980 research outputs found
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Workforce preparation for delivery of nurturing care in low and middle-income countries: Expert consensus on critical multisectoral training needs
No full textBackground
Services to support nurturing care through early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries are hampered by significant workforce challenges. The global early childhood workforce is both diverse and complex, and it supports the delivery of a wide range of services in extremely diverse geographical and social settings. In the context of contemporary global goals for the universal provision of quality early childhood provision, there is an urgent need to build appropriate platforms for strengthening and supporting this workforce. However, the evidence base to support this work is severely limited.
Methods
To contribute to evidence on how to strengthen the ECD workforce in low- and middle-income countries, this study used a Delphi methodology involving three rounds of data collection with 14 global experts, to reach consensus on the most critical training needs of three key early childhood workforce groups: (i) health; (ii) community-based paraprofessionals, and (iii) educational professionals working across ECD programmes.
Results
The study identified a comprehensive set of shared, as well as distinct, training needs across the three groups. Shared training needs include the following: (i) nurturing dispositions that facilitate work with children and families in complex settings; (ii) knowledge and skills to support responsive, adaptable delivery of ECD programmes; and (iii) systems for ECD training and professional pathways that prioritise ongoing mentoring and support.
Conclusions
The study's detailed findings help to address a critical gap in the evidence on training needs for ECD workers in low-resource contexts. They provide insights into how to strengthen content, systems, and methods of training to support intersectoral ECD work in resource-constrained contexts
Through the Eyes of Retired Clergy: The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Future for the Church of England
No full textData from the Coronavirus, Church & You Survey indicated that retired clergy were feeling less comfortable with the Church’s responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and more disaffected from the institutional Church. The subsequent project, Through the eyes of retired clergy, listened in greater depth to how retired clergy felt about the ways in which the Church had responded to the pandemic and to how they saw the future for the Church. In terms of the Church’s response to the pandemic, retired clergy were not only realistic and affirming, but also engaged and critical. In terms of the future for the church, retired clergy were realistic and pessimistic. The general view was that the pandemic had accelerated the effect of trends evident before the pandemic. Some would argue that, while the pandemic could have reinforced the visibility of the Church in the local community, such opportunities were largely missed
Testing the contact hypothesis in interfaith encounters: personal friendships with sikhs countering anti-sikh attitudes?
No full textDrawing on data provided by 5,811 students from schools in England, Wales, and London who self-identified as either ‘no religion’ or as Christian, this study explored the effect of the contact hypothesis (having friends who are Sikhs) on scores recorded on the five-item Scale of Anti-Sikh Attitude (SASA), after controlling for type of school (with or without a religious character), location (England, Wales, and London), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) and religious factors (self-assigned affiliation as Christian, worship attendance, and belief in God). The data demonstrated the positive effect of having friends who are Sikhs on lowering anti-Sikh attitudes
Towards a typology of secondary school subject departments
No full textSubject departments are an increasingly important unit of analysis for research on schools and beginning teachers’ experiences. By analysing a practice-based typology of eight departmental types through an exploratory factor analysis of questionnaires completed by beginning teachers (n=55), we refined the typology to four (hierarchical; open; self-promoting; divisive). Further exploration of this refined typology, through in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of six beginning teachers, allows us to illustrate the departmental types in relation to their experiences. These findings highlight some of the ways in which new regimes of accountability and corporatisation are reshaping the ways in which departmental cultures are constructed and enacted. The beginning teachers in this study describe their responses and adaptations to their placement departments in ways that highlight opportunities for ITE partnerships to better anticipate and prepare beginning teachers for the departmentalised nature of their experiences
Necropolitical Ecologies: Creative Articulations of Nature’s Death-Work in the Borderzone
