Māori social workers' experiences of the collision of their personal, professional and cultural worlds

Reamer (2013a) states that the most difficult ethical dilemmas happen for social workers when their personal and professional worlds conflict. Māori social workers (kaimahi) often live and work in the same area as their whānau, hapū and iwi and there is a high chance that members of their whānau will come through the organisation that they work for. This is when kaimahi will experience a collision (tukia) of their personal, professional and cultural worlds. It is the domain where the three different systems have to interact – a professional system, a whānau system, and a cultural system. This research study interviewed seven kaimahi who had experienced tukia and explored their encounter of tukia. Kaupapa Māori underpins this research, and pūrakau has been utilised to connect the research to Māori worldviews, however the research framework is guided by the Pā Harakeke. Pā Harakeke is often used as a metaphor for whānau and a model for protection of children, whānau structure and well-being. The harakeke sits well in this research as the focus is on the well-being of kaimahi Māori – caring for the carers, helping the helpers and healing the healers. Hence the kaimahi represents the rito (baby centre shoot) of the harakeke, needing nurture, help and support. A key finding from this study reveals that collision is a complex area that requires careful navigation by the kaimahi experiencing the collision, as well as the organisation that the kaimahi works for. It is imperative that social workers and managers discuss and plan for collision as opposed to waiting until it happens, and organisations should have policies and protocols in place for working with whānau. This research has also developed a definition and construction of what collision is in the social services and kaimahi have imparted words of wisdom (Ngā Kupu Taonga) so that others experiencing collision may find a way forward. These include: Take care of the ‘self’, get good support from whānau and mahi, talk about the hard stuff, get good supervision, come back to reality and smell the manuka (be grounded), and the collision can ultimately be a growth experience that will have a positive impact on kaimahi practice

A review of mentorship measurement tools

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Objectives: To review mentorship measurement tools in various fields to inform nursing educators on selection, application, and developing of mentoring instruments. Design: A literature review informed by PRISMA 2009 guidelines. Data Sources: Six databases: CINHAL, Medline, PsycINFO, Academic Search Premier, ERIC, Business premier resource. Review Methods: Search terms and strategies used: mentor* N3 (behav* or skill? or role? or activit? or function* or relation*) and (scale or tool or instrument or questionnaire or inventory). The time limiter was set from January 1985 to June 2015. Extracted data were content of instruments, samples, psychometrics, theoretical framework, and utility. An integrative review method was used. Results: Twenty-eight papers linked to 22 scales were located, seven from business and industry, 11 from education, 3 from health science, and 1 focused on research mentoring. Mentorship measurement was pioneered by business with a universally accepted theoretical framework, i.e. career function and psychosocial function, and the trend of scale development is developing: from focusing on the positive side of mentorship shifting to negative mentoring experiences and challenges. Nursing educators mainly used instruments from business to assess mentorship among nursing teachers. In education and nursing, measurement has taken to a more specialised focus: researchers in different contexts have developed scales to measure different specific aspects of mentorship. Most tools show psychometric evidence of content homogeneity and construct validity but lack more comprehensive and advanced tests. Conclusion: Mentorship is widely used and conceptualised differently in different fields and is less mature in nursing than in business. Measurement of mentorship is heading to a more specialised and comprehensive process. Business and education provided measurement tools to nursing educators to assess mentorship among staff, but a robust instrument to measure nursing students' mentorship is needed

Analysis of Public Relations

The public relations profession is a person’s ability to communicate to various publics on behalf of a person, organization, or a place of business to build positive relationships and create awareness of a brand. The field of public relations is important in today’s society. PR requires expertise in communication in order to maintain and help meet an entities’ mission, vision, and goals. Through a close examination of communication skills, types of public relations, the effectiveness of communication in public relations, PR ethics, and the future of PR, we analyze the communicative profession of public relations

Gendering Social Studies: Teachers’ Intended and Enacted Curriculum and Student Diffraction

Due to intransigence of social studies curriculum-makers to broaden the scope of who and what is studied, women (especially non-white women) are lacking representation. However, some teachers go beyond the textbook to select alternative curriculum lenses. Utilizing curricular-instructional gatekeeping, complementary curriculum, and queer theory, this article examines how two secondary teachers who incorporate issues of gender and/or women’s experiences into their social studies curriculum describe their reasoning and intentions, how their expressed aims are manifested within their classrooms, and student reaction to the incorporation of gender and women’s experience in the social studies curriculum. Findings indicate participants value multiple perspectives and parity in social studies curriculum and map these ideas onto the explicit curriculum. However, student responses tend to resist teacher intentions and enactment of challenges to normative gender roles. This diffracted curriculum interferes with teacher aims, creating a curricular space where traditional assumptions of the gender binary play out in teacher-student and student-student interactions. These findings indicate a more relational approach to social studies curriculum may be needed to encourage students to engage constructively with nonnormative social ideas

