Soft Skills in Mississippi Community Colleges\u27 Online Career and Technical Programs

Soft skills are an essential piece in the employment puzzle, and most students’ behavioral characteristics require development, if not complete transformation, before learning can subsequently be transferred to the workplace. To that end, this facet of occupational education in community colleges’ online courses was in need of exploration to determine whether instructors were having success in implementing instructional and assessment methods for both teaching and grading students’ soft skills behaviors. This mixed methods study narrowed the focus of an extremely broad topic to four skills, specifically communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and work ethic. A look at how those skills related to online students’ overall employment readiness was also examined. In an effort to provide a comprehensive investigation, the study began with a focus group to collect ideas and generate themes for items to create a questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to instructors of online CTE courses at participating institutions to collect survey data. Participants who volunteered via an open-ended question on the survey instrument were then invited to share their stories through interviews. This in-depth investigation produced deeper meaning and explained points found in the quantitative data that otherwise seemed contradictory. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed a critical dearth of teamwork instruction and assessment. Nevertheless, overall findings were conducive to promoting incorporation of soft skills in online courses as well as allowing instructors to trust the educational process when considering whether online students are ready for employment

Teachers’ and center leaders’ sensemaking of inquiry-based professional learning in early childhood education and care programs : a multiple case study

Professional development (PD) in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is at a critical juncture within the current accountability and standards movement. Various stakeholders position PD as a necessity to ready children within a neoliberal framing of the education process and posit universal training/PD as a solution. Conversely, many scholars continue to call for more critical approaches such as inquiry-based professional learning (IBPL) to better support the linguistically and culturally diverse early childhood landscape and address larger social-justice inequities. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms responsible for sustaining such IBPL practices. This research, therefore explores how center leaders and teachers of three ECEC programs made sense of enacting and engaging in varying forms of IBPL. Specifically guided by two research questions: 1) How do school leaders and teachers make sense of PL and their experiences within them and their school community? 2) How do school leaders and teachers make sense of IBPL and their experiences within them and their school community? Chapter 1 introduces my research questions and framing of this study. Chapter 2 reviews four stands of the literature pertinent to this study. First, it explores how PD has been defined and understood by identifying current best practices as well as exploring critical understandings within ECEC. Next, the chapter synthesizes relevant literature in the areas of teacher development research and highlights how teachers learn. Then, the chapter explores IBPL specifically by first defining then illuminating the differences between PL and IBPL as well as the varying ways IBPL has been enacted in ECEC programs. Chapter 2 then closes with a review of the theoretical framework that informs this study, sensemaking. Chapter 3 details the methodology that guided this instrumental multiple case study including data collection and analysis. Chapters 4 and 5 present the findings from this research. Chapter 4 looks at how teachers and center leaders made sense of PL and Chapter 5 looks at how they made sense of IBPL specifically. Chapter 6 addresses the significance of these findings and concludes with a discussion of implications and suggestions for future researchCurriculum and Instructio

Trends in legume consumption among ethnically diverse adults in a longitudinal cohort study in Australia

Abstract presented at the Experimental Biology 2015 conference, 28 March-1 April 2015, Boston, United States

Evaluation of Households into Work Phase 2: final report

Households into Work (HiW) is an employment support programme led by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA). Clients are offered 1:1 bespoke support for up to 12 months, aimed at helping them identify and overcome the issues that are preventing them from seeking, considering or moving into employment, education or training. The issues faced by people on the programme are complex and varied including debt, finances, housing, mental health, domestic violence, addiction and isolation. HiW has been a key component of LCRCA’s employment and skills strategy since its inception. Phase 1 was a two-year pilot from 2018 to 2020, on the basis of which the programme was continued. This report is on the evaluation of HiW Phase 2, which ran from 1 October 2020 to 31 March 2023. The evaluation has been carried out by the University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place, for the purposes of understanding the outcomes of Phase 2, tracking how the programme has evolved in response to various contextual changes, and informing current and potential future phases

Parenting for Autism, Language, And Communication Evaluation Study (PALACES): protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial

Introduction Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) often have associated behavioural difficulties that can present a challenge for parents and parenting. There are several effective social learning theory-based parenting programmes for dealing with behavioural difficulties, including the Incredible Years (IY) parent programmes. However, these programmes typically do not specifically target parents of children with ASD. Recently, a new addition to the IY suite of programmes known as the IY Autistic Spectrum and Language Delays (IY-ASLD) parent programme was developed. The main aims of the present study are to examine the feasibility of delivering this programme within child health services and to provide initial evidence for effectiveness and economic costs. Methods and analysis The Parenting for Autism, Language, And Communication Evaluation Study (PALACES) trial is a pragmatic, multicentre, pilot randomised controlled trial comparing the IY-ASLD programme with a wait-list control condition. 72 parents of children with ASD (aged 3–8 years) will be randomly allocated to either the intervention or control condition. Data will be collected prior to randomisation and 6 months postrandomisation for all families. Families in the intervention condition only will also be followed up at 12 and 18 months postrandomisation. This study will provide initial evidence of effectiveness for the newly developed IY-ASLD parenting programme. It will also add to the limited economic evidence for an intervention targeting parents of children with ASD and provide longer term data, an important component for evaluations of parenting programmes. Ethics and dissemination Approval for the study was granted by the Research Ethics Committee at the School of Psychology, Bangor University (reference number: 2016–15768) and the North Wales Research Ethics Committee, UK (reference number: 16/WA/0224). The findings will be disseminated through research conferences and peer-reviewed journals

Getting it right: creating partnerships for change. Integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges in social work education and practice

The 2012 Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (ASWEAS) state that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing are one of four essential core curriculum content areas alongside Mental Health, Child Wellbeing and Protection and Cross-cultural knowledge and skills, that must now be included in all Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW)-accredited social work programs (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2012a). By articulating this new requirement, the AASW is asserting that social workers need to be informed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges in all areas of practice