Exploring Early Years Practitioners’ Perspectives and Practices on Pre-Schoolers’ Physical Activity, Fundamental Movement Skills and Eating Behaviours

Exploring Early Years Practitioners’ Perspectives and Practices on Pre-Schoolers’ Physical Activity(PA), Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) and Eating Behaviours.Childhood obesity prevalence in the UK is worrying as 9.9% and 13.1% of 4-5 year old children are obese and overweight, respectively. The number of children attending early years settings’ (EYS) is gradually increasing and the habits young children acquire are heavily dependent on the opportunities provided to them in the environments they spend the most time in. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore early years practitioners' (EYP), working in Startwell EYS in Birmingham, knowledge and perspectives on practices related to promoting pre-schoolers' physical activity, healthy eating and motor competence.METHODS: An anonymous, cross-sectional 24-item online survey was used to explore EYPs’ (n=77) working in Startwell EYS in Birmingham (West Midlands, UK) practices, knowledge and perspectives on pre-schoolers' PA, FMS and eating behaviours. Descriptive and thematic analyses were administered to analyse the results. RESULTS: Early years practitioners’ knowledge on Startwell-specific nutrition and physical activity for pre-schoolers' guidelines was adequate with 89.6%, 84.4%, 71.4%, 83.1% and 62.3% of EYPs answering correctly in relation to fruit and vegetables (F&V) portion, snack serving, plate size, daily overall as well as high physical activity, respectively. Almost half (41.6%, n=32) of EYPs said they have not heard of the FMS term before. Main barriers when promoting PA and healthy eating behaviours included a lack of EYPs’ confidence and parental support. CONCLUSIONS: This study explored important EYPs’ perspectives and knowledge that can aid and further shape the Startwell programme in relation to promotion of EBRBs and motor competence in EYS. Overall, the knowledge demonstrated by EYPs on pre-schoolers' nutrition and PA guidelines was an indicator of successful Startwell provision. However, some findings highlight areas for improvement, especially in EYPs’ training on FMS concept and its application in EYS

Corporate brand portfolio management

Thesis (M.M. (Strategic Marketing))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2016Many organisations consider their brands strategic assets and want to manage them accordingly. The adoption of a corporate brand strategy is one way in which organisations show their commitment to being a brand-focused business. Organisations do however often find it difficult to translate the theory on corporate branding into practice. There are a number of reasons for this; in essence, brands are not always created equally due to the fact that organisations often inherit brands through mergers and acquisitions, each bringing with them a different degree of equity and strength to the brand portfolio. Aligning and strategically managing the brands in the portfolio is the end goal, but before that can happen, a good understanding of what each brand contributes to the brand portfolio and how best each brand can be leveraged to ultimately support the growth of the corporate brand is required. This is followed by identifying who is responsible for managing the changes in the portfolio and communicating them to the stakeholders. The research explored the above process and entailed conducting a literature review on the evaluation and analysis of corporate branding and corporate brand management and the basis on which brand decisions are made and the scope of their influence. This was followed up by in-depth interviews with ten purposefully selected, information-rich participants within Tsogo Sun, a pre-selected organisation that comprises a multi-brand portfolio, with the aim of gaining information on their understanding of corporate branding and corporate brand management in practice. iii Following the interrogation of the data, it was confirmed that corporate branding in practice cannot always follow the strict approaches proposed by the theory, resulting in a gap between the literature and the practical solution required in order to be suitable for organisational implementation. The result of the research proposes a framework that aims to address this gap with the intent that the application thereof would make decision-making pertaining to branding easier and keep branding on a strategic level within an organisation.DM201

Lost at Sea: The Continuing Decline of The Supreme Court in Admiralty

For the first 200 years of its history, the United States Supreme Court served as the primary leader in the development of, and its cases the primary source of, the admiralty and maritime law of the United States. That appears to be changing. The Court’s admiralty cases over the last quarter century indicate that it is slowly giving up its traditional leading role in creating and developing rules of admiralty law, and instead deferring to Congress to make those rules, a trend that is tantamount to abandoning its Article III constitutional duty to serve as the country’s only national admiralty court. Some scholars believe that this trend is just as it should be. It has been recently argued that the Court’s two centuries of federal common lawmaking in admiralty is, and always has been, unconstitutional, and ought to be curtailed with few exceptions. Federal admiralty law should therefore be “normalized” and brought into conformity with the same principles of federalism and separation of powers which govern most other areas of federal law. This Article examines the Court’s most recent admiralty case, Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, and argues that it represents a striking escalation in the Court “normalizing” federal admiralty law. The many objectionable features of Lozman, however, form the basis of a pragmatic argument against the Court adopting a normalization approach. In largely ignoring hundreds of years of its own cases, the Court’s reasoning was arbitrary, unpredictable, and provides virtually no guidance to the state and lower federal courts. Properly understood, the troubling aspects of the case justify a return to the Court’s traditional, constitutionally prescribed role of making rules of decision in admiralty in the manner of a common law court

An occupational-therapy survey of the hospitalized eye patient

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The scope of fluorescein angiography

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