411,959 research outputs found
Early childhood flexibility practices and patterns: report 2014
No full textThe Early childhood flexibility practices and patterns report highlights recommendations and future directions for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in providing flexible arrangements for families and local communities.
The Report was informed through sector surveys, interviews with early childhood services and a Reference Group of sector leaders.
Children’s interests are a paramount consideration when considering flexible practice. The stability, quality, and intensity of early childhood services are all relevant when considering children’s interests, as well as children’s wishes. Children may also benefit from flexibility in some circumstances. Putting children’s interests into practice may include considering children’s rights and identifying and treating risks associated with flexible approaches.
Flexibility in early childhood services also should be placed in the context of family flexibility and workplace flexibility which also contribute to parents’ workforce participation. In this Report, the approach to flexibility in early childhood services has been broad, and includes both workforce participation objectives as well as the broader needs of the family. Models of flexible practice include not only extended operating hours but flexible location, flexible sessions and enrolment patterns as well as early childhood services offering a broader set of family support services and partnerships.
There are links between flexible practices and the National Quality Standard (NQS), including Collaborative partnerships with families and communities (NQS Area 6), Relationships with children (NQS Area 5) and Leadership and service management (NQS Area 7). These links provide cause for services to reflect on flexibility in the context of quality improvement of their services.
The attributes of flexible services may help to support flexible practice. The stability and consistency of attendance of families, and flexibility in early childhood programming, are important enablers of flexible early childhood practices reported by services. Some service types may show inherent flexibility, like in-home care and family day care, particularly in providing care after hours. Technology use may also support services to implement flexible practice.
Early childhood services may encounter barriers to flexible practice. Lack of demand, workforce issues and related costs were particular challenges. Local government regulations, as well as leadership and management capabilities were also barriers to flexible practices.
Some early childhood services provide extended hours of care, especially in family day care and in-home care, with some educators offering 24 hours care. Long day care services and outside school hours care services were less flexible in terms of their opening hours, with few services open past 6.30 pm. Removal of local government restrictions on opening hours may help to improve flexibility in this area.
Flexible sessions were also offered by some services, utilising the existing provisions under Family Assistance Law. Changes to enrolment were also offered by early childhood services. With the exception of outside school hours care and in-home care, most services were not flexible in relation to changes to bookings at short notice. High levels of utilisation may make it difficult for services to offer flexible sessions and enrolment.
The location of early childhood services may also provide flexibility for families. While most outside school hours care services are located with schools, only small numbers of long day care and other services were located with schools and businesses. The development of underutilised land targeted at Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) may help to improve the availability of co-located services. Reducing the complexity of incentives for onsite services in the workplace would also provide additional flexibility, benefiting parents.
To meet the broader needs of families, early childhood services also formed partnerships with a range of community services including health, child protection and other early childhood services. A key area of flexible practice is inclusiveness and there is further work to be done in embedding inclusive practice within the sector.
Family day care and in-home care services are more likely to cater for shift workers and parents with changing work hours. This suggests that these care types might provide particular opportunities to improve early childhood flexibility in the future
Early Orndorff Papers, 1868-1942
No full textPapers, 1868-1942, of the King and Orndorff families of Van Buren Furnace, Shenandoah County, Va. The collection includes papers, 1891-1942, of Early Orndorff, documents in German of a maternal ancestor, Emily Wilde, who came to America in 1877 and letters, 1882-1890, written to Frank King and his wife from G. H. Rochling and Ferd Lipfert, Annaberg, Germany. From Mss. Sm Coll Orndorff, Early Orndorff Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary
Reconciliation in early childhood settings: A whole-team approach
No full textWhile there is growing support for Reconciliation and increasing awareness about the role early childhood educators play in enacting Reconciliation as part of everyday practice, some educators continue to question their role in this work. Open conversations across staff teams are critical to understanding why some members of staff may be more reluctant to take ownership of Reconciliation work and how they can be supported to move forward
Early childhood flexibility practices and patterns
No full textExecutive summary
The early childhood flexibility practices and patterns report highlights recommendations and future directions for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in providing flexible arrangements for families and local communities.
The Report was informed through sector surveys, interviews with early childhood services and a Reference Group of sector leaders.
Children’s interests are a paramount consideration when considering flexible practice. The stability, quality, and intensity of early childhood services are all relevant when considering children’s interests, as well as children’s wishes. Children may also benefit from flexibility in some circumstances. Putting children’s interests into practice may include considering children’s rights and identifying and treating risks associated with flexible approaches.
Flexibility in early childhood services also should be placed in the context of family flexibility and workplace flexibility which also contribute to parents’ workforce participation. In this Report, the approach to flexibility in early childhood services has been broad, and includes both workforce participation objectives as well as the broader needs of the family. Models of flexible practice include not only extended operating hours but flexible location, flexible sessions and enrolment patterns as well as early childhood services offering a broader set of family support services and partnerships.
There are links between flexible practices and the National Quality Standard (NQS), including Collaborative partnerships with families and communities (NQS Area 6), Relationships with children (NQS Area 5) and Leadership and service management (NQS Area 7). These links provide cause for services to reflect on flexibility in the context of quality improvement of their services.
The attributes of flexible services may help to support flexible practice. The stability and consistency of attendance of families, and flexibility in early childhood programming, are important enablers of flexible early childhood practices reported by services. Some service types may show inherent flexibility, like inhome care and family day care, particularly in providing care after hours. Technology use may also support services to implement flexible practice.
