An appetite for learning : increasing employee demand for skills development

Raising the demand for skills amongst individuals in the workforce is critical if the UK is to meet its 2020 Ambition. This edition of Praxis highlights a number of policy interventions that the evidence suggests can work, and proposes a policy framework for describing and understanding these. The paper aims to stimulate wider debate about the policy interventions most likely to address the barriers to learning faced by the UK workforce. To this end the UK Commission welcomes readers' responses to the following questions, prompted by this paper

Experiencing Alba Tressina’s Anima mea liquefacta est through Bodily Humors and the Sacred Erotic

In this article, I situate Tressina’s Anima mea liquefacta est (1622) at the nexus of Renaissance and Early Modern intellectual and religious frameworks. I demonstrate the ways in which it connects with the sacred erotic, a major component of European religious thought in the seventeenth century, and Galenic humorism, which by the end of the Renaissance had regained popularity. Through close reading of Tressina’s composition, I explore the artistic and cultural celebration of the sacred erotic and its offshoot, liquid eros, as well as the link between humorism and musical performance. Finally, I analyze Anima mea with respect to humorism, mapping Galen’s four humors and their cultural connotations line by line onto the piece itself in order to more fully appreciate the associations between sacred eroticism, the psychology and emotion of performance, and the physical bodies of the nuns who performed this music. Tressina’s compositions employ many conventions of sacred polyphonic music popular in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Such pre–existing conventions function as a shorthand version of collectively agreed–upon cultural meanings, performing cultural work that is easily recognizable to a wide variety of listeners living in a common time, society, and geographic area. By linking Anima mea to prevailing ideas about the body and its connection with the Divine, I demonstrate the extent to which Tressina interacted with and contributed to her artistic and political communities—not cut off from society, as many in the church hierarchy expected from a cloistered nun, but very much a part of it

Now Rising O’er the Ganges: Vibrant Lives in Rural India

All photographs were taken in and around Anupshahr, Uttar Pradesh, where Johnson lived for a year volunteering with Pardada Pardadi School. These photos were taken between 2009 and 2012

CONFLICTING CULTURES, COMPROMISING CARE: A HEURISTIC INQUIRY OF WOMEN DIRECTORS OF COLLEGE COUNSELING CENTERS

The role that women leaders of college counseling centers have is unique; they must contend with the inherent social norms that women face in gendered organizations, in addition to negotiating the dichotomous, and often conflicting, leadership expectations of a care work division and a care-less upper administration. The purpose of this qualitative, heuristic, phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of women directors of college counseling centers. Moreover, this study sought to understand the lived experiences, beliefs, and actions of these directors how these experiences influenced, and continue to influence, their leadership pathway in a care-oriented division within the careless institution of higher education. Three of the themes that encompassed the lived experience of these women in counseling leadership within a care-less context included: (1) caring about care, (2) (un)compensated care, and (3) care-less compromises. These themes portray the interaction between gender, leadership, and care work within the care-less landscape of higher education

Outcomes of an Evidence-Based, Data Driven-Model Fieldwork Experience for Occupational Therapy Students

Over the past decade, there has been an increased emphasis on evidence-based practice (EBP) and the use of outcome measurement in clinical practice, however, the implementation of evidence into practice remains challenging and irregular. During fieldwork, students often experience a disconnect between the emphasis on EBP in the classroom and lack of use in the clinic. Recognizing the need to develop high-quality, evidence-based and data-driven models of practice for student training, we partnered with local fieldwork educators to develop an innovative program that guides students and simultaneously trains fieldwork educators (FWE) in the use of a systematic data driven decision making (DDDM) process to infuse evidence into practice. Using a pre-post quasi-experimental design, we evaluated the impact of this program on students’ perceived knowledge and skills in use of EBP and DDDM. A focus group with participating fieldwork educators captured their knowledge and attitudes in the use of EBP and DDDM in their clinical sites. Eleven FWEs and twenty four students participated. Results revealed significant change in students’ knowledge and skill in use of EBP and DDDM. FWEs reported the program clarified the role of occupational therapy, enhanced communication, and validated the value of occupational therapy in their clinical site. This program serves as a model for training students to implement evidence and data driven approaches in clinical practice, thus bridging the gap between classroom and clinic

