Brunei economy

Brunei Darussalam is a small, oil- and gas-dependent economy, which is continuing to strive for economic diversification and attempting to reduce its dependence on non-renewable resources. The sultanate has good physical infrastructure; free high-quality health care and education for its citizens; no personal income tax or sales taxes; heavily subsidized retail prices for petrol, diesel, electricity, rice and sugar that have remained unchanged for many years; and a relatively high material standard of living

Unmarried Adolescents’ Experiences of Using Reproductive and Maternal Health Services in Nigeria and Uganda: A Qualitative Study

Adolescents’ access and use of reproductive and maternal health (RMH) services is a critical part of the global strategy for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, previous studies have shown that a complex range of factors, including restrictive policies and punitive laws, limit adolescents from accessing a full range of RMH services in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Our study explores the experiences of unmarried adolescents’ access and use of RMH services in Nigeria and Uganda to understand the extent to which the diverse policy environment in both countries enables or hinders adolescents’ access to and use of RMH services. Our qualitative research design involved eight focus group discussions (FGDs) in Nigeria and in Uganda, 14 in-depth interviews, and eight FGDs among adolescents. The data were analysed thematically and organised according to the WHO’s five broad dimensions for assessing youth-friendly health services. Our findings show that RMH services were inequitably delivered in both countries. Adolescents were restricted from accessing services based on age and marital status. Being unmarried and having no partner, especially in Uganda, was a cause for discrimination during antenatal appointments. We also observed that the expectations of adolescents were not adequately met. Service providers tended to be impolite, judgemental, and unwilling to provide services, especially contraceptives, to younger and unmarried adolescents. Our findings suggest that the existence of a youth-friendly health policy does not translate into effective youth-friendly service provision. This underscores the need for further studies to understand the complexities surrounding this by using a realist evaluation method to examine how adolescent and youth-friendly health services can be designed to improve uptake of reproductive and maternal health services among adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa

Participatory action research: towards a more fruitful knowledge

This is the final version. Available on open access from the publisher via the link in this recordWakeford and Sanchez Rodriguez’s review is written from the position of individuals who situate themselves as both activists and academics. From a perspective both inside and outside the academy, they make visible the traditions of participatory action research that have evolved in social movements and their interaction with academic knowledge. They explain how PAR emerged as a practice that seeks to intervene and act on the world through disrupting assumptions about who has knowledge, and by building intercultural dialogue between those whose interests have historically been marginalised and those experts and institutions in dominant positions. They discuss the contributions of Paolo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, as well as the emergence within universities of centres for Action Research and indigenist approaches to research before exploring recent examples of PAR from the Highlander Folk School in the US, to the Cumbrian Hill Farmers post Chernobyl, to questions of Food Sovereignty in India (amongst others)

VCU voice (1992-05-01)

VCU Today, the University’s first official administrative organ, began as a somewhat irregular monthly publication but moved to a bi-weekly newspaper format in the 1980s. The newspaper changed its name to VCU Voice in 1988 and ten years later it appeared under the title UniverCity News. As it neared the end of its run as a physical newspaper, the publication became simply VCU News. These four publications were essentially the same periodical published under different titles by the Office of University Relations. VCU News appeared online for the first time in 2002.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/vcv/1072/thumbnail.jp

School leadership and the primary curriculum: development and practice

The structure of this critical commentary is that required for higher doctorates as outlined in the Keele University: Code of Practice on Postgraduate Research Degrees. The submission focuses on: 74 items in refereed journal articles; 7 Press items, commissioned journal articles and other publications; 18 books; and, 12 book chapters. Special reference is placed on the period since 2003, during which the bulk of the material has been produced.The commentary outlines that the publications that make up this submission encapsulate a career of thirty-five years during which the writer has been a school-teacher, head-teacher, Lecturer, and Professor of Education. It is explained that this body of work encompasses two interconnected themes, including the development and practice of leadership in education and the primary curriculum. Overall, this submission, totaling 750,000 words of material where the writer was sole author, within an overall submission totalling approximately two million words, has contributed to the ongoing discourse on educational leadership and the primary curriculum through a sustained programme of original research and publications.It is stated that the range of influence of this material has been broadened to international status through comparative research that has included work on leadership training in North America, Australasia and Europe. Centrally, it is claimed that this work has contributed to the movement towards a more complex conceptualisation of pedagogy and andragogy that seeks to encourage a more reflexive, research-led and praxis-based approach to teaching and learning. It is argued that the writer has thus made a long-term contribution to the development of knowledge within the discipline of Education

Washington University Record, August 23, 2007

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/record/2113/thumbnail.jp