A Cluster Randomised Trial Evaluation of the Media Initiative for Children: Respecting Difference Programme

Evaluates trial outcomes of a preschool program designed to raise awareness of diversity issues, increase empathy, and promote inclusive behaviors among children, early childhood practitioners, and parents. Considers implications for further development

Benefitting both nonprofits and donors: charitable lead trusts

New estate-planning and charitable-giving instruments can make resources available to community development groups and other nonprofits immediately. Have your donors heard?Investments ; Community development

Assessing the Successes of and Challenges Facing Civil Society Organizations in South Africa, in Influencing Gender-Based Violence Policy

The purpose of this study is to explore how South African civil society organizations (CSOs) influence government policies that are put into place to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (GBV). The project seeks to determine what strategies for influencing these policies have been the most effective and had the greatest impact, what factors have contributed to the organizations’ successes in influencing these policies, what challenges have been experienced in attempting to influence these policies, and what best practice for civil society actors attempting to influence such policies might be. The research focuses on the experiences of seven women working that currently work or have worked for various CSOs and coalitions attempting to influence GBV prevention and response policies in South Africa. The examined organizations include MOSAIC, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Sonke Gender Justice, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Shukumisa Campaign. Oral interviews with staff members from these five organizations, as well as two interviews with anonymous participants with years of experience working with various CSOs in the sector, were the primary method of data collection for this project. These interviews were supplemented by desktop research on GBV policy and public participation in South Africa. Through these research methods, this study interrogates how civil society has influenced GBV policy in South Africa, and how, drawing on learnings and insight in this regard, it might have a greater impact in the future, shining a light on the issue of GBV, participation in the policymaking process by survivors of GBV themselves, and nonprofit effectiveness in policy influence in South Africa

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE REHABILITATION OF MOVEMENT CONTROL IN STROKE PATIENTS

Psychological models of motor control, although often developed by work with people who have specific pathologies, have been contained very much within the academic sphere of psychology. Physiotherapy and methods of movement rehabilitation have also been developed within the bounds of one profession. With the increasing trend towards working in multidisciplinary settings the opportunity now exists more readily to cross professional boundaries and integrate these two separate knowledge bases in order that better rehabilitation programmes can be developed and in recent years this has begun to happen. With this in mind the research reported here set out to investigate the motor function of stroke patients who have reached a plateau of motor recovery, using dual task methodology. Two experiments were conducted, one involving the "automatic" movement of walking and the other more controlled hand and finger movements. In addition to information about movement it was hoped to investigate whether there was evidence for more than one central information processing system. The results of the walking experiment were inconclusive because of a number of methodological issues which are discussed. The results of the second experiment indicate that there may be evidence for more than one central information processing system. They also showed that in a dual task situation stroke patients differentially allocate their cognitive resources in favour of the movement task. These results are interpreted in terms of stroke patients monitoring their movement more closely. The, results are discussed in terms of a psychological framework of movement control, and issues are raised about whether physiotherapists could make use of this type of approach in developing movement rehabilitation programmes for stroke patients.Frenchay Healthcare Trus

A small project and a big venture: sharing practices between two different scale OER developments

Sharing knowledge between OER initiatives and the reality of what actually happens in practice can lead to the fostering of openness amongst yet further initiatives and consequently enable our communities of practice to grow (Lane and Darby, 2012). Such knowledge sharing and learning of valuable lessons involves OER projects both large and small; projects ranging from those involving a few individuals, to those based in departments, and covering discipline areas as well as those that have arisen as a result of large institutional OER investments. This paper sets out to offer insight into, and contrast, the practices and knowledge sharing of two very different UK based OER projects: the internationally recognised OpenLearn project (McAndrew et al, 2009), established by the Open University in 2006 and the smaller scale Open Resource Bank for Interactive Teaching (ORBIT) project established at the University of Cambridge in 2012 (Hassler at al, 2012). In turn it highlights the other initiatives that informed or were informed by these two projects. On the one hand we provide a direct comparison between OpenLearn, established at a University as a big institutional approach and aiming to reach a broad academic audience, with ORBIT, developed as a small specialised project within a Faculty of Education and focused on a more targeted audience: that of primary and secondary school teachers of mathematics and science, and teacher educators in those areas. On the other hand we set out the expectations of the principal stakeholders - learners and educators – as well as mapping out the wide range of other projects and initiatives that they shared knowledge with and vice versa. If we are to understand and facilitate the spread of open practice, it is important to examine the knowledge sharing practices and approaches of both smallscale and large-scale ventures as well as the role of knowledge brokers

