Primary school teachers’ knowledge and misperceptions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Putting inclusive education into practice and within diverse classrooms, teachers have to support and teach according to a variety of needs and preferences of learners, among them learners with ADHD. Teachers are seen as some of the most valuable sources of information with regard to referral and diagnosis of this disorder. They are also responsible for creating an environment that is conducive to academic, social and emotional success for children with ADHD. However, since there is some doubt as to whether teachers have the appropriate knowledge of ADHD to fulfill this important role, we aimed at assessing the knowledge and misperceptions of primary school teachers in towns on the periphery of the Cape Town Metropole. A quantitative study using a survey was conducted. The measuring scale used was the KADDS (Knowledge of Attention Deficit Disorders Scale), which measures teachers’ knowledge and misperceptions in three specific areas: symptoms/diagnosis of ADHD, general knowledge about the nature, causes and outcome of ADHD and possible interventions with regard to ADHD. The data were statistically analysed. Overall knowledge of ADHD was poor. The results suggest that teachers are most knowledgeable about symptoms/diagnosis, scoring lower on treatment and general knowledge subscales.Keywords: ADHD; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; inclusive education; primary school teachers; teacher training; teachin

Theoretical and Numerical Analysis of an Optimal Execution Problem with Uncertain Market Impact

This paper is a continuation of Ishitani and Kato (2015), in which we derived a continuous-time value function corresponding to an optimal execution problem with uncertain market impact as the limit of a discrete-time value function. Here, we investigate some properties of the derived value function. In particular, we show that the function is continuous and has the semigroup property, which is strongly related to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman quasi-variational inequality. Moreover, we show that noise in market impact causes risk-neutral assessment to underestimate the impact cost. We also study typical examples under a log-linear/quadratic market impact function with Gamma-distributed noise.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures. Continuation of the paper arXiv:1301.648

Effective practices of international volunteering for health : perspectives from partner organizations

Abstract: The demand for international volunteer experiences to promote global health and nutrition is increasing and numerous studies have documented the experiences of the international volunteers who travel abroad; however, little is known about effective practices from the perspective of partner organizations. This study aims to understand how variables such as the skill-level of volunteers, the duration of service, cultural and language training, and other key variables affect partner organizations’ perceptions of volunteer effectiveness at promoting healthcare and nutrition..

Stock Market Co-Movement and Exchange Rate Flexibility: Experience of the Republic of Korea

This paper argues that for countries where equity investments dominate cross-border capital flows, the proper framework for analyzing the role of a flexible exchange rate system as a buffer against external shocks is the uncovered stock return parity condition, rather than the uncovered interest parity condition. Estimation of the stock return parity condition shows that it fails to hold in the Republic of Korea largely because of co-movement in the Republic of Korea and United States stock markets. Three global factors are largely responsible for the co-movement: global financial integration, which may be generating a global financial cycle; acceptance of insensitivity of exchange risk by global equity investors; and domestic investors imitating the trading behavior of foreign equity investors

Trading Efficiency of Fund Families: Impact on Fund Performance and Investment Behavior

Mutual funds are part of larger organizations, which make decisions with consequences for all their member funds. This study examines how the efficiency of trading desks operated by fund families affects the performance and trading of affiliated funds. We introduce a novel approach to measure the efficiency of trading desks, which allows for comparisons across families with different investable universes. By operating efficient trading desks, which reduce trading costs, fund families improve the performance of their funds significantly. Furthermore, the lower trading costs resulting from more efficient trading desks enable mutual funds to trade more and hold less liquid portfolios