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An exploration of the characteristics and embeddedness of entrepreneurs in a rural community
Get PDFA major objective of recent supranational and national policies has been the socio-economic equity and cohesion of all regions within the European Union (EU) and in the Irish state. Pezzini (2001) identifies that current policies reflect a shift in political thinking; policy makers now see sustainable development occurring through development strategies rather than fiscal ones. Rural entrepreneurship has been acknowledged in academic and government circles as a key driver in rural socio-economic development (Wortman, Jr., 1990; Irish Rural Development Programme 2007-2013; Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Rural Development Plan 2007-2013). Despite its recognized importance, rural entrepreneurship has attracted little research attention, resulting in extensive knowledge gaps (Wortman, Jr. 1990; Statopoulou et al., 2004).
Emergent literature suggests that the utilization of Actors Network Theory and a qualitative methodology will provide insights into the entrepreneurial process and how the rural context and the entrepreneur‟s social embeddedness within the local community (identified as the major differentiators between rural and urban entrepreneurship) both inhibits and enhances the entrepreneurial process (Statopoulou et al., 2004; Jack and Anderson 2002). Based on the foregoing, the objective of this study is to substantially contribute to extant knowledge by determining those factors that inhibit and facilitate rural entrepreneurs.
In order to achieve the research objectives, a multi-case study approach is utilised, involving two rural destinations. Dunhill Enterprise Centre (DEC) and Dunhill, Fenor, Boatstrand and Annestown (DFBA) communities, as case examples.
Consistent with the findings of the European Commission (2003), this study indicates that demographic and psychological characteristics do impact on rural entrepreneurs. This research found that the characteristics most likely to impact on rural entrepreneurs were sex, age, and period of time spent in business in the rural community. Also included under the demographic umbrella were education, previous work experience and family influences. When investigating psychological characteristics, the study found that the characteristics that directly impacted on rural entrepreneurs were independence, need for achievement, locus of control, risk-taking and tolerance of ambiguity. The study also revealed the importance of rural community embeddedness, in the form of relational, structural and positional embeddedness, in addition to highlighting the importance of business networking. These findings have particular implications for practitioners and policy makers in an Irish entrepreneurial context
Engaging vulnerable men in community based health promotion
Get PDFIt is well established that men suffer poorer health and die younger than their female counter parts. The health status of men is closely linked to economic opportunity in society and those in the lowest socio-economic group carry the disproportionate burden of ill health and have traditionally been difficult to engage. The impetus for this study was underpinned by recommendations made by the Irish National Men‟s Health Policy and is particularly relevant in the current economic downturn. The Carlow Men‟s Health Project (CMHP), a community based partnership, also recognised the need to support vulnerable men and thus developed a strategy to improve their health and wellbeing.
Using mixed methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups etc), this thesis investigated the specific components of the strategy; the delivery of short programmes (men‟s health programme and physical activity programme) and awareness raising activities conducted by the CMHP over an 18 month period. Specifically, it will examine the individual components of the short programmes that were associated with effective engagement of men, the factors necessary to deliver an effective print media campaign, and the factors that contributed to successful partnerships working.
The researcher concludes that the CMHP successfully adopted a community development approach to address the needs of men in Carlow. The short programmes highlighted the need to find an effective “hook” or “incentive” to engage men and also men‟s need for structure and tangible outcomes. The print media campaign found that localisation of stories is necessary to ensure issues alluded to are meaningful to men. It also demonstrated the importance of literacy demand and design in enabling men to interpret health messages. Although the CMHP experienced a number of challenges to partnership working, findings suggest that the REAIM planning tool was seen as a very beneficial to effective planning of interventions. Finally, the dedicated and enthusiastic partners involved with the CMHP was fundamental to their success
Virtue Epistemology:Some Implications for Education
Get PDFThe new field of virtue epistemology has implications for educational debate. In order to identify these implications, I explore the seminal writings of Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski and develop them in directions promising for education. Both see knowledge as true belief arising in a socially-situated cognitive agent from epistemically-virtuous acts, rather than the traditional construal of true belief to which an idealised, individual knower has a duty to assent because of particular properties of the belief. They differ in emphasis, however: Sosa stresses reliable mechanisms, while Zagzebski accentuates virtuous motivation.
In dealing with Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology, I analyse and build on his precursor Robert Nozick’s model in ways propitious for education, including an extension of his use of formal logic, and the importation of some concepts from artificial intelligence theory. One significant outcome of my work on reliabilist virtue epistemology is the importance of subjunctive conditionals, and thus a more nuanced view of educational propositional targets, involving both p and ~p. Sosa’s two-tier model of knowledge is also addressed.
I compare Zagzebski to her historical forebear Aristotle, and then develop some lines of thought congenial to education. Zagzebski’s responsibilist virtue epistemology leads to named intellectual virtues. I supplement these and show how they can be co-ordinated between teacher and learner. Substantial consideration is also given to other regarding epistemic virtue and to testimony.
The model of learning and teaching defended amounts to virtuous belief-modification, carried out by an epistemic agent (the learner), using intellectual virtue to bring his doxastic web into closer cognitive alignment with reality via intersubjective triangulation using the webs of others (particularly that of the teacher). I argue that a combination of the two approaches – virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism – yields a richer, more decent basis for education than rival conceptions, such as technical rationality, can provide
'Problem-based learning in the library: implementing PBL into one-shot nursing infromation literacy sessions', case- study presented at FACiLiTATE conference, TCD, 26-27 May 2011.
