Disaster response and climate change in the Pacific

AbstractDisasters, and therefore disaster response, in the Pacific are expected to be affected by climate change. This research addressed this issue, and focused on the immediate humanitarian needs following a disaster, drawing upon adaptive capacity as a concept to assess the resilience of individual organisations and the robustness of the broader system of disaster response. Four case study countries (Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa) were chosen for deeper investigation of the range of issues present in the Pacific. The research process was guided by a Project Reference Group, which included key stakeholders from relevant organisations involved in Pacific disaster response to guide major decisions of the research process and to influence its progression.Given the complexity of issues involved, including the contested definitions of adaptive capacity, the research team developed a conceptual framework to underpin the research. This framework drew upon concepts from a range of relevant disciplines including Earth System Governance, climate change adaptation, health resources, resilience in institutions and practice theory. Objective and subjective determinants of adaptive capacity were used to assess the ‘disaster response system’, comprised of actors and agents from government and non-government sectors, and the governance structures, policies, plans and formal and informal networks that support them.Results revealed the most important determinant of adaptive capacity in the Pacific to be communications and relationships, with both informal and formal mechanisms found to be essential. Capacity (including human, financial and technical); leadership, management and governance structures; and risk perceptions were also highly important determinants of adaptive capacity. The research also found that in small Pacific island bureaucracies, responsibility and capacity often rests with individuals rather than organisations. Leadership, trust, informal networks and relationships were found to have a strong influence on the adaptive capacity of organisations and the broader disaster response system.A common finding across all four case study countries affecting adaptive capacity was the limited human resources for health and disaster response more generally, both in times of disaster response and in day-to-day operations. Another common finding was the gap in psychosocial support after a disaster. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) as an immediate post-disaster humanitarian need was relatively well established amongst responding organisations (although long term WASH issues were not resolved), while other humanitarian needs (health care, and food and nutrition) had varying stages of capacity – often limited by human, financial and technical resources. Adaptive capacity was therefore constrained by current gaps which need addressing alongside a future focus where risk is changing.Drawing on these and other findings, recommendations for addressing key determinants of adaptive capacity were developed for relevant stakeholder groups including policy makers and practitioners in the disaster and emergency response sectors in Australia and the Pacific

Australia’s National Assessment Programme rubrics : an impetus for self-assessment?

Background: On an annual basis, students across Australia in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on their literacy and numeracy skills via the National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), with the student performance data used for purposes including national accountability. Purpose: Against this backdrop of large-scale national assessment, this practitioner-research case study explored the possibilities of using existing NAPLAN writing assessment rubrics as a basis for formative assessment purposes. Specifically, the aim was to galvanise and encourage a culture of self-assessment within one school, using the notion of intelligent accountability. Sample: Participants included seven teachers and 126 students in Years 2, 4 and 6 (students aged approximately 7, 9 and 11 years), at an independent school in Northern Territory, Australia. Design and methods: The data presented here derive from a larger study which aimed to explore ways in which assessment can be used to scaffold students’ ability to self-regulate their learning, as part of a classroom writing project. Data sources included planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers, and email correspondence with teachers. The data were analysed for emerging themes and interpreted within a framework of social cognitive theory. Findings: The analysis identified that students used the self-assessment process to set specific learning goals for developing a number of aspects of their writing. In terms of intelligent accountability, three elements of difference were distinguished: time, confidence and experience. Conclusions: The findings from this study highlight the crucial role of self-assessment within classroom practice. The researcher-practitioner self-assessment framework developed suggests the potential for utilising large-scale assessment rubrics as a basis for formative assessment activity. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW FRIED FOOD PREPARED FROM COWPEA FLOUR

American consumers are exposed to thousands of new food products on supermarket shelves each year. For new products, such as akara products, it is crucial to determine consumer preferences and buying intentions. In this study, 346 randomly selected consumers were surveyed to reveal their preference for five akara products prepared from cowpea flour. Preference data were analyzed through use of a multi-ordered response model. Model results indicate that socio-demographic factors were weakly linked to explaining consumer preferences while product characteristics were much more important in preference considerations.Consumer/Household Economics,

Incorporating ethics in software engineering : challenges and opportunities

Ethics is recognised as an important concern in the development and operation of software systems. While there are codes of ethics and sets of ethical principles available to software professionals, there is a lack of tool and process support for systematic ethical deliberation at most stages of the software lifecycle. To create and deploy ethical software, it is vital that ethical concerns of software systems are reflected in their artefacts, such as requirements, software architecture, code and test suites, and that software professionals are supported in considering the ethical as well as technical consequences of their decisions. This paper reports on some early work in identifying the challenges of ethical decision making and opportunities for addressing these challenges in the context of software engineering.Postprin

Exceeding expectations : scaffolding agentic engagement through assessment as learning

Background: The active involvement of learners as critical, reflective and capable agents in the learning process is a core aim in contemporary education policy in Australia, and is regarded as a significant factor for academic success. However, within the relevant literature, the issue of positioning students as agents in the learning process has not been fully examined and needs further exploration. Purpose: This study aims to explore ways in which aspects of self-regulated learning theory may be integrated with the concept of agentic engagement into classroom practice. Specifically, the study seeks to scaffold students’ self-assessment capabilities and self-efficacy by using a formative assessment-as-learning process. The research examines how scaffolded planning, as part of the forethought phase in the Assessment as Learning (AaL) process, influences self-regulation and student agency in the learning process. Sample: 126 students from school years two, four and six (student age groups 7, 9 and 11 years), and 7 teachers at an independent (co-educational, non-religious) primary school in the Northern Territory, Australia, participated in the study. Design and methods: Conducted as a one-setting, cross-sectional practitioner research study, the data sources included students’ planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers and email correspondence with teachers. The data were analysed for emerging themes and interpreted from a framework of social cognitive theory. Findings: In this study, students were given the opportunity and support to exercise agentic engagement. Findings suggested that, in particular, students who were identified by their teachers as low-achieving and/or with poor motivation, were perceived by the teachers as exceededing expectations by demonstrating relatively greater motivation, persistence, effort and pride in their work than would be the case usually. Conclusions: The findings from this formative AaL study suggest that AaL has the potential to help scaffold primary students’ development of assessment capabilities. © 2016 NFER

