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Paper 45: Exploring student perceptions of existing learning communities of practice within a Degree Apprenticeship to enable the greater adoption of inclusivity principles for work-integrated studies
Get PDFDegree apprenticeships (DAs) have been introduced in the United Kingdom as a form of employer funded work-integrated learning within specific occupational job roles. This paper focuses on how the applied concepts of learning communities of practice can be developed to support the DA student experience and enhance existing tuition surrounding inclusivity. A small case study of a Business to Business Sales DA reviewed existing programme materials and carried out a mixed methods survey exploring apprentice perceptions of their studies and lived experience regarding inclusive practice. Findings showed that apprentices had an awareness and appreciation of how learning communities operated and raised some valuable insights about the benefits and limitations of learning within a university setting. DA communities of practice have differing dynamics as they include a range of workplace professionals. Apprentices prefer tuition that allows them to participate in social learning with peers, in-person and online, and that accommodate their sales role with shared interests as employee learners. As a result of the research, there is a greater sense of the part that learning communities play in framing inclusive practice within DA provision that could be further aligned to institutional and programme aims
Causes of and alternatives to medication for behaviours that challenge in people with intellectual disabilities: direct care providers' perspectives
Get PDFBehaviours that challenge (BtC), such as aggression and self-injury, are manifested by many people with intellectual disabilities (ID). National and international guidelines recommend non-pharmacological psychosocial intervention before considering medication to address BtC. Support staff play a pivotal role in the prescription process. Using coproduction, we developed a training programme for support staff, called SPECTROM, to give them knowledge and empower them to question inappropriate prescriptions and ask for the discontinuation of medication if appropriate and instead look for ways to help people with ID when they are distressed without relying on medication. We have presented data from two focus groups that we conducted during the development of SPECTROM: one that included support staff, and another that had service managers and trainers. In these focus groups, we explored participants’ views on the use of medication to address BtC with a particular emphasis on the causes of and alternatives to medication for BtC. Along with the participants’ views, we have also presented how we have addressed these issues in the SPECTROM resources
Bank performance and noninterest income: evidence from countries in the Asian region
Get PDFNoninterest income (NII) is income generated by banks from sources other than interest payments. Studies conducted on the relationship between NII and bank risk for the USA and Europe have found that emphasis on income diversification lowers risk in European banks but exacerbates it in American banks. Current research on Asian banks has not led to a coherent view of the relationship between NII and bank risk. We employ data over 25 years for 24 Asian countries to examine this relationship. Using the GMM estimation approach we estimate equations for two time-periods, 1996–2007 and 2008–2018, to examine the NII-bank risk relationship in the presence of some controlling financial, macroeconomic and policy variables. Our results show that non-interest income worsens bank risk for all 24 countries as well as for sub-groups of countries. We also find that, by and large, economic growth improves bank risk while inflation above a threshold worsens it. Finally, our proxy measure for monetary policy improves bank risk though fiscal policy seems to have no effect
The impact of market orientation on new product performance through product launch quality: a resource-based view
Get PDFPurpose- Grounded on the resource-based view, this study aims to examine the mediating role of product launch quality as a deployment mechanism in the association between market orientation and new product performance.
Design/methodology/approach- Conducting an on-site survey of Iranian manufacturing industries, this study applies covariance-based structural equation modeling to test research hypotheses and verify the proposed theoretical model.
Findings- The empirical findings indicate market orientation is a critical knowledge-based resource enhancing firms’ product launch quality, and right decisions concerning the product launch elevate new product performance. The results also reveal while market orientation significantly impacts new product performance, product launch quality is a crucial deployment mechanism for leveraging market orientation as it fully mediates impacts of market orientation on new product performance.
