Access to early childhood education in Australia

This report presents AIFS research undertaken to identify gaps in access to and participation in preschool programs by Australian children in the year before full-time school review how "access" to preschool services is conceptualised and defined; identify the issues and factors that affect access to preschool services; and document and provide recommendations on how access to preschool services can be measured beyond broad performance indicators. To meet these objectives, the publication includes a review of Australian and international literature; results of consultations across Australia; and analyses of participation of children in early childhood education using a number of Australian datasets. The key messages identified by the study included: "Access" to Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Australia is considered to be more than just "participation" in ECE. It should, for example, also cover elements of quality, relevance to children. However, data are not available that would allow measurement against such a broadly defined concept of "access". There are difficulties and limitations in using existing survey and administrative data to measure "access" by "participation" in ECE. Nevertheless these data provide broad indications of ECE participation. Participation rates have the advantage of being easily understood and easily compared over jurisdictions and time. The complexity and variation in how ECE is delivered in Australia has implications for the measurement of access. This is related to different nomenclature used, and varied ages at which children are eligible to attend ECE. The different models of delivery of ECE also complicate the measurement issues, with long day care a widespread provider of ECE in some states/territories, but not others. Given there are difficulties in measuring access, this research used a number of datasets, to provide a fuller understanding of access across Australia. The analyses showed that children missing out on ECE were more often represented among disadvantaged families, and whose children are perhaps in greatest need of ECE to achieve school-readiness. The groups of children who stood out in these analyses as being less likely to be participating in ECE were Indigenous children and children from NESB backgrounds

Size corrections based on refractive index for particle measuring systems active scattering aerosol spectrometer probe (ASASP-X)

January 1996.Includes bibliographical references.The response function for the ASASP-X is affected by the optical properties of atmospheric aerosols. The manufacturer calibration is based on polystyrene latex spheres (m=l.588-0i), therefore the size distributions derived from measurements taken with the ASASP-X should be corrected for particles of different refractive index. Corrections based on the manufacturer calibration and Mie theory are used to derive size corrections for different refractive indices. These corrections are applied to data and demonstrate the significant over and underestimation of aerosol volume distributions possible if no corrections to diameter are applied.Funding agency: National Park Service #1443-CA0001-92-006 96.5

Access to early childhood education in Australia: insights from a qualitative study

Based on interviews with 94 parents in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia, this report investigates parents\u27 knowledge of and attitudes towards early childhood education. Executive summary This report documents the background, methodology and findings from the Access to Early Childhood Education (AECE): Qualitative Study, undertaken by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and commissioned by the then Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR; now the Department of Education) on behalf of the Early Childhood Data Subgroup (ECDSG). This research was commissioned within the context of the National Partnership Agreement on Early Childhood Education (NP ECE), which jointly committed the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments to achieving universal access to preschool by 2013. The AECE Qualitative Study was undertaken in order to develop a qualitative evidence base about how the concept of “access” to early childhood education (ECE) is defined and understood, and to explore what reasons and barriers exist in relation to access to ECE. A qualitative framework was chosen for this study to enable more in-depth study of any barriers to ECE, and/or factors that lead to parents making particular decisions about their children’s use of ECE. &nbsp

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Asexual, Intersex et al. (LGBTQAI+) Health Access Disparities in Female-Identified Clients

To address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, intersex et al. (LGBTQAI+) health policy, we must consider the historical context of the population in the United States. Within the last twenty years, the legal system codified basic safety and fundamental rights for LGBTQAI+ citizens. The legal system makes change slower than most other systems in order to preserve the rule of law from the tidal waves of popular opinion, and law often follows and codifies established policy. In the United States, there is great discrepancy in social attitudes towards this community that the creation of anti-discrimination laws beget new policies across all areas of social systems (Harrison & Michelson, 2017). Consequently, new anti-discrimination laws prescribe the conscientious and meticulous undoing of systemic bias in all of our social services, from housing to health care

Alone-Together: Shelves as Intergenerational Maps of Sense-Laden, Relational, Multimodal Pedagogies

