Responses of three Muslim majority primary schools in England to the Islamic faith of their pupils

This paper considers the responses of three English primary schools to the education of their Muslim pupils. It begins by setting out the context of discussion about Muslims and education in Europe as well as by describing some of the structural and pedagogical characteristics and trends in English education influencing the schools’ options and choices. The main body of the article is a comparative analysis of the three schools, focusing on the approaches of teachers and school leaders to the faith backgrounds of their pupils, their constructions of Islam for these educational contexts, and their preparation of Muslim children for a religiously plural Britain. As the schools devise strategies and select between options, they provide in microcosm differing models of the inclusion of minority Islam in a western society

MedlinePlus??: The National Library of Medicine?? Brings Quality Information to Health Consumers

The National Library of Medicine???s (NLM??) MedlinePlus?? is a high-quality gateway to consumer health information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other authoritative organizations. For decades, NLM has been a leader in indexing, organizing, and distributing health information to health professionals. In creating MedlinePlus, NLM uses years of accumulated expertise and technical knowledge to produce an authoritative, reliable consumer health Web site. This article describes the development of MedlinePlus???its quality control processes, the integration of NLM and NIH information, NLM???s relationship to other institutions, the technical and staffing infrastructures, the use of feedback for quality improvement, and future plans.published or submitted for publicatio

Beyond the Patient: Nursing Presence With Families During the Perioperative Period

Nurses have used the intervention of caring for many years, but little attention has been given to describing the phenomenon of nursing presence in the perioperative setting. The purpose of this research was to learn more about the experience of the connection of the family to the nurse who kept them informed during the perioperative period. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was utilized to identify patterns of caring, connecting, and transpersonal nursing presence described by the family of surgical patients. Five women were interviewed for this study. Transcribed interviews became the phenomenological texts for my hermeneutic analysis. Essential themes were uncovered that captured the essence of their experience. The women described the nurse\u27s presence as a relationship that involved a kind of being with. They expressed a remarkable feeling knowing that someone cared, and described a special connection with someone they had just met. The presence of the nurse was an important factor in feeling reassured, even though time seemed endless. Perioperative nurses must understand the impact of nursing presence with families, and transform their nursing practice

Somali CARES: Listening to the Voices of the Other

Care during pregnancy is an important preventative health intervention for women and their unborn baby in all cultures. Healthcare inequities exist among some ethnic minority groups and contribute to racial disparities in birth outcomes. Pregnant Somali women, newly immigrated to the United States, ffie forced to seek prenatal care within a cultural context that can be very different from their own experiences and expectations. This refugee population is expected to fit into a medical system that is not only unfamiliar to them, but at times unable to meet their needs during pregnancy. As Somali women seek access to western healthcare systems, practitioners need to understand, facilitate, and integrate traditional cultural practices into prenatal care encounters. Somali Culturally Appropriate and Respectful Education and Support (CARES) Program for Pregnancy is a clinic-based, group prenatal care program for Somali refugees that advances healthcare delivery. A creative approach of providing prenatal care, the Somali CARES program was developed and implemented at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN in 2009 to support the cultural and social contexts of Somali women through the use of a cross-cultural pedagogy. Incorporating storytelling, role playing, and facilitative discussion created an atmosphere of respect for cultural differences and built trust between the Somali women and their healthcare practitioners. The use of learning through cultural ways of expression was a very effective method of bring traditional African education alive for the learners and enabled active participation as teachers involved the learners in uncovering the meaning of their stories. Through a both ways educational approach, an equal power status was created between the healthcare practitioners and the Somali women, because both learned from the other. When healthcare practitioners listened and partnered with the Somali women, a new paradigm for advancing participatory healthcare practice transformed. The Somali women indicated a high level of satisfaction with the program and recommended it to other Somali women. Entering into the world of the Somali culture, while listening to the voices of the women, while honoring their ways of knowing and doing, new insights unfolded for healthcare practitioners. Listening to the voices of the other help to dismantle barriers of providing culturally appropriate prenatal care for the Somali women created an atmosphere of a caring, teaching-learning environment that lead to improved health outcomes of the mother and baby

