This article summarizes the rationale for multi-agency working when assessing children and young people with suspected neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental coordination disorder and autistic spectrum disorders. Details of referral pathways that have been drawn up for each separate disorder are given and the process through which multi-agency agreement was reached is described. Key features thought to be common to all three pathways are discussed and factors thought to have contributed to successful multi-agency working highlighted. The work is described in the context of existing national policy documents in the UK.

Given the linguistically diverse instructor and student populations at Canadian universities, mutually comprehensible oral language may not be a given. Indeed, both instructors who are non-native speakers of the language of instruction (NNSLIs) and students have acknowledged oral communication challenges. Little is known, though, about how the NNSLI population perceives its ability to teach in a second language (L2). This paper presents results pertaining to one part of a larger, exploratory study that investigated how NNSLI instructors perceive their ability to teach in their L2. Teachers’ perceptions of themselves as able classroom teachers, referred to as teachers’ sense of efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero, 2005), are important for their potential positive impact on student learning. To examine how NNSLIs perceive their language ability to shape their classroom teaching, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with participants (n = 14) from English- and French-medium Canadian universities. Thematic analyses of the interview data revealed that self-perceptions of language ability influence instructional strategy choices. In addition, NNSLIs described going to great lengths to prepare their language for teaching and emphasized that this extra layer of teaching preparation is especially time-consuming. Results and implications are discussed.

Professional development offerings for current and aspiring educational developers can be sparse and neither fully contextually appropriate nor personally relevant given the range of experiences people bring to the field. In the absence of suitable professionalization programs, we created a self-defined professional development approach to support us in our educational developer work. Using a framework for reflective writing, we describe our approach and the strategies we implemented, and we consider at a “meta” level what contributes to the viability or success of our self-defined professional development plan. Measures for assessing success were framed using utilization-focused evaluation. We outline implications for future practice and propose that a self-defined approach to professional development could be adopted and adapted by other current and aspiring educational developers.

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