Help seeking : Agentic learners initiating feedback

Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to present a recalibrated perspective of feedback by exploring the concept as a student-initiated learning action, manifested within classroom practice as help seeking for learning. Teachers and students from years 2, 4 and 6 at an Australian primary school worked together on a writing project, which was structured as a three-phase learning process. The value of this approach was revealed by data gathered through students’ planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers along with email correspondence with the teachers. A framework of social cognitive theory guided the analysis. It is suggested that the three-phase Assessment as Learning (AaL) process has the potential to support teachers in scaffolding students to seek help at a time when they are receptive to feedback. Furthermore, this AaL approach appears to have enhanced the teachers’ practice, particularly in respect to providing support for students during the forethought stage of the learning process. Practical techniques for scaffolding students’ adaptive help seeking and autonomy as learners are presented in the paper

Online healthy lifestyle support in the perinatal period: What do women want and do they use it?

Unhealthy weight gain and retention during pregnancy and postpartum is detrimental to mother and child. Although various barriers limit the capacity for perinatal health care providers (PHCPs) to offer healthy lifestyle counselling, they could guide women to appropriate online resources. This paper presents a project designed to provide online information to promote healthy lifestyles in the perinatal period. Focus groups or interviews were held with 116 perinatal women and 76 PHCPs to determine what online information perinatal women and PHCPs want, in what form, and how best it should be presented. The results indicated that women wanted smartphone applications (apps) linked to trustworthy websites containing short answers to everyday concerns; information on local support services; and personalised tools to assess their nutrition, fitness and weight. Suggestions for improvement in these lifestyle areas should be practical and tailored to the developmental stage of their child. PHCPs wanted evidence-based, practical information, presented in a simple, engaging, interactive form. The outcome was a clinically endorsed website and app that health professionals could recommend. Preliminary evaluation showed that 10.5% of pregnant women in Western Australia signed up to the app. Use of the app appeared to be equitable across urban and rural areas of low to middle socioeconomic status

Assessment to develop students’ strategies and competence as learners

Assessment has been called “the bridge between teaching and learning” (Wiliam, 2011, p. 50), which reflects this chapter’s exploration of how students’ use of learning strategies can be developed when they engage in Assessment as Learning (AaL). The chapter’s discussion of AaL as an evidence-based teaching and learning approach derives from a larger mixed-methods study (Fletcher, 2015), in which teachers and students from Years 2, 4 and 6 worked together on an AaL writing project. The term AaL refers to assessment that is designed to enable students to reflect on and monitor their own progress to inform their future learning goals

Intraspecific trait variation and changing life-history strategies explain host community disease risk along a temperature gradient

Predicting how climate change will affect disease risk is complicated by the fact that changing environmental conditions can affect disease through direct and indirect effects. Species with fast-paced life-history strategies often amplify disease, and changing climate can modify life-history composition of communities thereby altering disease risk. However, individuals within a species can also respond to changing conditions with intraspecific trait variation. To test the effect of temperature, as well as inter- and intraspecifc trait variation on community disease risk, we measured foliar disease and specific leaf area (SLA; a proxy for life-history strategy) on more than 2500 host (plant) individuals in 199 communities across a 1101 m elevational gradient in southeastern Switzerland. There was no direct effect of increasing temperature on disease. Instead, increasing temperature favoured species with higher SLA, fast-paced life-history strategies. This effect was balanced by intraspecific variation in SLA: on average, host individuals expressed lower SLA with increasing temperature, and this effect was stronger among species adapted to warmer temperatures and lower latitudes. These results demonstrate how impacts of changing temperature on disease may depend on how temperature combines and interacts with host community structure while indicating that evolutionary constraints can determine how these effects are manifested under global change. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world’

Multiple dimensions of biodiversity mediate effects of temperature on invertebrate herbivory in a montane grassland

Invertebrate herbivores are important and diverse, and their abundance and impacts will likely shift under climate change. Yet, past studies of invertebrate herbivory have documented highly variable responses to changing temperature, making it challenging to predict the direction and magnitude of these shifts. One explanation for these responses is that changing environmental conditions drive concurrent changes in plant communities and herbivore traits. The impacts of changing temperature on herbivory might therefore depend on how temperature combines and interacts with characteristics of plant and herbivore communities. To test this, we surveyed damage to leaves by invertebrate herbivores on 4400 plant individuals in 220 sampling plots along a 1101 m elevational gradient. Increasing temperature drove community‐level herbivory via at least three overlapping mechanisms: increasing temperature directly reduced herbivory, indirectly affected herbivory by reducing plant‐community phylogenetic diversity, and indirectly affected herbivory by altering the effects of plant‐community functional and phylogenetic diversity on herbivory. Consequently, increasing plant functional diversity reduced herbivory in colder environments while increasing plant phylogenetic diversity increased herbivory in warmer environments. Moreover, different herbivore feeding guilds varied in their response to temperature and plant community composition. These results indicate that, even along a single elevation gradient in a single year, a variety of mechanisms can concurrently drive herbivory, thereby supporting the hypothesis that a universal response of herbivory to changing environmental conditions is unlikely to exist. Instead, our results highlight the importance of considering both plant and herbivore community context to predict how climate change will alter invertebrate herbivory