No full textResearch suggests that students engaged in problem-based learning (PBL) will make greater use of libraries and library resources, and result in a greater need for information and research skills (Dodd, 2008). This provides a unique and valuable opportunity for librarians to promote information literacy (IL) skills to a receptive user profile. Less has been written about effective use of PBL approaches in actual IL instructional sessions delivered by librarians.
Indeed, much of the IL instruction on-going in libraries today is delivered as one-shot sessions; with large student numbers, within a 50-60 minute timeframe. This makes it all too easy to deliver IL instruction in a behaviourist way, attempting to cram ‘point-and-click’ demonstrations of multiple resources in the hope that students later remember at least some part of the session. PBL could be used in IL sessions to actively engage students in a challenging and active learning environment (Kenney, 2008). But, in the one-shot session, students don’t have the benefit of working on complex problems over time. Also, the student has little opportunity to reflect on the problem, and react accordingly. With this is mind, does PBL have a place in IL instruction?
This case study takes a closer look at the final year Nursing IL programme in Waterford Institute of Technology, which introduced a PBL approach on a pilot basis. It takes a practitioner viewpoint at the development of the sessions, particularly when devising problems for investigation. By assigning team roles, and using specific and manageable timed tasks, students were asked to identify and retrieve scholarly research on the problem presented. Finally, student groups presented their findings to the class, which were recorded and analysed against the findings of their peers.
An initial small-scale evaluation was carried out to gauge the success of the pilot. Feedback to date has been very favourable: 93% of students rated the programme favourably. Despite this, the demands on the librarian as a PBL facilitator should not be underestimated. By providing constructive solutions for incorporating PBL into IL sessions, this paper is a useful source for libraries in similar positions, faced with similar challenges.
References
Dodd, L. (2007) ‘The impact of problem-based learning on the information behaviour and literacy of veterinary medicine students at University College Dublin’, Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(2), 206-216.
Kenney, B. (2008) ‘Revitalizing the one-shot instruction session using problem-based learning’, Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(4), 386-391
Phylogenetically diverse grasslands are associated with pairwise interspecific processes that increase biomass
Get PDFBiodiversity is an important determinant of primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. We combine two streams of research on understanding the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function: quantifying phylogenetic diversity as a predictor of biodiversity effects in species-rich systems and the contribution of pairwise interspecific interactions to ecosystem function. We developed a statistical model that partitions the effect of biodiversity into effects due to community phylogenetic diversity and other community properties (e.g., average pairwise interaction, between-and within-functional-group effects, and so forth). The model provides phylogenetically based species-level explanations of differences in ecosystem response for communities with differing species composition. In two well-known grassland experiments, the model approach provides a parsimonious description of the effects of diversity as being due to the joint effect of the average pairwise statistical interaction and to community phylogenetic diversity. Effects associated with functional groupings of species in communities are largely explained by community phylogenetic diversity. The model approach quantifies a direct link between a measure of the evolutionary diversity of species and their interactive contribution to ecosystem function. It proves a useful tool in developing a mechanistic understanding of variation in ecosystem function
Eulerian polynomials as moments, via exponential Riordan arrays
Get PDFUsing the theory of exponential Riordan arrays and orthogonal polynomials, we demonstrate that the ``descending power'' Eulerian polynomials, and their once shifted sequence, are moment sequences for simple families of orthogonal polynomials, which we characterize in terms of their three-term recurrence. We obtain the generating functions of the polynomial sequences in terms of continued fractions, and we also calculate their Hankel transform
An Analysis of the Determinants of Voluntary Impairment Disclosure Post the 2008 Credit Crisis
Get PDFRe-consecrating Jesus: Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and the Hermeneutics of Tradition
Get PDFA key task in theological reflection on film is to emphasize its place within tradition – that it is a viable medium of representing and interpreting the Christian story. Since the birth of cinema, directors have given viewers contrasting images of Jesus and the Gospels. They have added to, re-orientated, and indeed transformed our ways of reflecting on the Christian tradition and its sources of expression. Film, then, is a central moment in Christianity's dialogue with the visual arts. It is not a commentary or peripheral accompaniment to the Gospel story but a mode of interpretation and representation in itself. This article explores the role of tradition in the Jesus film through Pier Paolo Pasolini's "re-consecration" technique in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. His interpretation of Matthew, influenced by both Marxist theory and centuries of Christian art, situated the story of Jesus in the austere, poverty stricken villages of southern Italy in the 1960s. Despite his apparent unease with Italian Catholic culture, he succeeded in crafting a film that was not only acceptable to Christian viewers, but a significant development in the Jesus film genre. Using the hermeneutics of Gadamer, this article offers a theological reflection on the role of tradition in the Jesus film through the lens of Pasolini's work
A Folio of Original Compositions for Various Performing Groups with Detailed Analysis : Volume 2 of 2
Get PDFDesign of flexible platform for various free-space, broadband dielectric analysis measurement techniques
Get PDFNon destructive testing (NDT) is an important analysis technique to understand material composition. Dielectric analysis is an NDT technique, using a probing electromagnetic wave, which is reflected and/or propagated from/through the material under test (MUT). There have been many advances in this area, with several frequency domain techniques based on measurement of amplitude and phase, amplitude alone or phase alone. This paper describes the design of a new dielectric analysis test platform, which includes controllable variable widths of MUT, antenna translation and even accurate angular positioning. This test platform will allow comparison of several of the recognised techniques whose various aims include to lower cost, to remove diffraction and multiple reflection effects. In our case, the target dielectrics are in powder or liquid form. The proposed test platform is a physical extension of an existing test platform, developed to qualify propagation reduction for microwave signals passing through energy efficient glass, coated with transparent conductors