Coaching school leadership in Primary Education in Rwanda. Evolutions in Head Teachers’ self-assessment

School leadership is identified as a crucial element for improving the quality of education. This article describes a project on school leadership in Rwandan primary education, in which different groups of head teachers received inputs in varying degrees input on school leadership and follow-up coaching by their sector education officers. A self-assessment tool has been developed to map training needs and to measure professional capacity development, addressing eight dimensions of school leadership. By comparing the mean self-assessment scores of about 196 head teachers, over the course of the first year of the project, we identify how the different experimental groups perceive similar training needs, especially on the dimensions of “reshaping conditions for teaching and learning”, “enriching the curriculum” and “enhancing teacher quality”. However, even at the start of the project, the different experimental groups seem to use the self-assessment tool in different ways. We discuss that further research is needed on the use of the self-assessment tool as measurement as well as capacity development instrument.Keywords: school leadership; primary education; coaching;  self-assessment; capacity developmen

Data Retention – The Belgian Approach

Security, privacy and fundamental rights must be realized together and not at the cost of one another. That is the challenge

Teachers’ professional development for ICT integration: towards a reciprocal relationship between research and practice

Teachers in the 21st century are facing new challenges as a result of the expanding possibilities of ICT integration in every aspect of the school milieu. Studies have shown the potential of teacher professional development (TPD) that is tailored to local conditions as well as global components and takes advantage of mutual support among teachers, as well as modeling of effective practices. The goal of the paper is to consider the issue of TPD with reference to the usage of ICT as a lever for educational change in a systemic manner, based on the application of local as well as international research. This paper will synthesize some key issues and challenges for TPD in the ICT-saturated 21st century, illustrated in four cases presented herein, which synthesize elements of practice and theory. Based on the literature and the four case studies, we suggest a conceptual model for identifying and evaluating TPD practices using ICT as a lever for educational change and innovation, accompanied by research aimed to develop TPD models. We include suggestions for more effectively linking research to practice and will lay out possible research directions, as a means of facilitating evidence-based decisions and policies

The importance of genetic parenthood for infertile men and women

STUDY QUESTION: Do men and women beginning to attend a fertility clinic prefer genetic over non-genetic parenthood? SUMMARY ANSWER: Nearly, all infertile men and women prefer genetic parenthood. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Clinicians assume that all infertile couples prefer genetic parenthood over non-genetic parenthood and, therefore, consider treatments with donor gametes an option of last resort. Previous studies of the desire for parenthood identified 30 motivations for genetic parenthood, and 51 motivations for which having a genetically related child is not strictly necessary but might be deemed required. The exact strength of the preference of infertile men and women for genetic parenthood remains unclear, as does the importance of the various motivations. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: A questionnaire was developed based on a literature review. It was assessed by professionals and pilot tested among patients. The coded paper-pencil questionnaire was disseminated among both partners of 201 heterosexual infertile couples after their first consultation at one of two Belgian fertility clinics between October 2015 and May 2016. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: The survey addressed: (i) the preference for genetic parenthood for themselves and for their partner, (ii) the importance of 30 motivations for genetic parenthood and (iii) the importance of 51 other motivations for parenthood and whether these motivations require being the genetic parent of their child to be fulfilled. To simplify presentation of the results, all 81 motivations were grouped into reliable categories of motivations using psychometric analyses. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: The survey was completed by 104 women and 91 men (response rate: 49%). Almost all respondents (98%) favored genetic over non-genetic parenthood for both their partner and themselves. One-third of the respondents stated they only wanted to parent their own genetically related child. Achieving genetic parenthood for their partner was considered significantly more important than achieving genetic parenthood for themselves. Within couples, men had a stronger preference for genetic parenthood (P = 0.004), but this was not significant after correction for educational level, which was significantly associated with the preference of both men and women. The 30 motivations for becoming a genetic parent clustered into 11 categories of which 'to experience a natural process' was deemed most important. The 51 motivations for becoming a parent for which having a genetically related child is not strictly necessary clustered into 14 categories of which 'to contribute to a child's well-being' and 'to experience the love of a child' were most important. Respondents deemed they would need to be the genetic parent of their child to fulfill nearly all their motivations for parenthood. LIMITATIONS REASONS FOR CAUTION: We included couples that visited the fertility clinic for the first time, and the preference for genetic parenthood might change throughout a fertility treatment trajectory. Moreover, what prospective parents expect to be important for their future well-being might not really define parents' well-being. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: The presumed preference of couples for genetic parenthood was confirmed. Resistance against using donor gametes is more likely among lower educated individuals. Researching whether non-genetic parents actually feel they cannot fulfill the 51 motivations for parenthood, could be a basis for developing patient informatio

