When children require mental health services, clinicians need to conduct assessments that are developmentally sensitive and that include the child's point of view. Drawing is a popular tool that is commonly used in clinical settings. Research on drawing in experimental settings has confirmed that the opportunity to draw while talking increases the amount of verbal information that children report during an interview. The present research examined whether drawing also facilitates children's self reports during a mental health assessment. A total of 33 5-12-year-old children were asked either to draw and tell about their presenting problem or to tell only. Children who drew and told provided twice as much verbal information as children who told only. Further, interviewers in the draw and tell condition used a greater number of minimal responses than did interviewers in the tell only condition. These data have important implications for clinical practice.

No abstract

There are increasing calls for the teaching of STEM within interdisciplinary settings, as a way of engaging students in authentic tasks and innovation. However there have been concerns raised about the impact of inter-disciplinary curricula on mathematics learning particularly, with a concomitant need to conceptualise how mathematics might productively interact with other disciplines in STEM settings. This chapter explores cases of interdisciplinary STEM activity that arose as part of two major Australian STEM professional learning initiatives. It focuses on the variety of curriculum structures that occurred, the challenges for schools and teachers in implementing such structures, and teacher perceptions of their experiences including student engagement. Cases of inter-disciplinary tasks/investigations are presented to explore the different ways in which mathematics is transacted, and to develop a set of principles that should govern the inclusion of mathematics in inter-disciplinary settings. The cases show evidence of increased engagement and enthusiasm of students for STEM project and investigative work, but indicate the challenge for teachers of generating productive and coherent mathematics learning in inter-disciplinary settings. The results also point to institutional and systemic barriers to the wider take-up of interdisciplinary STEM activities.

No abstract

To obtain a child's perspective during a mental health assessment, he or she is usually interviewed. Although researchers and clinicians generally agree that it is beneficial to hear a child's account of his or her presenting issues, there is debate about whether children provide reliable or valid clinical information during these interviews. Here, we examined whether children provide clinically and diagnostically relevant information in a clinical setting. In all, 31 children aged 5-12-years undergoing mental health assessments were asked open-ended questions about their presenting problems during a semi-structured interview. We coded the information that children reported to determine whether it was clinically relevant and could be used to diagnose their problems and to formulate and plan treatment. We also coded children's information to determine whether it was congruent with the children's presenting problems and their eventual clinical diagnoses. Most of the information that children reported was clinically relevant and included information about behaviour, affect, temporal details, thoughts, people, the environment, and the child's physical experiences. The information that children reported was also clinically valid; it was congruent with the problems that were discussed (84%) and also with the eventual diagnosis that the child received after a complete assessment (74%). We conclude that children can contribute relevant, clinically useful, valid information during clinical psychological assessments.