‘Maybe we can turn the tide’ : an explanatory mixed-methods study to understand how knowledge brokers mobilise health evidence in low- and middle-income countries

Background: Little is known about how knowledge brokers (KBs) operate in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to translate evidence for health policy and practice. These intermediaries facilitate relationships between evidence producers and users to address public health issues. Aims and objectives: To increase understanding, a mixed-methods study collected data from KBs who had acted on evidence from the 2015 Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference in Mexico. Methods: Of the 1000 in-person participants, 252 plus 72 online participants (n=324) from 56 countries completed an online survey, and 20 participants from 15 countries were interviewed. Thematic analysis and application of knowledge translation (KT) theory explored factors influencing KB actions leading to evidence uptake. Descriptive statistics of respondent characteristics were used for cross-case comparison. Findings: Results suggest factors supporting the KB role in evidence uptake, which include active relationships with evidence users through embedded KB roles, targeted and tailored evidence communication to fit the context, user receptiveness to evidence from a similar country setting, adaptability in the KB role, and action orientation of KBs. Discussion and conclusions: Initiatives to increase evidence uptake in LMICs should work to establish supportive structures for embedded KT, identify processes for ongoing cross-country learning, and strengthen KBs already showing effectiveness in their roles

Pandemic Healthcare: Face Shield Modification

Current face shields used in home and institutional healthcare settings create hardships for their wearers, which makes normal work routines more difficult. Recent mandates require healthcare workers to wear both surgical masks as well as plastic face shields when tending to patients. Unfortunately, the majority of face shields have been designed for hospital settings, which does not address the specific requirements for in-home therapist use. Some of the issues include their restrictive size, tendency to fog, susceptibility to glare, and sterilization and re-use issues. Our team proposes to design a face shield for homecare occupational therapists that addresses their unique set of requirements. A prototype face shield will be developed and tested by several stakeholders to validate performance and refine the design. The design will be iterated as required to satisfy customer requirements

“Like Produces Like”: John Heyl Vincent and His 19th Century Theory of Character Education

An examination of late 19th century writings about character development by popular educator and revered Methodist bishop John Heyl Vincent (1832–1920) sheds additional insight on early character education theory. Vincent is best known as the cofounder of the Chautauqua movement in 1874. However, his theoretical constructs for character development merit not only acknowledgment in the discipline’s official history but also further investigation and discussion by today’s scholars. The constructs identified from early writings suggest that effective character education occurs in both the home and the school and requires parents and teachers who model good moral character. This article posits the importance of a teacher’s moral character as the central idea of Vincent’s theory of character education, and it provides one example of how theories of character education at home transitioned to theories of character education at school during this important time period

Development and Analysis of a Measurement Scale for Teacher Assessment Literacy

The purpose of this study was to develop and analyze an updated scale of teacher assessment literacy that measures teachers' self-ratings of skills in areas mentioned in the current literature on assessment. Items were included in the scale based on expert judgment. The participants were 193 Kindergarten through fifth grade teachers in a rural school district in the southeastern United States. All demographic surveys and scales were distributed in classrooms or at an after school staff meeting and all were collected within a three week time frame. Following collection, data were entered and analyzed. Independent t-tests and analysis of variance indicated that statistically significant differences existed in overall scale scores as a function of education level, grade level taught, and measurement courses taken. Teachers with a higher level of education had higher overall scores than teachers with less education and teachers who have taken a course in measurement had higher overall scores than teachers who have not taken a course in measurement. Principal components analysis indicated that all items had moderate to high loadings on to a single component, which may be called "assessment literacy."  M.A

Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era

The founders of American democracy believed it could not survive without an “informed citizenry”. What does an informed citizenry look like in today’s world? And what role do we have as educators and students to support it? First, we look at the significant challenges to institutional and media legitimacy that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, which rightfully called attention to the ways longstanding Western knowledge practices excluded marginalized communities and silenced important histories. We ask about the status of norms and mores in the aftermath of this challenge, in an era often called “post-truth.” Second, we consider the challenges of teaching information literacy. To the extent that we teach it at all, how have our instructions to “do the research” and “avoid fake news” failed? We invite instructors to interrogate their own information literacy practices (which are typically invisible); and to understand, empathize with, and value students’ information literacy practices. Jeffery Gonzalez, Assistant Professor of English, teaches courses on 20th and 21st century American literature. His research and writing explore how literary forms and narratives relate to economic, political, and social concerns. He has published essays in the academic journals Critique, Mosaic, and College Literature, among others. Catherine Baird, Online and Outreach Librarian, teaches and studies information literacy, and her recent publications examine MSU faculty and students. She and collaborator Jonathan Howell, Associate Professor of Linguistics, have written and presented on librarian-faculty collaboration. Their current book project, Teaching Information Literacy, offers faculty an accessible and practical introduction to recent research in the learning and information sciences

Total Encounter: Theorizing Image-Text Collaborations from the Francophone Caribbean

This dissertation highlights an understudied but vital engagement with the visual arts by some of the most influential writers from the Francophone Caribbean: Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau, Frankétienne and Dany Laferrière. The liminal space produced by the encounter of image and text in the illustrated books, graphic novels, “Spirals” and livres dessinés I examine is a site where we can see other forms of exchange and creolization take shape. I contend that these types of transgeneric collaborations enact decolonial thinking in a way that is not achievable through text alone. These works destabilize arbitrary boundaries while questioning and re-presenting the nature of both intellectual property and historiography. My work draws connections among theories of creolization and mondialité from the Francophone Caribbean, decolonial thinkers from the Global South, and Black diaspora studies more broadly in order to argue for a more decentered conceptualization of authorship and authority. In turn, these collaborations propose visualizing history as multidirectional, relational, and falsely universalized. The Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant frames my discussion of how the reader/viewer’s interpretive strategies operate, particularly through his idea of Tremblement: meaning trembling or quake, here used to name the positive chaotic vibration created from a relational way of thinking that connects everything to everything else without establishing a linear directionality, filiation, or hierarchy. By looking through this lens of collaborative authorship, we can see Glissant’s philosophy of Relation in action.Doctor of Philosoph

Re/formulating Ethical Issues for Visual Research Methods

This paper discusses six categories of key ethical issues that are important to consider when using visual methods in social research. The categories were identified during workshop discussions with researchers working across disciplines and using a range of visual methods. They have been used to inform guidelines for the ethical conduct of research using visual methods. The categories represent both familiar and emerging ethical challenges. They include widely accepted strategies for meeting ethical obligations to ensure participants’ informed consent, to maintain confidentiality, and to design and conduct research that minimises harm. Three further categories represent more novel ethical issues that are particularly prominent in visual methods: managing fuzzy boundaries around the multiple purposes that visual research may serve, addressing questions of authorship and ownership of visual products generated during research, and dealing with representation and audiences when disseminating research findings. In this paper we reflect on the tensions and challenges these issues raise for researchers working with visual methods, and consider potential strategies to address these challenges. By identifying and critiquing ethical issues that are prominent in visual methods, this paper contributes to a growing body of work that aims to ensure the ethical conduct of visual research

Re-envisioning negritude: historical and cultural contexts for Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor

This thesis seeks to expose and discredit a perceived misconception that understood the Negritude movement as one, relatively uniform concept. An oversimplified, homogeneous view of Negritude at times appears to contradict itself, leading critics to dismiss the movement's relevance and/or standing in diaspora studies. The extensive intellectual relationship and personal friendship between Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor underscores many of the similarities that allowed for the collaboration that started the movement. A detailed analysis of Césaire and Senghor's relationships to Negritude, however, illustrates significant differences in each poet's perception of the movement. I examine the conditions in early twentieth-century Paris that marked it as a cross-cultural center of diasporic literary production. Many critiques of Negritude do not take into account the importance of the historical and cultural contexts surrounding the birth of the movement, when in fact, context is the essence of Negritude's formation. I analyze the conceptions of Negritude found in Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and Senghor's Chants d'Ombre and Hosties noires and discuss the reasons behind their intrinsic differences, which are also contextually centered. I argue that Negritude not only bears a historical importance, but also continues to carry significance in present-day Francophone and diaspora studies. The movement led to a growing unrest over colonization and Western supremacy that eventually resulted in independence movements in Africa and departmentalization in the Antilles. It remained a point of contention after decolonization and endures as a present force in the background of both spaces