The Influence of Financial Aid on Academic Performance and Persistence in Medical School

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship of financial aid to the persistence and academic performance of financial aid recipients in a professional school. Receipt of aid did not correlate significantly with graduation rate or class rank. Therefore, financial aid provided capable students, who otherwise could not afford, it the opportunity to attend medical school

Mental Health and Psychosocial Calls in the Prehospital Setting in Ontario: A Qualitative Case Study

Paramedics have seldom been included in discussions of mental health care and yet play a significant role in the chain of mental health care for many. This thesis explores the nature of paramedic work and the mental health and psychosocial calls encountered by paramedics in the community. This project is a case study of mental health and psychosocial calls in paramedicine in Ontario and was designed to explore the care provided by paramedics on mental health and psychosocial calls, the training and resources for these calls, and the experiences of paramedics in managing these calls. Using both a feminist political economy and social determinants of health approach, this thesis explores questions around care provision on the front lines, but also beyond into community mental health services and to the social determinants of health impacting an individuals need for care from paramedic services. I conducted interviews with front-line paramedics, paramedic services management, paramedic educators and Base Hospital physicians/managers; observation in three paramedic services including urban, rural/suburban and rural with varying degrees of engagement on the issue of mental health in paramedicine; and document analyses of the standards guiding paramedic practice in this area. This thesis reframes issues of mental health calls in paramedicine from an issue of misuse of emergency services, to one which accounts for the contexts creating distress as well as existing constraints for work and care. Findings from this study support enhanced training and education for paramedics, specific mental health related programming for paramedic services, as well as the importance of working conditions for both care providers and care recipients. I argue that there must be a balance between efforts placed on establishing appropriate supports for managing mental health and psychosocial calls as well as addressing necessary training and education in this area, while simultaneously ensuring sufficient focus remains at the level of prevention at the broader social, political, and economic determinants of physical and mental health

Digital libraries for creative communities

Digital library technologies have a great deal to offer to creative, design communities. They can enable large collections of text, images, music, video and other information objects to be organised and accessed in interesting and diverse ways. Ordinary people—people not traditionally viewed as 'creators' or 'designers'—can now conceive, assemble, build, and disseminate new information collections. This paper explores the development rationale behind the Greenstone digital library technology. We also examine three examples of creative new techniques for accessing and presenting information in digital libraries and stress the importance of tailoring information access to support the requirements of the users and application area

Belonging to school: the nature and extent of the bond between pupil and school

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Professional Doctorate within the Institute of Applied Social ResearchThe school holds particular functions for society; to credential, to contain and to shape the citizens of the future. One much discussed function is the influence of school on the morality and behaviour of young people. This thesis explores the nature of the bond between pupil and school, how it affects behaviour and how it is shaped by the school culture. The focus is derived from an integration of different disciplinary and theoretical paradigm in three previously separate fields; criminology, education and psychotherapy. This thesis is practice-based, using mixed methods research centred on a case-study school and encompasses pupil questionnaires (n=189), pupil interviews (n=5) and extensive ethnographic research. Furthermore, the study is unusual due to the 'insider' status created by my professional role within the school. In this thesis, Hirschi's bond to conformity (1969) is developed to incorporate a pupil's perceptions of the bond. This is defined as a sense of belonging. Findings indicate that a pupil's sense of belonging is significantly linked to pupil behaviour. Furthermore, elemental strands of the sense of belonging signify that the pupil's perception of the school's bond to him, are of key importance. This foregrounds the significance of a school's cultural Character (Berne, 1973) on shaping a pupil's perceptions and sense of belonging. The purpose of this study is to generate useful findings that will support academics, practitioners and policy-makers in attending to a pupil's sense of belonging and a school's culture. The findings that emerge have important implications for professional education and training, and for school development

Iurii Trifonov’s fireglow and the “mnemonic communities” of the brezhnev era

Cet article étudie les réseaux de partage des Mémoires et de l’information historique du début de la période soviétique qui ont fait suite aux recherches de l’écrivain Jurij Trifonov et à la publication, par celui-ci, de la biographie de son père, Otblesk kostra [Le Reflet du brasier] (1965 ; version augmentée en 1966). Il analyse ces « communautés mnémoniques » des vétérans de la guerre civile et des historiens amateurs locaux non pas comme une forme de dissidence mais davantage comme une illustration de l’instabilité des frontières de la mémoire publique soviétique et de l’historiographie dans les premières années de l’ère brejnévienne. Plus largement, ces échanges de l’écrivain avec ses lecteurs sont pénétrés d’une croyance en l’accumulation de la vérité historique, plutôt qu’en sa déconstruction. En conclusion, l’auteur examine les similitudes, mais aussi les différences cruciales, entre le texte de Trifonov, progressivement augmenté des contributions des lecteurs, et d’autres projets contemporains de reconstruction mnémonique et historique de la fin des années 1960 et des années 1970, tels que L’Archipel du Gulag d’Aleksandr Solženicyn.This article examines the networks of sharing of historical information and memories of the early Soviet period, which formed as a result of the writer Iurii Trifonov’s research and publication of his biography of his father, “Fireglow” (1965; second, expanded edition, 1966). It analyses these “mnemonic communities” of Civil war veterans and local and amateur historians not as a form of dissidence, but rather as an illustration of the unstable boundaries of Soviet public memory and historiography in the early years of the Brezhnev era. More broadly, these exchanges between a writer and his readers were permeated by a belief in the accumulation, rather than deconstruction, of historical truth. In concluding, the article considers the similarities, yet also the crucial differences, between Trifonov’s expanding text and other, contemporary projects of historical and mnemonic reconstruction in the late 1960s and 1970s, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago.

A Proposed Framework for the Evaluation of Academic Librarian Scholarship

The ACRL Impactful Scholarship and Metrics Task Force has created a framework draft that is designed to help librarians and libraries contextualize their impact within academic librarianship. To create this framework, the task force studied existing disciplinary models, institutional guidelines, and surveyed academic librarians. The task force discovered few standard practices regarding impact measurement from disciplinary societies or in institutional documentation, but did find some larger models outlining distinct impact areas. The proposed framework outlines evaluation in two primary impact areas for academic librarians, scholarly and practitioner impact, with suggested metrics for a range of research outputs in each category. It is envisioned that this framework will help initiate conversations at institutions with the aim of reviewing and revising existing documentation, alongside complementary ACRL initiatives that will similarly affect scholarly production and evaluation. The first framework draft was revised based on academic librarian feedback, and could be finalized as an ACRL document in 2020

Exploring How Well UK Coach Education Meets the Needs of Women Sports Coaches

Inclusive and equitable processes are important to the development of sports coaching. The aim of this study was to explore how well UK coach education meets the needs of women sports coaches in order to make recommendations to further enhance the engagement of, and support for, aspiring and existing women coaches. The national governing bodies (NGBs) of four sports (Cycling, Equestrian, Gymnastics and Rowing) volunteered to participate and semi-structured interviews using the tenants of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) within a Self Determination Theory (SDT) framework were undertaken with 23 coaches, eight coach educators and five NGB officers. The data themed into an analytic structure derived from SDT comprising ‘Autonomy: Freedom to coach’, ‘Coaching competence’, and ‘Relatedness and belonging’. The coaches perceived potential benefit from enhanced relatedness and belonging within their sport with the findings suggesting that NGBs should embrace coach-led decision making in terms of the developmental topics which are important and should adopt the development of competence, rather than assessing technical understanding, as the foundational principle of more inclusive coach education. Future research should investigate the impact of the inclusive practices which are recommended within this investigation such as the softening of the technocratic focus of formal coach education