Early childhood services may encounter barriers to flexible practice. Lack of demand, workforce issues and related costs were particular challenges. Local government regulations, as well as leadership and management capabilities were also barriers to flexible practices.
Some early childhood services provide extended hours of care, especially in family day care and in-home care, with some educators offering 24 hours care. Long day care services and outside school hours care services were less flexible in terms of their opening hours, with few services open past 6.30 pm. Removal of local government restrictions on opening hours may help to improve flexibility in this area.
Flexible sessions were also offered by some services, utilising the existing provisions under Family Assistance Law. Changes to enrolment were also offered by early childhood services. With the exception of outside school hours care and in-home care, most services were not flexible in relation to changes to bookings at short notice. High levels of utilisation may make it difficult for services to offer flexible sessions and enrolment
Tertiary teaching: Reflecting on human change and influence from the crucible
No full textThis article draws on the metaphor of ‘a crucible’ to describe the tertiary classroom context, where I work in initial teacher education with early childhood education (ECE) student teachers. Stories are told about the classroom participants (students and an educator) in an attempt to find meaning in terms of development, both the students and mine. This storytelling highlights ongoing questions for me about the impact of what happens in the classroom we bring our selves to, and the significance of informed actions for social justice for teachers and teaching. In telling these stories I highlight my deepening understanding of education pedagogy, and perception of myself as a teacher, a practitioner of human influence and change. I hope that these stories echo and illuminate the experiences of other educators as they too seek to understand their practice
Hamiltonian gravity with variable G,Lambda from the renormalization group
No full textModels of gravity with variable G and Lambda have
acquired greater relevance after the recent evidence in favour of
the Einstein theory being non-perturbatively renormalizable. The
present paper applies the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner formalism and
the Dirac-Bergmann theory of constrained Hamiltonian systems to
such a class of gravitational models. A modified action functional
is then built that reduces to the Einstein-Hilbert action when
G is constant, and leads to a linear growth of the scale factor
when gravity is coupled to a massless self-interacting phi^{4}
theory in a Universe with Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker
symmetry, in agreement with the recently developed fixed-point
cosmology. Interestingly, our modified action functional makes it
necessary to consider an external field that decays as the inverse of
the sixth power of cosmological time in the early universe, although the
relevant solutions are actually independent of the strength of this new
field
HLA-G may predict the disease course in patients with early arthritis
No full textThe current management of early arthritis (EA) with negative
prognostic factors is to start an intensive treatment. To avoid
under/overtreatment, it is important to identify EA evolution
biomarkers. Several factors have been suggested but their predictive
value is still limited. Human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G)
molecules are expressed as membrane bound and soluble isoforms
(mHLA-G and sHLA-G) that act as ligand for immune-inhibitory
receptors (ILT2, ILT4 and KIR2DL4). Expression of HLAG is
influenced by a 14-bp insertion/deletion polymorphism in exon
8 of the gene, where the deletion is associated with mRNA stability.
sHLA-G levels are positively correlated with RA disease
activity and treatment response. We suggest a role both in disease
immunopathology and as a biomarker of disease course
and treatment response. We analyzed 14 EA patients during a
12 months follow-up pharmacological treatment. We evaluated
sHLA-G levels in plasma samples by enzyme-linked immunosorbent
assay, mHLA-G and IL-T2 expression on peripheral blood
cells by flow cytometry and typed HLA-G 14-bp polymorphism
by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Disease status parameters
(DAS28) and laboratory data were checked. The sHLA-G
levels, mHLA-G and IL-T2 expression inversely correlated with
DAS28 parameter during the 12 months follow-up (P < 0.0001).
The distribution of HLA-G polymorphism tends to a correlation
between the homozygosity for the deletion, the high producer
genotype and a lower DAS28 (P = 0.069). On the basis of these
preliminary results, HLA-G may be a candidate biomarker to
evaluate early prognosis and disease activity in EA patients
Bibliographie Hilarion G. Petzold 1958 – 2009 mit Anhang als Einführung
No full textDieses Archiv enthält die Gesamtbibliographie der Werke des Autors nebst einiger Texte „Über H. G. Petzold“ im Schlussteil der Bibliographie sowie einen Anhang mit einer Einführung in die Architektur des Werkes in seinem wissenslogischen Aufbau als Ausarbeitung seines „Tree of Science Modells“ (2007).This archive contains the complete bibliography of the author and some texts about H. G. Petzold, moreover an epilogue with an introduction to the architecture of the works in its epistemological structure and composition and as an elaborations of Petzold’s „Tree of Science Modell (2007).https://www.fpi-publikation.de/polyloge/01-2009-petzold-h-g-gesamtbibliographie-h-g-petzold-1958-2009-updating-november2009/peerReviewedpublishedVersio
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Beginning the day with the IWB in an early childhood classroom
No full textThere is a substantial demand in New Zealand for professional learning opportunities to help early years’ teachers to make use of ICT for teaching and learning (Harlow, Cowie and Jones, 2008), and where interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are increasingly being purchased by schools as instructional technologies. This paper reports on the findings of a researcher who was invited by a teacher in a small rural school in New Zealand to describe and understand the use of an IWB with young children aged five to six years. In this paper, the role of the IWB to enhance learning particularly in the use of language, symbols and texts is examined. The research involved collecting data from intensive classroom observation over a week using video and audio recordings as well as student and teacher interviews. Data were analysed using a framework developed by Kennewell and Beauchamp (2007), who identified how teachers used features of ICT/IWBs to enhance learning. The findings indicate that it was the way the teacher integrated the IWB into her pedagogy to improve the learning activities that made the IWB such an effective tool in this classroom
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