DBI Realizations of the Pseudo-Conformal Universe and Galilean Genesis Scenarios

The pseudo-conformal universe is an alternative to inflation in which the early universe is described by a conformal field theory on approximately flat space-time. The fields develop time-dependent expectation values, spontaneously breaking the conformal symmetries to a de Sitter subalgebra, and fields of conformal weight zero acquire a scale invariant spectrum of perturbations. In this paper, we show that the pseudo-conformal scenario can be naturally realized within theories that would ordinarily be of interest for DBI inflation, such as the world-volume theory of a probe brane in an AdS bulk space-time. In this approach, the weight zero spectator field can be associated with a geometric flat direction in the bulk, and its scale invariance is protected by a shift symmetry.Comment: 34 page

An evaluation of the transferability of the interpretive approach to teachers’ continuing professional development

This is a practitioner research project set in the humanities faculty of a school in a northern town where riots took place in 2001. The aim was to evaluate the transferability of the interpretive approach to teachers’ continuing professional development and to see how far it increased their understanding of and relationship with their local communities. Qualitative data were gathered using a range of methods including participant observation, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The teachers engaged in ethnographic-type activities in their participant observation of groups and interviews with representatives and their students. The principles of the interpretive approach – representation, interpretation and reflexivity – underpinned the design of the programme and the data analysis. The research found that teachers’ understanding of the diversity of communities was increased. There was little evidence of increased understanding of ‘the group’ in relation to individuals and the tradition. There was little formal evidence of a deeper understanding of concepts, of ‘oscillation’ or of personal edification. There were significant professional benefits in increased confidence, dealing with controversial issues and in developing community education. The teachers demonstrated open-mindedness and a positive attitude to pluralism. Further questions about the inter-connectedness of religion and culture and the interpretation of religious texts were raised and there was critical engagement with aspects of community life, including the place of women. The research identifies the need for a more informed critique of and engagement with the presuppositions that underpin discourse on minority communities. The teachers recognised the need for the whole school staff to undergo the same process and understood that this would be a long-term enterprise. The conclusion is drawn that the interpretive approach can be applied to teachers’ CPD and that it increases their understanding of and relationship with their communities, though some anticipated outcomes were not realised

Cantrips and carlins : magic, medicine and society in the presbyteries of Haddington and Stirling, 1603-88

This thesis is an examination of the belief and practice of popular magic, specifically related to charmers, in the presbyteries of Haddington and Stirling between the years 1603 and 1688. It is the first study of either locality which concentrates on identifying the difference between charmers and witches, and considers the practice of the former in the broader context of seventeenth-century attitudes towards health and disease of both orthodox medical practitioners and the wider population. The thesis examines charmers and their healing practice in reference to theories of power, popular and elite culture, the church and gender, and reveals new information about seventeenth-century society. The principles and practice of charmers are then compared to orthodox medicine and popular magic, and the recorded healing treatments and rituals have been examined and analysed in close detail. A comparative analysis has been made of the two localities which assesses and contrasts patterns of witchcraft and charming accusation on a parish level. By using evidence contained in kirk records, supplemented by secular court material, it has been shown that all levels of society identified differences between the practice and intent of charmers and witches. Accusation and prosecution of witches was influenced more by local elites, and by elite demonological theories, than accusations of charming. Importantly, the devil was not a feature of charming accusations. Due to the overt nature of charming, differences in its perception and acceptability were highlighted by the less severe penalties which were ordered by the kirk. The dilemma for the church and society was that the church had, to an extent, surrendered its practical healing role with the abandonment of pre-Reformation ritual. The emphasis on personal piety and prayer for the relief of mental and physical suffering did not appear to offer sufficient comfort for the rest of society