Employee demand for skills: evidence and policy review : UK Commission for Employment and Skills Research Report no. 3

This report presents the results of a detailed review of evidence and policy relating to the factors that influence the engagement of the individual in skills development. It incorporates a broad range of formal and informal learning activities, delivered in a range of institutional settings and through different media, including work-based, classroombased, distance learning and community based learning. The review is deliberately broad in its focus, drawing on evidence and policy relating to people in different positions within the labour market - in or out of work, new entrants into employment, younger and older workers, people with and without qualifications and/or with higher and lower skills. However, a key focus for the research was the barriers and factors affecting access to skills development opportunities among lower skilled and lower qualified people. The review was undertaken by WM Enterprise and the Employment Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UK Commission)

Casts for Creating Success: An Activity Manual for Pediatric Modified Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy

Unilateral paralysis or paresis of an upper extremity can cause gross and fine motor functional impairments. These impairments can severely impact bilateral function of the upper extremities, thereby affecting a child’s participation in daily activities. Modified constraint-induced movement therapy (mCIMT) is an emerging and potentially effective treatment for children with unilateral upper extremity impairment that can profoundly improve their functional ability. Thus, the purpose of this project was to create an activity manual for occupational therapists to conduct a mCIMT program for children with unilateral upper extremity impairment through Children’s Therapy Unit at Good Samaritan Hospital in collaboration with the University of Puget Sound. This manual includes progressively graded gross and fine motor activities that promote active functional use of the involved upper extremity for unilateral and bilateral tasks. The manual was designed to provide ease of access for therapists to set-up, conduct, and grade the mCIMT activities up or down depending on the child’s motor function

Business Strategy, Staffing Orientation, and Information Systems Performance

Miles and Snow (1978) identified four strategy types: defenders, prospectors, analyzers, and reactors. Their typology is used to propose a relationship between business strategy, information systems (IS) staffing orientation, and IS performance. Hypotheses predict that prospectors’ staffing orientation is external, defenders’ staffing orientation is internal, and analyzers assume an intermediate staffing orientation where they engage in less internal staffing than defenders and less external staffing than prospectors. IS performance is expected to be higher when defenders’ staffing orientation is internal, prospectors’ staffing orientation is external, and analyzers employ a combination of internal and external staffing. IS performance is expected to be consistently higher for these three strategy types than for reactors

Temporal and visual source memory deficits among ecstasy/polydrug users

Objectives: The present paper seeks to investigate whether source memory judgements are adversely affected by recreational illicit drug use. Method: Sixty-two ecstasy/polydrug users and 75 non ecstasy users completed a source memory task, in which they tried to determine whether or not a word had been previously presented and if so, attempted to recall the format, location and temporal position in which the word had occurred. Results: While not differing in terms of the number of hits and false positive responses, ecstasy/polydrug users adopted a more liberal decision criterion when judging if a word had been presented previously. With regard to source memory, users were less able to determine the format in which words had been presented (upper versus lower case). Female users did worse than female nonusers in determining which list (first or second) a word was from. Unexpectedly, the current frequency of cocaine use was negative associated with list and case source memory performance. Conclusions: Given the role that source memory plays in everyday cognition, those who use cocaine more frequently might have more difficulty in everyday tasks such as recalling the sources of crucial information or making use of contextual information as an aid to learning

Exposure contrasts of pregnant women during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Exposure to OBJECTIVES: This paper reports exposure reductions achieved by a liquified petroleum gas (LPG) stove and fuel intervention for pregnant mothers in the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) randomized controlled trial. METHODS: The HAPIN trial included 3,195 households primarily using biomass for cooking in Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda. Twenty-four-hour exposures to RESULTS: Median postrandomization exposures of particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameter DISCUSSION: Postinterventio