Lessons in change: adapting the World Bank’s ‘Flagship’ training course for the Pacific region

Over the past three years, the Health Policy and Health Finance Hub has collaborated with the World Bank Institute (WBI) and the Harvard School of Public Health to develop a world-class training program to strengthen cohesively health systems and policy making capacities across the Pacific region. Piloted in Fiji in June 2010, the WBI’s Flagship Program on Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing aims to give health officials a conceptual framework for analysing the performance of their health systems and for identifying the tools, policies and financing options that best meet their needs

Blended Learning in the K-2 Classroom

This is an infographic displaying some of the highlights of a research study conducted about student and teacher attitudes about blended learning in the early childhood (K-2) classroom

The Rise and Fall of Bread in America

Over the last century bread has gone through cycles of acceptance and popularity in the United States. The pressure exerted on the American bread market by manufacturers’ advertising campaigns and various dietary trends has caused it to go through periods of acceptance and rejection. Before the industrialization of bread making, consumers held few negative views on bread and perceived it primarily as a form of sustenance. After its industrialization, the battle between the manufacturers and the neighborhood bakeries over consumers began. With manufacturers, such as Wonder Bread, trying to maximize profits and dominate the market, corporate leaders aimed to discourage consumers from purchasing from smaller bakeries. Though industrial bread manufacturers came out on top, they too faced challenges as consumers began to disapprove of all bread, not just locally baked loaves. Carb Free diets and, most recently, Gluten free diets have influenced people to remove bread from their diets. With the drop in bakers’ profits, they had to come up with trends to drive consumers back to the staple. Whole wheat bread once thrown aside for white bread was welcomed back as a better and healthier choice to the processed packaged bread. Movements, such as Artisan Bread and Locally Made, help consumers return to neighborhood bakeries. With the shift back to traditional bread, Wonder Bread was forced to close, showing that consumers do value quality over cost. When looking at the big picture of bread it shows that no matter how many waves the staple food goes through it can stand the test of time

An investigation into BBC Radio 4 comedy appreciation ratings (AIs): ‘the cesspool with the velvet lid’

BBC Radio 4 comedy is heard by over five million people every week in the UK. Selecting which comedy programmes are to be broadcast on the station is mainly the duty of a single person: Radio 4’s Commissioning Editor for Comedy. She faces a delicate task, since her personal choices will affect the listening experience of millions of people. A poor selection will potentially result in a waste of licence payers’ money, can have an effect on the perception of the station as a whole, and may even enrage the listeners. The BBC currently generates ‘objective’ numerical evaluations of audience responses in order to aid the commissioning decision-making process, but are the resultant figures useful? This thesis attempts to answer that question by investigating the suitability of this data in determining the quality of Radio 4 comedy programmes, using analysis of over 650,000 responses. The key measure of objective audience evaluation of BBC broadcast programmes is the Appreciation Index (AI ), a weighted mean value derived from programme appreciation ratings on a 10-point scale from a panel of respondents. This metric is also published as an aggregate station-level score on a quarterly basis as a station performance indicator, used as a ‘meta score for channel quality’. For BBC radio, there is no other recognised objective measure of programme performance that allows episode-level evaluation; the industry standard, RAJAR, does not allow sufficient granularity for audience size information at this level of detail. Thus BBC radio (in comparison to BBC television) has a particular need for the AI to provide a meaningful figure to facilitate programme evaluation. Strict statistical theory dictates, however, that calculating a mean score using data taken from subjective ratings may not give useful results, particularly if the data spread is not unimodally distributed nor taken from a non-interval level scale. Given evidence that comedy is a divisive genre (and indeed as a constituent genre of Radio 4’s broadcasting there is desirability for it to be so), comedy may be particularly poorly represented by AI scores. Indeed, the analysis of the data shows that that the responses are not distributed in a fashion that allows the mean to be a useful measure of central tendency. Not only are the aggregate responses not spread in a unimodal distribution, individual respondents have been found to adopt patterns (types) of responses that differ from the topline distribution. Academic investigations relating to programme appreciation ratings have been relatively scarce, partly due to the limited number of broadcasters that measure this aspect of audience research, as well as the tendency for those that do to refrain from disseminating the data. Where studies have actually been published, researchers have not addressed the issue of the shape of the data’s distribution nor the nature of its scale. This work’s original contribution to knowledge considers these aspects specifically and does so for radio comedy rather than for the more typically utilised television

Teacher’s Perceptions of how they Influence Student Academic Performance in VCE Physical Education

This research explored teacher perceptions of how they influence academic performance of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education students. VCE Physical Education teachers (n = 37) from 31 secondary schools in Victoria, Australia participated in a qualitative study using focus groups with a semi-structured interview schedule. Recorded focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed (NVivo 11). A social-ecological model was used to categorise emergent themes. At the individual level teachers perceived content knowledge, expectations, passion and enthusiasm, pedagogical content knowledge and use of reflective practices to inform teaching as key factors influencing student academic performance. Social level influences identified were positive student-teacher relationships and student access to the teacher outside of class time. The emergent themes highlight the teacher perceptions of the key factors of effective teaching in this context. Professional learning opportunities to improve effectiveness of pre-service and in-service teachers of senior-secondary physical education are discussed

Insights from senior-secondary physical education students on teacher-related factors they perceive to influence academic achievement

This research aimed to explore student perceptions of teacher-related factors that may influence academic achievement in the context of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education. This qualitative study involved 23 VCE Physical Education students from three government and one independent secondary school in Victoria, Australia. Focus groups utilising a semi-structured interview schedule explored student perceptions of teacher-related factors on academic achievement. The importance of teachers having a good ‘attitude’, a broad repertoire of teaching strategies, making real-world connections, developing positive student-teacher relationships and facilitating access to themselves outside of scheduled class time were perceived by students as important influences

The ‘Perfect’ Senior (VCE) Secondary Physical Education Teacher: Student Perceptions of Teacher-related Factors that Influence Academic Performance

Improving student academic performance in senior-secondary education increases student opportunities for employment, training and further education. The aim of this research was to identify students’, completing the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education, perceptions of teacher-related factors that influence subject specific academic performance. Unit 3 and 4 VCE Physical Education students (n = 23) from three government secondary schools and one independent secondary school in Victoria, Australia completed poster annotations identifying their perception of the ‘perfect’ VCE Physical Education teacher. The de-identified data from the posters were transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed using NVivo software to explore student perceptions of teacher-related factors that influence academic performance. Emergent themes from the poster annotations suggested that student’s perceptions of the ‘perfect’ VCE Physical Education teacher included the teacher-related factors of knowledge (of subject matter), verbal ability, caring, enthusiasm and teacher accessibility