Supporting Young Immigrants in Their Transition From School to Work? A Staff Perspective on Challenges of Vocational Integration Classes

Context: The implementation of successful measures to support immigrants' integration in cultural, social, and economic life can be considered as one of today's greatest challenges for many societies. This is especially true for adolescent immigrants who have not yet been able to finish education or gain qualifications relevant to joining the labour market. That is why many receiving countries have developed and implemented special programmes that aim at supporting immigrants' integration by facilitating their employability. Unfortunately, not much is known about the process of implementing these programmes or about how education systems, schools, and teachers are dealing with the new situation and target group. In this contribution, the implementation, development, and challenges of German Vocational Integration Classes (VIC), as an example of comparable programmes in the EU, are investigated to address this research gap. The paper considers the following exploratory research questions: (a) What challenges have been experienced by teachers and social workers in the implementation of VIC as well as in the integration of immigrants into the labour market in recent years? (b) How can these challenges be met in the long run and how should VIC be developed to better achieve its aims? Methods: To answer these questions, a sequential qualitative study containing questionnaire and interview elements was conducted. First, teachers and social workers involved in VIC filled in a questionnaire about their experiences and experienced challenges in implementing VIC (N = 46). Then, supplementing interviews were conducted with participants from the first sample in order to generate further insights and to contextualise the findings from the first study part (N = 14). Findings: From the respondents' answers, it appears that the VIC programme is well implemented. The results show, however, that central challenges continue to exist. This concerns, for example, legal regulations or the development of adequate curricula, but also the scope and quality of language education. In addition, problems have also been identified with regard to students' culture-specific education and their individual attitudes. These prevailing problems seem to affect schooling and educational processes. In addition, respondents report feeling left alone to deal with problems and that their experiences from their daily work in VIC and with immigrants are not sufficiently taken into account in policy and school-related decisions. Conclusions: Although VIC seems well implemented, key challenges remain in the view of the participants. It was found that teachers cannot solve many of the identified problems themselves, as they require action at the level of policy or school organisation. For staff, this can be accompanied by increased stress and demotivation. For the young immigrants, the existing challenges can have a long-term impact on school success and transition to vocational education and training. The study thus highlights the importance of targeted and holistic strategies to support immigrant integration through education

Digitalisation in Agriculture: Knowledge and Learning Requirements of German Dairy Farmers

Purpose: This study aims at investigating how digitalisation (in the sense of industry 4.0) has changed the work of farmers and how they experience the changes from more traditional work to digitalised agriculture. It also investigates what knowledge farmers require on digitalised farms and how they acquire it. Dairy farming was used as domain of investigation since it, unlike other industries, has strongly been affected by digitalisation throughout the last years.Method: Exploratory interviews with 10 livestock farmers working on digitalised dairy farms were analysed using qualitative content analysis. A deductive and inductive coding strategy was used. Findings: Farming work has changed from more manual tasks towards symbol manipulation and data processing. Farmers must be able to use computers and other digital devices to retrieve and analyse sensor data that allow them to monitor and control the processes on their farm. For this new kind of work, farmers require elaborated mental models that link traditional farming knowledge with knowledge about digital systems, including a strong understanding of production processes underlying their farm. Learning is mostly based on instructions offered by manufacturers of the new technology as well as informal and non-formal learning modes. Even younger farmers report that digital technology was not sufficiently covered in their (vocational) degrees. In general, farmers emphasises the positive effects of digitalisation both on their working as well as private life. Conclusions: Farmers should be aware of the opportunities as well as the potential drawbacks of the digitalisation of work processes in agriculture. Providers of agricultural education (like vocational schools or training institutes) need to incorporate the knowledge and skills required to work in digitalised environments (e.g., data literacy) in their syllabi. Further studies are required to assess how digitalisation changes farming practices and what knowledge as well as skills linked to these developments are required in the future

Active labour market policies for the long-term unemployed: New evidence from causal machine learning

We investigate the effectiveness of three different job-search and training programmes for German long-term unemployed persons. On the basis of an extensive administrative data set, we evaluated the effects of those programmes on various levels of aggregation using Causal Machine Learning. We found participants to benefit from the investigated programmes with placement services to be most effective. Effects are realised quickly and are long-lasting for any programme. While the effects are rather homogenous for men, we found differential effects for women in various characteristics. Women benefit in particular when local labour market conditions improve. Regarding the allocation mechanism of the unemployed to the different programmes, we found the observed allocation to be as effective as a random allocation. Therefore, we propose data-driven rules for the allocation of the unemployed to the respective labour market programmes that would improve the status-quo

Aufgaben, Ziele und Betreuungsstrategien von am Praxissemester beteiligten Lehrkräften: Zur Exploration der Perspektive und der Erfahrungen von Mentor*innen