Originality/value- The current static characterization of the resource-based view signifies strategic resources have potential value, but unleashing this potential requires incorporation of deployment mechanisms in the resource-performance link. Besides, considering this insufficient view, prior studies have revealed mixed and inconsistent results. Accordingly, through examining product launch quality as a deployment mechanism for leveraging market orientation on new product performance, not only does this study address inconsistent findings, but it noticeably contributes to the resource-based view by casting light on the mechanism through which market orientation as a strategic knowledge-based resource leads to superior new product performance
Evaluating the optimal number of clusters to identify similar gene expression patterns during erythropoiesis
No full textHaematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are differentiated into red blood cells (erythrocytes) through a process called Erythropoiesis. During this process, the genes undergo global gene expression changes to reflect the present developmental stage. Unsupervised clustering aims at highlighting the co-expressed genes that share similar expression profiles. Some clustering algorithms, like the well-known and most commonly used K-means, need the number of clusters as input in order to group the data based on similarity measurements. Determining a sufficient number of clusters is not a straightforward task and might be tricky. Furthermore, the quality of the obtained clusters depends on how many clusters were used. In this study, three cluster validation metrics; Silhouette Score, Calinski Harabaz Index, and DaviesBouldin Score were used to evaluate the clusters obtained from the different clustering algorithms applied. For the data of Erythropoiesis, two clusters were identified as sufficient
Corporate accountability towards species extinction protection: insights from ecologically forward-thinking companies
Get PDFThis paper contributes to biodiversity and species extinction literature by examining the relationship between corporate accountability in terms of species protection and factors affecting such accountability from forward-thinking companies. We use triangulation of theories, namely deep ecology, legitimacy, and we introduce a new perspective to the stakeholder theory that considers species as a ‘stakeholder’. Using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) regression, we examine a sample of 200 Fortune Global companies over three years. Our results indicate significant positive relations between ecologically conscious companies that are accountable for the protection of biodiversity and species extinction and external assurance, environmental performance, partnerships with socially responsible organizations and awards for sustainable activities. Our empirical results appear to be robust in controlling for possible endogeneities. Our findings contribute to the discussion on the concern of species loss and habitat destruction in the context of corporate accountability, especially in responding to the sixth mass extinction event and COVID-19 crisis. Our results can also guide the policymakers and stakeholders of the financial market in better decision making
3D analytical modelling and iterative solution for high performance computing clusters
Get PDFMobile Cloud Computing enables the migration of services to the edge of the Internet. Therefore, high-performance computing clusters are widely deployed to improve computational capabilities of such environments. However, they are prone to failures and need analytical models to predict their behaviour in order to deliver desired quality-of-service and quality-of-experience to mobile users. This paper proposes a 3D analytical model and a problem-solving approach for sustainability evaluation of high-performance computing clusters. The proposed solution uses an iterative approach to obtain performance measurements to overcome the state space explosion problem. The availability modelling and evaluation of master and computing nodes are performed using a multi-repairman approach. The optimum number of repairmen is also obtained to get realistic results and reduce the overall cost. The proposed model is validated using discrete event simulation. The analytical approach is much faster and in good agreement with the simulations. The analysis focuses on mean queue length, throughput, and mean response time outputs. The maximum differences between analytical and simulation results in the considered scenarios of up to a billion states are less than1.149%,3.82%, and3.76%respectively. These differences are well within the5%of confidence interval of the simulation and the proposed model
Dominant narratives, uncertainty denial, negative capability and conviction: a commentary on Fenton-O’Creevy and Tuckett 2021
Get PDFThis is a short response to the paper Fenton-O'Creevy, M. and Tuckett, D. (2021) Selecting futures: The role of conviction, narratives, ambivalence, and constructive doubt, Futures and Foresight Scienc
Willingness to reduce travel consumption to support a low-carbon transition beyond COVID-19
Get PDFThis paper explores people's willingness to reduce travel consumption in support of the transition to a low-carbon pathway beyond COVID-19, using new survey data from UK car drivers and air travellers. Evidence from our study indicates that reductions of 24% - 30% to car use and 20% - 26% to air travel could be sustained in the long term. This potentially could lead to annual reductions of 343–529 kgCO2 per car driver (20% - 29% of pre- COVID-19 car emissions) and 215–359 kgCO2 per air traveller (10% - 20% of pre-COVID-19 emissions from flying), suggesting that behavioural change may be a major route to emissions reductions. We find that stated voluntary reductions are greater among those who report having ‘more time to do creative things’ since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Hence, recovery policies promoting low-carbon leisure time may be a key to consumption reductions. We also find that higher-income travellers consume and pollute substantially more than the rest, and yet there is little difference in relative voluntary reductions across the income distribution. We conclude that behaviour associated with affluence represents a major barrier to a low-carbon transition, and that policies must address over-consumption associated with affluence as a priority
A qualitative exploration of care homes workers' views and training needs in relation to the use of socially assistive humanoid robots in their workplace
Get PDFAim: The study aimed to explore the views and attitudes of care home workers about the socially assistive robot that was trialled in their workplace, in order to identify training needs in relation to the hypothetical future use of these robots in their workplace.
Background: Care home workers face challenging workload conditions which may require the exploration of new solutions such as the use of socially assistive robots (SARs).
Methods: This is a qualitative descriptive study which used semi-structured interviews. Care home workers (n = 23) in the UK participated in the study, and data collection took place between October 2019 and January 2020. NVivo software was used for data management, and a thematic inductive analysis was conducted.
Results: Findings indicated that many participants were open to the use of robots and valued the potential usefulness of SARs in the care setting. However, some participants showed resistance to the use of robots and did not feel comfortable with the idea of working alongside them. Participants wished to receive technical training that would enable them to be competent in using SARs. Participants took seriously their duty of care to the older people and thus wanted to ensure that the use of the SAR would not negatively impact on the care being provided. Robots were viewed as having potential to be supplementary to human carers, such as sharing the workload and improving upon the care already being provided.
Conclusions: Care home workers express both positive and negative views in relation to the hypothetical future deployment of socially assistive humanoid robots in their workplace.
Implications for practice: The findings highlighted the importance of values around person-centred care which should be taken into account when planning for the implementation of robots in social care settings and training care home workers in how to work with robots