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Tele Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in India - A Short Report
Get PDFBackground: The discipline of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology is half-a-century old in India. Speech language pathologists and audiologists (SLPs and AUDs) have identified the need to ‘reach-the-unreached’ in India by using a telehealth model for rehabilitation of persons with communication disorders. The aim of this paper is to present a panoramic view of telepractice in India right from its emergence to its current state, drawing support from a review of published work by SLPs and AUDs in India. Methods: A questionnaire was developed to elicit responses on barriers for telepractice and similarities and differences in face-to-face and telepractice of speech-language pathology service delivery. Using survey research design, 17 speech-language pathologists practicing in India were purposively selected for the study. Results: 15 questionnaires were completed. Most respondents (53.3% - 86.6%) reported technical issues as barriers for telepractice. Face-to-face and telepractice of speech language pathology service delivery was reported to be different in terms of instructions for caregivers, documentation, face validity, acceptance and responsibility on caregivers. Many participants felt that more sensitivity and caution, special ICT skills for clinician and caregiver/client, exclusive software, dedicated professionals to trouble shoot technical issues are additional requirements for telepractice. Concerns about client confidentiality were expressed and lack of direct feedback and environmental distractions at client end were reported as challenges in telepractice delivery. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that service delivery through telemodel is mostly positively embraced in India, despite the challenges.
 
Motion Capture for Telemedicine: A Review of Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect, and PlayStation Move
Get PDFAccess to healthcare has been and continues to be difficult for many around the world. With the introduction of telemedicine, this impediment to attaining medical care has been lifted. Although many avenues of telemedicine exist (and have yet to exist), the use of home video game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii®, Microsoft Kinect®, and PlayStation Move® can be used to measure patient progress outside of the office. Due to the nature of each individual console/system, some unique characteristics exist that allow each system to provide its own clinical potential. A comparative analysis of the clinical implications of the Nintendo Wii®, Microsoft Kinect®, and PlayStation Move® showed that with its ease of use and dynamic accuracy, the Microsoft Kinect® offered the most benefit. With further exploration, using the Microsoft Kinect® for telemedicine will be able to improve medical efficiency and hopefully health outcomes
A sociological analysis of the pictures used in the South African foundation phase numeracy workbooks and their mathematical implications
Get PDFAbout half of South Africa’s Department of Basic Education foundation phase numeracy workbooks’ content
consist of pictures (Pausigere, 2016), yet the implications of these pictures to the different lower grades is not
clear. To analyse the types of pictures, and the inferences to be drawn upon learners’ mathematical
understanding this article is theoretically informed by Dowling’s (1996; 1998) sociology of mathematics
education, specifically drawing from his textual description concepts. A sociological qualitative content
analysis of the numeracy workbook pictures led to the development of a model capable of classifying key
mathematical pictures used in mathematical workbooks and applicable to conventional maths textbooks. The
analytical framework’s pictorial categories show abstract and concrete-abstract mathematical pictures as
being effective in translating generalising, context-independent mathematical principles. On the other hand
concrete and abstract-concrete mathematical pictures through situational activities exhibit context-dependent
numerical strategies. Given the analytical framework the study discusses the mathematical implications of its
findings across the foundation phase
Green IS Management Framework Corroboration and Verification: Explicating the Enabling Capabilities of Green IS
Get PDFThe first objective of the paper is to demonstrate the quantitative corroboration of the Green Information Systems (Green IS) management framework, which comprises the enabling capabilities of Green IS, the moderating concepts, and their relationships to environmental sustainability. The second objective is to demonstrate the framework’s verification using the focus group method and member checking. The achievement of these objectives establishes that the framework successfully captured the essential Green IS concepts and interrelationships to be relevant for environmental sustainability, that it was credible, relevant, and an original contribution to the academic body of knowledge. The research was empirical, confirmatory, quantitative, and qualitative. The study provides research design insights by detailing research design choices and rationale. The framework presents verified and salient management focal points for environmental sustainability in the South African banking sector
Contestations of Self and Other in Researching Religion, Gender and Health among Migrant Women