Im Praxissemester sind Mentor*innen für Studierende wichtige Bezugspersonen und Kooperationspartner*innen, die die Studierenden u.a. bei der Planung, Durchführung und Reflexion von Unterricht begleiten. Während z.B. zur Kompetenzentwicklung Studierender im Praxissemester mehrere    Erkenntnisse vorliegen, wurde die Perspektive von Mentor*innen bisher wenig untersucht. Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf, die Perspektive und Erfahrungen von Mentor*innen zu explorieren und sichtbar zu machen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden Ergebnisse einer leitfadenzentrierten Interviewstudie vorgestellt, an der 23 nordrhein-westfälische Lehrkräfte teilnahmen. Auf Grundlage der inhaltsanalytischen Auswertung der Transkripte werden die nachstehenden Fragestellungen beantwortet: (1) Was sind aus Sicht von Mentor*innen Aufgaben im Zusammenhang mit der Betreuung und Begleitung von Praxissemesterstudierenden?, (2) Welche Ziele haben Praxisphasen aus der Perspektive der Mentor*innen?, (3) Welchen Betreuungsstrategien folgen Mentor*innen bei der Betreuung und Begleitung von Praxissemesterstudierenden? Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Antworten der Mentor*innen hinsichtlich der ihnen selbst zugeschriebenen Aufgaben und der dem Praxissemester attribuierten Ziele kaum differieren. Die Betreuungsstrategien der Befragten unterscheiden sich hingegen vergleichsweise stark. Unterschiede bestehen u.a. bezüglich der den Studierenden zugesprochenen Freiheitsgrade bei der Unterrichtsplanung und -durchführung sowie bei der (gemeinsamen) Gestaltung der Unterrichtsplanung bzw. -vorbesprechung

An Evaluation of Food Insecurity & Health Behavior among Rural Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Participants

Introduction. Access to healthy foods is a major barrier for individuals achieving a healthy diet. The literature reveals several investigations into causes of food insecurity, but few focus on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs that attempt to address food insecurity and related health behaviors of participants.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1199/thumbnail.jp

Visual Sensory Signals Dominate Tactile Cues during Docked Feeding in Hummingbirds

Animals living in and interacting with natural environments must monitor and respond to changing conditions and unpredictable situations. Using information from multiple sensory systems allows them to modify their behavior in response to their dynamic environment but also creates the challenge of integrating different, and potentially contradictory, sources of information for behavior control. Understanding how multiple information streams are integrated to produce flexible and reliable behavior is key to understanding how behavior is controlled in natural settings. Natural settings are rarely still, which challenges animals that require precise body position control, like hummingbirds, which hover while feeding from flowers. Tactile feedback, available only once the hummingbird is docked at the flower, could provide additional information to help maintain its position at the flower. To investigate the role of tactile information for hovering control during feeding, we first asked whether hummingbirds physically interact with a feeder once docked. We quantified physical interactions between docked hummingbirds and a feeder placed in front of a stationary background pattern. Force sensors on the feeder measured a complex time course of loading that reflects the wingbeat frequency and bill movement of feeding hummingbirds, and suggests that they sometimes push against the feeder with their bill. Next, we asked whether the measured tactile interactions were used by feeding hummingbirds to maintain position relative to the feeder. We created two experimental scenarios—one in which the feeder was stationary and the visual background moved and the other where the feeder moved laterally in front of a white background. When the visual background pattern moved, docked hummingbirds pushed significantly harder in the direction of horizontal visual motion. When the feeder moved, and the background was stationary, hummingbirds generated aerodynamic force in the opposite direction of the feeder motion. These results suggest that docked hummingbirds are using visual information about the environment to maintain body position and orientation, and not actively tracking the motion of the feeder. The absence of flower tracking behavior in hummingbirds contrasts with the behavior of hawkmoths, and provides evidence that they rely primarily on the visual background rather than flower-based cues while feeding

Differentiation of benign and malignant vertebral fractures using a convolutional neural network to extract CT-based texture features.

PURPOSE To assess the diagnostic performance of three-dimensional (3D) CT-based texture features (TFs) using a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based framework to differentiate benign (osteoporotic) and malignant vertebral fractures (VFs). METHODS A total of 409 patients who underwent routine thoracolumbar spine CT at two institutions were included. VFs were categorized as benign or malignant using either biopsy or imaging follow-up of at least three months as standard of reference. Automated detection, labelling, and segmentation of the vertebrae were performed using a CNN-based framework ( https://anduin.bonescreen.de ). Eight TFs were extracted: Varianceglobal, Skewnessglobal, energy, entropy, short-run emphasis (SRE), long-run emphasis (LRE), run-length non-uniformity (RLN), and run percentage (RP). Multivariate regression models adjusted for age and sex were used to compare TFs between benign and malignant VFs. RESULTS Skewnessglobal showed a significant difference between the two groups when analyzing fractured vertebrae from T1 to L6 (benign fracture group: 0.70 [0.64-0.76]; malignant fracture group: 0.59 [0.56-0.63]; and p = 0.017), suggesting a higher skewness in benign VFs compared to malignant VFs. CONCLUSION Three-dimensional CT-based global TF skewness assessed using a CNN-based framework showed significant difference between benign and malignant thoracolumbar VFs and may therefore contribute to the clinical diagnostic work-up of patients with VFs