Design and Additive Fabrication of Foot and Ankle-Foot Orthoses

Foot and ankle-foot orthoses are prescribed in order to promote mobility through supporting and/or realigning the lower leg and alleviating pain in the foot in different parts of the gait cycle. This paper will outline new approaches to the design and manufacture of personalised foot and ankle-foot orthoses (FO and AFO) using additive fabrication technology. The research is addressing the need for specific software design tools for orthosis design which enable their properties to be locally tailored within a mass customisation framework. Structure/material testing to support that activity is also being undertaken and will be described.Mechanical Engineerin

Build a people & performance culture: quality analysis of personal targets to optimize the learning and development journey

The main purpose of our ICP project at Vandemoortele entails a quality check of the personal targets of all staff associates to help develop the performance culture in the company. We distinguish three key objectives in this project; a short term, a mid-term and a long term. The short-term objective is to help people understand why and how they need to upgrade (and update) their personal targets. Secondly, the mid-term objective is to make sure leaders can help their teams in updating their targets while following up on their progress using the available tools such as ‘continuous feedback’. Lastly, the long-term objective is to build the right performance culture at Vandemoortele by integrating discipline throughout the whole organization. As a consequence of COVID-19, the given timeframe was shortened which forced us to speed up the goal scoring process and analysis of the personal targets. Since no quality checks were performed previously, our project should give the company an insight in the quality level of the personal targets in all layers of the company. By providing more insights into the current performance and development process we gained some critical knowledge about the current situation and what further development objectives there were planned out. As supporting tools, the OGSAM method was introduced to ensure a smooth and aligned top-to-bottom targets cascading. In addition, principles such as SMART have been introduced in an earlier stage to staff associates for them to be used as guideline when setting personal targets. We start our report by giving in depth information about both the OGSAM method and SMART principles to provide the correct framework in which this project took place. To provide as much valuable information as possible, we split the personal targets into ‘goal’ and ‘measure’, as is the case when the employees fill in their personal targets in SuccessFactors, and score them separately on a score of 5 to come to a total score on 10 for the personal target. One employee can have up to six different personal targets, so we take the average of all personal targets as the score for one employee. In total 2423 personal targets were analysed from a total of 606 staff associates. We developed a scoring system that took into account the relevant scoring criteria, which will be elaborately discussed in the methodology. We focussed the analysis of the data on four different levels; the individual level, the department level, the country level and Vandemoortele in total on a company level. By using the department and country averages, we could benchmark these with the total company average to show which departments and countries are doing good and which could improve the most. Furthermore, we could take the average of scores of the personal targets of one employee and categorise him/her into four different categories: highly improvable, improvable, acceptable and good quality. In the next stage of our project, every employee received a mail which described in which of these four categories they belonged, with specific tips and tricks per department to help them improve their personal target setting. We delivered a general report of the quality level of personal targets, which our project supervisor presented to the Exco. In addition, we delivered country and department specific reports that entailed both quantitative and qualitative information about the goal setting performance of those respective domains, alongside specific tips and tricks to improve the quality level. Lastly, we also delivered team specific results for managers on request, which provided a manager with detailed information of the quality of the personal targets of his/her team members. In our report we will go more in detail about the content of these reports. Regarding the results of the analysis, 53% of the goals are of good quality being that they score 4 or 5 out of 5. Both the country- and department-specific findings also indicate that goals are greatly aligned with SMART at Vandemoortele as they often meet the requirements. Country wise for the goal setting, Germany has the leading position with an average of 3.56, whereas the United Kingdom finds itself as most improvable country with an average of 2.70. To further improve, all countries are encouraged to keep up the good work and to continuously challenge themselves to ultimately generate better performance. Department wise, goals also appear to be correctly set following the required guidelines. Approximately 65% of the reviewed goals scored 3 (24%) or 4 (41%) out of 5. ENG and QA are the departments gathering the highest scores within 'goals’. For R&D and PROC on the other hand, there is a lot of room for improvement regarding the goal setting.Contrarily to the goals, only 37,8% of the measures are of good quality. Within the measures, Spain obtains the first place with an average of 3.61 and Germany closes the ranking with 2.55. On the other hand, HR is the best scoring department with an average of 3.67, meanwhile, LEG is ranked last with 2.00. One main conclusion is that measure setting seems to be a cross departmental challenge. Undoubtedly, setting correct measures that will track the progress towards goals appears to be more demanding when the department is mostly made of qualitative data. In order to improve the overall measure setting, every staff associate was asked to go a step further and set very clear qualitative and quantitative measures including a timebound element whenever possible. We believe that the necessary tools were giving to every concerned employee to support them in their learning and development journey. The current practices and principles were challenged in the discussion part where we performed a literature review on other existing methodologies regarding personal target setting and strategy execution. The two methodologies we considered were FAST and NLP driven frameworks, with regard to personal target setting. For strategy execution, the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy map are elaborated. Finally, these methodologies were compared to the prevailing practices at Vandemoortele to challenge the status quo and provide new insights for the compan

Development of an artificial foot enabling the simulation of the natural behaviour of the human unroll of the foot during walking and running

From 3rd Congress of the International Foot and Ankle Biomechanics Community Sydney, Australia. 11-13 April 201