Get PDFThis essay is a critical reflexive account of contestations over power and ethics related to getting ethical approval for a study on sexual and reproductive choices among migrant women in pentecostal congregations in South Africa. We found that despite the feminist method and theory that undergirded the proposed study, the University Ethics Committee regarded the researcher’s insider position as an obstacle to scholarly inquiry. Notwithstanding the marginal position of religion and theology in humanities and the social sciences (McCutcheon 2003), we found that a number of issues related to procedural ethics and power emerged as obstacles in the research, seemingly because the project was to be conducted by a migrant woman of colour. We contend that it is not uncommon that women, and black women researchers in particular, are required to demonstrate competency as if they are imposters or space invaders to the academic culture (Ahmed 2012; Mirza 2015). Similarly, where similar proposals using, for example, mixed methods and emic approaches might be welcomed as methodological innovation, our experience has been that insider/ indigenous methodologies are too easily dismissed as incompetence, or as being provisional and lacking substance (Smith 2006; Burgess-Proctor 2015). We propose to review a particular case study to show how ethical approval and governance processes intended as scientific gatekeeping, can serve to undermine the emergence of local and gendered ways of knowing and being. Thus in this article we argue that ethic committees’ biases result in (a) privileging positivist knowledge schemas over indigenous and feminist approaches; and (b) entrench particular gendered and racialised ideas about the emic researcher; and (c) in this case, re-inscribe narrow paternalistic ideas about migrant social worlds, agency, and self-fashioning. It is our intention to map the pedagogical trajectories and tensions that were sparked by the ethical issues faced by us as scholars of colour, and finally we will show how we sought to navigate these obstacles, as researcher and supervisor
Physical Science Teachers’ Insights into Pedagogical and Content Knowledge, and the Nature of Support of an ACE In-service Programme
Get PDFThis study was designed to gain insights into physical science teacher-students’ pedagogical knowledge, understanding of science concepts and the nature of support that they received during an in-service developmental programme. Understanding the experiences and learning gained during the programme can inform the design of future courses. The study is located within an interpretive paradigm that employs a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis. Participants (n = 156) were selected by convenience sampling from teachers on an in-service Advanced Certificate in Education programme. Data were collected towards the end of the proramme through a questionnaire administered to 211 in-service teachers and eight teachers were interviewed. The study identified three critical aspects gained during the programme: content knowledge, teaching strategies and confidence. The findings also reinforce the need for institutions of higher learning to design programmes that provide the appropriate level of support: material, emotional or both for all teachers on in-service programmes
Embodying pedagogical habitus change: A narrative-based account of a teacher’s pedagogical change within a professional learning community
Get PDFSituated in the context of teaching in South Africa, this article narrates the journey of pedagogical change and
adaptation of one teacher who participated in a professional learning community (PLC). It discusses the
durability and malleability of this teacher’s pedagogical disposition by arguing for a conceptualisation of
teacher change that moves beyond a cognitivist approach, i.e. one that is driven primarily by knowledge
acquisition, to one that engages the embodied practices of teachers in the light of the shifts and adaptations
that they undergo when trying to establish augmented pedagogical approaches. Drawing on Bourdieu’s
concepts of habitus, field, bodily hexis and doxa, this article argues that sustained pedagogical change
involves an engagement with the teacher’s embodied pedagogical habitus which has formed over time given
the educational spaces they have inhabited. The article is based on data collected over a two-year period from
PLC transcripts, observational school visits and multiple in-depth interviews with the teacher. This article
describes the constraints or ‘hardness’ of change as the teacher engages with his embodied pedagogical
habitus which has developed over time. However, this article further argues that possibilities of embodied
pedagogical adaptation and change exist in the reflexive, on-going dialogical space that a professional learning
community offers
A critical arts-based narrative of five educators working in higher education during an era of transformation in South Africa
Get PDFIn this paper I explore creative ways to engage critically with educator identity and experience during an era of transformation and decolonisation. I have written it as an illustrated arts-based narrative that revolves around the experiences of five educators working at the University of the Free State between 2014 and 2016. The narrative was created as part of a collaborative research project in which participants shared their experiential knowledge of anti-oppressive practice. In working with these portraits of five South African educators, I explore the connections between educator identity and social justice in the broader South African higher educational landscape as the call for transformation and decolonisation intensifies. The narrative is intended to trouble the identities and experiences of educators as they make their way through this messy terrain in an attempt to learn from uncertainty and crisis