Supporting Research Informed Teaching using a Mobile Application

A repositioning of research within teacher education is vital to the profession. Supporting teachers becoming active agents and producers of research within their school settings, is pivotal to their professional development and the development of the teaching profession. In this chapter we present how the European Union-funded project, Building a Research Infrastructure for School Teachers (BRIST), progressed through the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter presents a retrospective of the teaching and teacher education in fulfilling the project objectives which was designed to develop technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level. The principled participatory design collaborative project, across five national jurisdictions, engaged with teachers and teacher education stakeholders in developing a mobile application to support teacher research. The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic are captured, along with the innovative approaches in overcoming these roadblocks to progress the research

Research-Informed Teaching in a Global Pandemic: "Opening up" Schools to Research

The teacher-research agenda has become a significant consideration for policy and professional development in a number of countries. Encouraging research-based teacher education programmes remains an important goal, where teachers are able to effectively utilize educational research as part of their work in school settings and to reflect on and enhance their professional development. In the last decade, teacher research has grown in importance across the three i’s of the teacher learning continuum: initial, induction and in-service teacher education. This has been brought into even starker relief with the global spread of COVID-19, and the enforced and emergency, wholesale move to digital education. Now, perhaps more than ever, teachers need the perspective and support of research-led practice, particularly in how to effectively use Internet technologies to mediate and enhance learning, teaching and assessment online, and new blended modalities for education that must be physically distant. The aim of this paper is to present a number of professional development open educational systems which exist or are currently being developed to support teachers internationally, to engage with, use and do research. Exemplification of the opening up of research to schools and teachers is provided in the chapter through reference to the European Union-funded Erasmus + project, BRIST: Building Research Infrastructures for School Teachers. BRIST is developing technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level

Protecting workers' rights in Guatemala's apparel-for-export sector

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-117).This thesis examines three surprise victories for workers' rights in the Guatemalan garment sector. In the past three years, three unions have formed at the Choishin, Cimatextiles, and Nobland factories and each has negotiated a collective bargaining agreement. This thesis explores why these victories were possible given the general context of globalization and the economic and institutional context of Guatemala. I have proposed a model that describes the dynamic approach that allowed the unions to form and negotiate the only collective bargaining agreements in Guatemala's apparel-for-export sector. These unions were successful because cross-border union organizing, corporate codes of conduct, independent monitoring, and government enforcement were dynamically combined. This thesis also demonstrates how the new synthesized model accounts for differences across the three cases. These cases provide a series of Lessons for protecting workers' rights. But the most salient lesson from Guatemala is that, under certain conditions, victory for Labor rights is possible; it is possible to maintain garment sector employment while increasing respect for workers' rights. And if this sort of victory is possible in Guatemala, then it seems possible anywhere.by Sarah E. Connolly.M.C.P

A content analysis of vaping advertisements on Twitter, November 2014

INTRODUCTION: Vaping has increased in popularity, and the potential harms and benefits are largely unknown. Vaping-related advertising is expected to grow as the vaping industry grows; people are exposed primarily to vaping advertisements on the Internet, and Twitter is an especially popular social medium among young people. The primary objective of our study was to describe the characteristics of vaping-related advertisements on Twitter. METHODS: We collected data on 403,079 English-language tweets that appeared during November 2014 and contained vaping-related keywords. Using crowdsourcing services, we identified vaping-related advertisements in a random sample of 5,000 tweets. The advertisement tweets were qualitatively coded for popular marketing tactics by our research team. We also inferred the demographic characteristics of followers of 4 Twitter handles that advertised various novel vape products. RESULTS: The random sample of 5,000 vaping-related tweets included 1,156 (23%) advertisement tweets that were further analyzed. Vape pens were advertised in nearly half of the advertisement tweets (47%), followed by e-juice (21%), which commonly mentioned flavors (42%). Coupons or price discounts were frequently observed (32%); only 3% of tweets mentioned vaping as a way to quit smoking or as an alternative to smoking. One handle had a disproportionately high percentage of racial/ethnic minority followers. CONCLUSION: Vaping poses a threat to smoking prevention progress, and it is important for those in tobacco control to understand and counter the tactics used by vaping companies to entice their consumers, especially on social media where young people can easily view the content