Support for graphicacy: a review of textbooks available to accounting students

This Teaching Note reports on the support available in textbooks for graphicacy that will help students understand the complexities of graphical displays. Graphical displays play a significant role in financial reporting, and studies have found evidence of measurement distortion and selection bias. To understand the complexities of graphical displays, students need a sound understanding of graphicacy and support from the textbooks available to them to develop that understanding. The Teaching Note reports on a survey that examined the textbooks available to students attending two Scottish universities. The support of critical graphicacy skills was examined in conjunction with textbook characteristics. The survey, which was not restricted to textbooks designated as required reading, examined the textbooks for content on data measurement and graphical displays. The findings highlight a lack of support for graphicacy in the textbooks selected. The study concludes that accounting educators need to scrutinize more closely the selection of textbooks and calls for more extensive research into textbooks as a pedagogic tool

Nurturing the young shoots of talent: Using action research for exploration and theory building

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 19(4), 433-450, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1350293X.2011.623515.This paper reports the outcomes of a set of action research projects carried out by teacher researchers in 14 local education authorities in England, working collaboratively with university tutors, over a period of three years. The common aim of all the projects was to explore practical ways of nurturing the gifts and talents of children aged four–seven years. The project was funded by the Department of Education and Skills in England as part of the government's gifted and talented programme. The project teachers felt that their understanding of issues relating to nurturing the gifts and talents of younger children was enhanced through their engagement in the project. It was possible to map the findings of the projects to the English government's National Quality Standards for gifted and talented education which include: (1) identification; (2) effective provision in the classroom; (3) enabling curriculum entitlement and choice; (4) assessment for learning; (5) engaging with community, families and beyond. The findings are also analysed within the framework of good practice in educating children in the first years of schooling. Participating practitioners felt that action research offered them a suitable methodology to explore the complexity of the topic of giftedness through cycles of planning, action and reflection and personal theory building

Breaking the Double Impasse: Securing and Supporting Diverse Housing Tenures in the United States

What might be described as a double impasse characterizes debate on U.S. housing tenure with advocates fighting for rental or ownership housing on one side and Third Way or mixed-tenure solutions on the other. Breaking this impasse requires disengaging from conceptions of an idealized form of tenure and instead advocating making virtually all tenures as secure and supported as possible, so that diverse households are able to live in homes that best fit their changing needs over their life cycles. This essay (a) presents data on the variety of tenures in the United States; (b) conveys a new two-dimensional map of tenure according to their degrees of control and potential for wealth-building; and (c) shows how U.S. institutions shape their risks and subsidies. Most U.S. tenures are at least somewhat risky, including those that receive the greatest federal subsidies. A new housing system is needed to secure and support as many tenures as possible

Architectures of control in consumer product design

Copyright @ 2005 Social Services Research GroupThe idea of architectures of control is introduced through examples ranging from urban planning to digital rights management, and the intentions behind their use in consumer products are examined, with reference to case studies of printer cartridges and proposed 'optimum lifetime products.' The reactions of the technical community and consumers themselves are also explored, along with some wider implications for society

Maternal care and birth outcomes among ethnic minority women in Finland

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Care during pregnancy and labour is of great importance in every culture. Studies show that people of migrant origin have barriers to obtaining accessible and good quality care compared to people in the host society. The aim of this study is to compare the access to and use of maternity services, and their outcomes among ethnic minority women having a singleton birth in Finland.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study is based on data from the Finnish Medical Birth Register in 1999–2001 linked with the information of Statistics Finland on woman's country of birth, citizenship and mother tongue. Our study data included 6,532 women of foreign origin (3.9% of all singletons) giving singleton birth in Finland during 1999–2001 (compared to 158,469 Finnish origin singletons).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most women have migrated during the last fifteen years, mainly from Russia, Baltic countries, Somalia and East Europe. Migrant origin women participated substantially in prenatal care. Interventions performed or needed during pregnancy and childbirth varied between ethnic groups. Women of African and Somali origin had most health problems resulted in the highest perinatal mortality rates. Women from East Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Somalia had a significant risk of low birth weight and small for gestational age newborns. Most premature newborns were found among women from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Primiparous women from Africa, Somalia and Latin America and Caribbean had most caesarean sections while newborns of Latin American origin had more interventions after birth.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Despite good general coverage of maternal care among migrant origin women, there were clear variations in the type of treatment given to them or needed by them. African origin women had the most health problems during pregnancy and childbirth and the worst perinatal outcomes indicating the urgent need of targeted preventive and special care. These study results do not confirm either healthy migrant effect or epidemiological paradox according to which migrant origin women have considerable good birth outcomes.</p