Heat shock proteins in leukaemia cell differentiation and cell death

When HL60 cells were induced to differentiate to granulocyte-like cells with the agents N-methylformamide and tunicamycin an concentrations marginally below those which were cytotoxic, there was a decrease in the synthesis of the glucose- regulated proteins which preceded the expression of markers of a differentiated phenotype. There was a transient increase in the amount of hsp70 after 36 hours in NMF treated cells but in differentiated cells negligible amounts were detected. Inducers which were known to modulate hsp70 such as azetadine carboxylic acid did not induce differentiation suggesting early changes in the endoplasmic reticulum may be involved in the commitment to terminal differentiation of HL60 cells. These changes in group synthesis were not observed when K562 human chronic myelogenous leukemia cells were induced to differentiate to erythroid-like cells but there was a comparable increase in amounts of hsp70. When cells were treated with concentrations of drugs which brought about a loss in cell viability there was an early increase in the amount of hsp70 protein in the absence of any increase in synthesis. HL60 cells were treated with NMF (225mM), Adriamycin (1μM), or CB3717 (5μM) and there was an increase in the amounts of hsp70, in the absence of any new synthesis, which preceded any loss of membrane integrity and any significant changes in cell cycle but was concomitant with a later loss in viability of > 50% and a loss in proliferative potential. The amounts of hsp70 in the cell after treatment with any of the drugs was comparable to that obtained after a heat shock. Following a heat shock hsp70 was translocated from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, but treatment with toxic concentrations of drug caused hsp70 to remain localised in the cytoplasm. Changes in hsp70 turn-over was observed after a heat shock compared to NMF-treated cells. Morphological studies suggested that cells that had been treated with NMF and CB3717 were undergoing necrosis whereas the Adriamycin cells showed characteristics that were indicative of apoptosis. The data supports the hypothesis that an increase in amounts of hsp70 is an early marker of cell death

Tagore Pedagogy and Visual Cultures

The Tagore, Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures network brings together a group of leading international academics and visual arts practitioners to discuss and explore the legacy and continuing relevance of Indian poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) for contemporary art practice and visual culture. The group, made up of artists, curators and cultural theorists from Europe and India, has come together because they share an interest in exploring Tagore’s legacy and influence from different disciplinary backgrounds, often taking unorthodox approaches in order to think outside of the established conventions of Tagore scholarship. Tagore Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures is Directed by Andrea Phillips in collaboration with Grant Watson, Curator at Iniva. The project is funded by an AHRC International Network Grant

An exploration of the structure of mentors' behavior in nursing education using exploratory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Background: To understand nursing students' expectation from their mentors and assess mentors' performance, a scale of mentors' behavior was developed based on literature review and focus group in China. Objectives: This study aims to explore the structure of mentors' behavior. Design: A cross-sectional survey. Setting: Data were collected from nursing students in three hospitals in southwest China in 2014. Participant: A total of 669 pre-registered nursing students in their final year clinical learning participated in this study. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis was employed to explore the structure and hierarchical property of mentors' behavior. Results: Three dimensions (professional development, facilitating learning and psychosocial support) were identified by factor analysis and confirmed by Mokken scaling analysis. The three sub-scales showed internal consistency reliability from 87% to 91%, and moderate to strong precision in ordering students' expectation about mentors' behavior and a small Mokken scale showing hierarchy was identified. Conclusion: Some insight into the structure of mentoring in nursing education has been obtained and a scale which could be used in the study of mentoring and in the preparation of mentors has been developed

The structure of mentors' behaviour in clinical nursing education: Confirmatory factor analysis

Aims: To study if a three-factor structure of mentors' behaviour identified through exploratory factor analysis could be confirmed in a dataset assessing mentors' performance using structural equation modelling. Background: To measure mentor's behaviour in clinical nursing education in China, a specific instrument was developed and preliminarily validated; a three-factor structure (professional development, facilitating learning and psychosocial support) was identified in a dataset of assessment of the importance of mentors' each behaviour using exploratory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis. Design: A cross-sectional study with online and hard copy survey was applied. Methods: Convenience sampling was conducted. Nursing students (n = 634) in Southwest China participated in the study from July to August 2014. Confirmatory factor analysis was used. Results: Mentors' behaviour can be perceived as a secondary order factor with three first order factors: professional development; facilitating learning; and psychosocial support. Conclusion: The three-factor structure of mentors' behaviour was confirmed by structural equation modelling. This structure is visible in mentors' real performance and implies that this instrument could be used to assess mentors' behaviour in addition to students' expectation from mentors

Confronting otherness: An e- conversation between doctoral students living with the Imposter Syndrome

This qualitative research study is about two women doctoral students who are experiencing ―The Imposter Syndrome‖ (Clance & Imes, 1978), a phenomenon characterized by an inability to internalize academic success. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks around this phenomenon to our experiences as women graduate students in a doctoral program. The research question for this study is: Do our email conversations provide us with clues to explain our imposter feelings? The methodology for this study is autoethnography (Ellis, 1997). Emails collected over an eight month period provide the data for this study. To analyze the data we used thematic analysis. The data reveal three predominant themes; fear, family and fellowship. The findings of this study provoke an extension into the experiences of other doctoral students as they meet the challenges of self concepts in their course of study

Evaluation of the Water Footprint of Beef Cattle Production in Nebraska

Data were compiled on feed usage to model the amount of water needed to produce beef in typical Nebraska production systems. Production systems where cows were wintered on corn residue utilized 18% less water than systems utilizing native range as a wintering source, because of water allocations. Therefore, the water footprint (gallons of water required to produce one pound of boneless meat) was decreased by 18%. In addition, increasing the dietary inclusion of distillers grains from 0% to 40% decreased the water footprint in the finishing phase by 29%, again based on water allocation. Utilizing corn residue and distillers grains in Nebraska beef cattle systems decreases the overall water footprint of production. Additionally, the water footprint of the systems analyzed was 80% green water as rain, minimizing the environmental impact of beef production on freshwater use and ecological water balance