Engaging with the concept of sensory shelfies, this essay exhibits how children and adults move across and between sounds, images and objects to make meaning and to tell stories. We glance beyond boundaries and imagine the notion of the shelf as an ongoing mapping of self where layers of experience enmesh and superimpose, and where our sense of self unfolds in the in-between, liminal spaces. These twelve shelves multimodally depict the porosity and fissures that opened up as we moved fluidly between online-offline spaces alone-together. Putting into practice an experimental and speculative approach to our research (Truman et al, 2020; Springgay and Truman, 2018), we argue for these methods as pedagogies that engage with the dynamic complexity of spaces of self. The point of departure for this researc

Alone-together:intergenerational mapping of digital and analogue spaces of self

The project featured in this article experiments with mapping methods as part of a research-creation approach to exploring spaces, times, and movements within materialisations of self. Bringing together adults and children across two cities during lockdown, the project problematises a stance on ‘learning loss’ during the pandemic and instead focuses on the potential of the experiential blurriness of analogue and digital spaces. Rather than seeking to control and structure online learning – thereby denying and limiting its possibilities, explorations, and senses of self – three researchers set out on a speculative approach that acknowledges the dynamic complexity of physical and virtual ways of knowing and being. The article discusses the affordances and challenges that the methodology offers and concludes with the broader implications of this research for reimagined post-pandemic pedagogies. In the end, we advocate for mapping as a way of generously creating spaces and activating meaning-making in diverse learning contexts

Psychological and physiological correlates of sleep in HIV infection

Insomnia, a common problem associated with HIV disease, is most likely caused by a multitude of factors. This study investigated the correlations between a selected group of physiological and psychological factors and sleep quality in an HIV-infected population. A convenience sample of 79 ethnically diverse HIVpositive adults, ages 24 to 63, completed a number of questionnaires and released their laboratory records for CD4+ cell count and viral load information. Variables significantly related to sleep quality were HIV-related symptoms, total pain, fatigue, depression, state anxiety, and the number of adults in the household. Findings support the need for health care providers to consider factors that contribute to impaired sleep when developing effective care for HIV-infected individuals with sleep disturbance

Ethical Issues Surrounding Weight Bias and Stigma in Healthcare

With the recognition of obesity as a global epidemic (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012), there has been increased interest in the study of weight bias and stigmatization (Ashmore, Friedman, Reichmann, & Musante, 2008; Puhl, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2005). Weight bias is a highly prevalent form of discrimination, perhaps as common as racial bias (Shkolnikova, 2008). Occurring in a wide variety of settings, weight bias may produce adverse effects in social relationships, education, employment, and health care (Durso & Latner, 2008), with the result that obese or overweight persons are socially marginalized and stigmatized

Analytical validation of new ELISAs for the quantitation of polyclonal free light chains and comparison to existing assays for healthy and patient samples

Background: Polyclonal FLCs can be used as a biomarker of inflammation and immune activation in a range of diseases. This study evaluated the performance of new FLC ELISAs (Seralite FLC ELISA) for the quantitation of polyclonal κ and λ FLC, including comparisons to existing assays. Methods: Technical performance was assessed for the ELISA and reference ranges were generated using healthy donor serum (N = 91). Patients with a range of conditions associated with polyclonal FLC dysregulation (N = 164) were measured across platforms. Results: The ELISAs generated references ranges of: 8.72–23.0 mg/L κ FLC, and 8.52–25.24 mg/L for λ FLC. ELISAs demonstrated linearity across the calibration range and intra-assay (≤ 8.7%) and inter-assay (≤ 12.3%) imprecision was low. The limit of detection was 0.63 mg/L for κ and 0.57 mg/L for λ FLC. Minimal cross-reactivity was observed for interference agents, alternate FLC and whole immunoglobulin (median change ≤3.6 mg/L). Assays showed good batch-to-batch consistency. For patient samples, methods generated different κ and λ FLC concentrations and differences were seen between methods for the number of patients classified as below, with and above references ranges for κ and λ FLC. There was no significant difference in the FLC sum between the different techniques. Conclusions: The ELISAs displayed good analytical and technical performance. The quantification of individual κ and λ FLC appears inherently different between platforms. These differences are attenuated if using the FLC sum, which was similar between methods and provided agreement in relation to patients having normal or elevated FLCs.</p