No full textIn recent years, the increased incidence of migrant deaths along borders has transformed these zones into necropolitical spaces in which migrant lives are expendable in the pursuit of border “security.” At the borders of Europe, policies of “minimal assistance” leave migrants vulnerable to death by exposure due to the unpredictable currents of the Mediterranean, as occurred in the tragic case of the “Left-to-Die Boat” in 2011. In such instances, migrants are transformed into Agamben’s homo sacer; they are at once hyper-visible to the surveillant eyes of the law and are yet abandoned, “exposed,” in the “state of exception.” What is unique in the case of migrants who die at sea is how states and supra-states like the EU co-opt nature into carrying out their death-work in borderzones, producing what I call “necropolitical ecologies.” Armin Greder’s graphic narrative Mediterranean (2017) and Caroline Bergvall’s multi-disciplinary work of poetry Drift (2014) both elegize migrant deaths in the Mediterranean while demonstrating the sea’s presence as “vibrant matter” in the story of irregular migration. They each deploy unique formal strategies to represent the complex human/non-human entanglements of this death seascape. While Greder’s wordless visuals “excavate” the bodies that nature conceals from our eyes, Bergvall maximizes the aural qualities of language to covey the “drifting” effects of the water itself. As ecocritical texts, both works are engaged in a wider project of critiquing the colonial and capitalist exploitation of the non-human world. Through their portrayals of the necropolitical ecology of the Mediterranean, they suggest continuities between the violence transmitted to migrants in borderzones and that perpetuated on the natural environment around the world
Mid-day supervisors in English primary schools: a role theory perspective
No full textThis paper presents the findings of a multi-site case study focused on the role of mid-day supervisors in English primary schools. Ethnographic approaches were employed to gain an understanding of the role and how this is experienced by those who undertake it. This included a fully
participatory phase where the researcher inhabited the role of a mid-day supervisor. Ethnographic interviews were also conducted. The research found that role strain, caused by a range of factors, as well as whether the role was legitimised or marginalised, had a significant
impact on how the role was enacted and experienced by mid-day supervisors
The future is unwritten: Joe Strummer, prophetic pedagogy and complexity as resistance
No full textJoe Strummer’s status as a punk icon is both legendry and contested. As lyricist and frontman of The Clash, Strummer can be seen as a controversial figure, a public schoolboy punk, with an early affection for folk and rock, fronting a punk rock band incorporating reggae, dub, funk, ska and rockabilly might be seen to lack true punk credentials.
Strummer’s views on education will be explored by reference to his lyrics and recorded interviews. Strummer’s contention that school ‘teaches you to be thick’ will be examined in the context of the current English Education system.
It will be argued that a Strummer infused punk pedagogy should be advocated in opposition to current ‘what works’ approaches to education research and pedagogy. Drawing on the work of Gert Biesta a pedagogy of emergence, set within a renewed understanding of the purposes of education will be advocated.
Such a pedagogy enables education to increasingly be viewed as a site of creative resistance. A resistance that Gert Biesta characterises as the middle ground between self-destruction and world-destruction. A middle ground in which dialogue comes to be more highly valued; an educational ‘campfire community’. Education and pedagogical theory must finally acknowledge that the future is unwritten
Exploring the factor structure of the Adolescent Form of the Francis Psychological Type and Emotional Temperament Scales (FPTETSA) among Canadian Baptist youth: full form and short form
No full textThe Francis Psychological Type and Emotional Temperament Scales (FPTETS) operationalise the four components of the psychological-type model of personality alongside the fifth component of emotional temperament. The five ten-item scales have been employed in research as continuous variables that explain individual differences in a wide range of religious beliefs and attitudes. The present study tested the factor structure of the adolescent form of the instrument (FPTETSA) and proposes a short form (FPTETSA-S) in which each of the five scales comprises six items, drawing on data provided by 360 Canadian Baptist youth. Both the full scales and the short scales are commended for use where the need is for continuous scale scores rather than generating psychological type categories
CEOs’ knowledge integration， entrepreneurship, and corporate innovation: Evidence for China
No full textThis study examines the influence of CEOs’ knowledge integration on corporate innovation. We find that CEOs
with an initial natural science background are more innovative and bring about greater corporate innovation.
Academic and social knowledge integration effects show that CEOs with an initial natural science background
who engage deeply in a certain discipline, enterprise, or industry are more innovative and bring more corporate
innovation. Furthermore, free and open innovation environments help integrate CEOs’ knowledge and improve
corporate innovation. We show that dynamic knowledge integration can facilitate entrepreneurship and
corporate innovation
The Francis Burnout Inventory: Testing the balanced affect model among Methodist circuit ministers in Great Britain
No full textThe Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in the terms of the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn. Operationalised specifically for application among clergy and religious professionals, in the FBI negative affect is assessed by the 11-item Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the 11-item Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). In the present study the FBI was completed by 803 Methodist ministers in Great Britain together with two independent measures hypothesised as reflecting the consequence of burnout, dissatisfaction with present appointment, and thoughts of leaving ministry. These data were employed to test the significance of the interaction between SEEM and SIMS in predicting these independent measures. In support of the theory of balanced affect, these data demonstrated that the mitigating impact of positive affect increased with increasing levels of negative affect