Illuminating and measuring personal development: the impact of this work on learning and teaching

This short article gives an overview of a small-scale case study research project based on a 2nd year cohort of students from the Business Information Systems area of the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences at Northumbria University. The aim of this employability module is to prepare students for the recruitment process for their placement year in industry and to inculcate proper professional attitudes and behaviour. The teaching strategy uses the precepts of PDP, and an eportfolio is the vehicle for learning and assessment

Literature Strands for the Enhancement of Language in the Early Childhood Classroom

Literature and activities which support and enhance language learning in the early childhood classroom were examined. Seventy-six pieces of literature were selected along with thirty-two supporting activities. These were all described and matched for easy reference by the classroom teacher. A discussion of the importance of literature for the early childhood classroom, particularly that in which Engli~h is taught as a second language, has been included

Relying on Young Ambassadors to bolster COVID-19 study recruitment and participation

In June 2020, young adults comprised 20% of the COVID-19 cases and asymptomatic individuals were seen as “carriers” taking the virus into their homes and social settings. As with many health issues, the minority population was dealing with worse health outcomes. African Americans young adults were not excluded from this circumstance. In Mississippi, the group had some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the state. Additionally, some young people across Mississippi were expressing that they felt unengaged and left out of the discussions on COVID-19. These concerns prompted the research project, Young Adults Against COVID-19 (YAACOV), a project under the Mississippi Community Engagement Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities (MS CEAL), funded by the National Institutes of Health. YAACOV was initiated to explore the perceptions, knowledge and coping strategies of 18 – 29-year-old African American young adults in Mississippi. To reach the recruitment goals, the YAACOV study team employed Young Ambassadors to help promote and recruit other young adults to participate in the study. The Young Ambassador initiative is the focus of the current case

British Asian families and the use of child and adolescent mental health services: a qualitative study of a hard to reach group

We explored attitudes to and experiences of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) among families of South Asian origin who are underrepresented as service-users in an area of a Scottish city with a high concentration of people of South Asian origin. Six community focus groups were conducted, followed by semi-structured interviews with families who had used CAMHS and with CAMHS professionals involved in those families’ cases. Lastly, parents of children who had problems usually referred to CAMHS but who had not used the service were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of transcripts and notes was undertaken using thematic and logical methods. Participants consisted of 35 adults who identified themselves as Asian and had children; 7 parents and/or the young service users him-herself; 7 health care professionals involved in the young person's care plus 5 carers of 6 young people who had not been referred to CAMHS, despite having suitable problems. Focus groups identified the stigma of mental illness and the fear of gossip as strong disincentives to use CAMHS. Families who had been in contact with CAMHS sought to minimise the stigma they suffered by emphasising that mental illness was not madness and could be cured. Families whose children had complex emotional and behavioural problems said that discrimination by health, education and social care professionals exacerbated their child's difficulties. Families of children with severe and enduring mental illness described tolerating culturally inappropriate services. Fear of gossip about children's ‘madness’ constituted a major barrier to service use for Asian families in this city. Given the widespread nature of the concern over the stigma of children's mental illness, it should be considered in designing culturally competent services for children's mental health

Religion, Spirituality and Addiction Recovery: Introduction

Religion, spirituality, non-religion, and the secular (Lee 2014, 2015) are unstable categories that are nonetheless routinely reified by academics, clinicians and practitioners alike, and positioned as fundamental to experiences of addiction recovery. For instance, addiction is often framed, dramatically, as a spiritual malady, yet, just as often, as simply a poor moral choice. While ideas associated with religion or spirituality play out differently in those contrasting diagnoses, the role of religion and spirituality in their aetiology is evident. We (Wendy Dossett and Liam Metcalf-White) argue that the categories of religion, spirituality, and non-religion, as they to relate to addiction recovery, need further analysis than they receive in the clinical literature. This literature frequently presents them as extra “technologies of the self ” (Foucault 1988); either functionally worthwhile or not (Szalavitz 2017); rather than as embedded in the very culture and discourses in which addiction and recovery are named and experienced. We argue for a focus on the latter as more productive for an understanding of the field