes of the US food relief system must be made to better meet the needs of food-insecure elderly American women.

Soup kitchens should begin to offer information about federal programs, group transportation and other resources tailored to elderly women at soup kitchens to significantly improve their wellbeing, and help relieve the burden born by US non-profit food assistance organizations.

No studies to date have focused on the soup kitchen use of this specific population, whose needs, living circumstances, attitudes toward charity and socioeconomic realities differ significantly from other subpopulations of soup kitchen patrons.