Knowledge of Infant/Toddler Development Among Low-Income Families

Pretest data from a two-year project entitled An Early Intervention Program for Parents of Young Children at-Risk were collected and analyzed, in a sample of 2,191 low-income parents, for Head Start participation and baseline information. Respondents participating in the sample were from the states of California, Delaware, Nevada, South Carolina, and Utah. For their participation in the study, respondents received a free subscription to age-paced newsletters, which contained information about appropriate growth expectancies, nutrition, and guidance for their child of 36 months or younger. Newsletters were mailed monthly to parents who had children 12 months and younger and every other month to parents with children older than 12 months. Knowledge of infant/toddler development among Head Start and non-Head Start parents was measured by i-test comparisons. Univariate analysis of demographic influences on developmental knowledge was computed by a oneway ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficients. Demographic variables measured were state of residence, race, educational level, marital status, employment status, attitude, income level, number of children, supplemental programs, and age of parent. Findings revealed that Head start parents did not have a significantly greater knowledge of infant/toddler development than non-Head start parents who had more than one child. Developmental knowledge scores were higher for Head start parents than non-Head start first-time parents. All participating Head start parents had at least two children, one in the Head start program and one other child 25 months or younger. There were differences in developmental knowledge scores by state of residence, race, educational level, marital status, and employment status. Demographic variables found to have a positive correlation with developmental knowledge scores were attitude, income level, number of children, and age of parents. There was a negative correlation with the effect of supplemental programs. Programs tested for this effect were AFDC, Food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, Social Security, and Head Start. A greater proportion of Head Start parents participated in these income-assistance programs, which may have influenced their scores for child development knowledge

Putting the emotion back: exploring the role of emotion in disengagement

This chapter explores the nature of disengagement and the role played by emotions and in doing so will disentangle the overlapping theories and definitions of both engagement and disengagement. The research that forms the basis for the chapter comes from two related studies exploring engagement and disengagement in 10 large UK public and private sector organisations. Both studies used an interpretive approach involving 75 managers and employees. The chapter suggests the that emotions play a mediating role in the process of disengagement and the emotional reaction involved provides a distinction to being ‘not engaged’. It highlights the confusion that different approaches bring to distinguishing engagement and disengagement from other job attitudes

Releasing the pressure valve: workplace relationships and engagement in a context of disruption

Purpose I aim to understand how informal relationships at work provide a supportive context for individuals and contribute to their engagement in an environment of disruptive change when they are likely to be stressed. Design The research was conducted in three UK public service organizations during pre-Brexit disruption. An app was used to capture 400+ transient emotions, reactions, and diary entries of employees about their interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues. This was followed by 25 interviews to reflect more deeply on those relationships documented in the app. Findings Interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues are shown to contribute in different ways to emotions felt and different aspects of engagement. Closer relationships, less transactional and more emotional in nature, contribute to feelings of trust, significance, and mutual reliance. A typology of four close colleague relationship types also emerged variously driven by the depth of the relationship and sense of shared mutuality. Value This research documents employees' lived experience during disruption to show that relationships provide support for the meaningfulness, psychological safety, and availability aspects of personal engagement. It maps the process of developing supportive workplace relationships that form the relational context with four sub-contexts, distinguishing work, and personal engagement by their different foci. Practical and social implications are discussed

Conceptual understanding of osmosis and diffusion by Australian first-year biology students

Osmosis and diffusion are essential foundation concepts for first-year biology students as they are a key to understanding much of the biology curriculum. However, mastering these concepts can be challenging due to their interdisciplinary and abstract nature. Even at their simplest level, osmosis and diffusion require the learner to imagine processes they cannot see. In addition, many students begin university with flawed beliefs about these two concepts which will impede learning in related areas. The aim of this study was to explore misconceptions around osmosis and diffusion held by first-year cell biology students at an Australian regional university. The 18-item Osmosis and Diffusion Conceptual Assessment was completed by 767 students. From the results, four key misconceptions were identified: approximately half of the participants believed dissolved substances will eventually settle out of a solution; approximately one quarter thought that water will always reach equal levels; one quarter believed that all things expand and contract with temperature; and nearly one third of students believed molecules only move with the addition of external force. Greater attention to identifying and rectifying common misconceptions when teaching first-year students will improve their conceptual understanding of these concepts and benefit their learning in subsequent science subjects

"I didn't have a traditional career trajectory...": the route to credibility in the HR profession

The HR profession is self-doubting, poorly regarded by others and stuck in reactive, operational and compliance modes - despite much rhetoric about the need to be strategic. There are instances, however, where it has broken out of this low level work, and successfully become business partners at the ‘top table’. This paper explores the career trajectories of HR professionals that are at senior levels of their organisation, are influential, strategic and are at the top table. What characterised these non-traditional HR careers was extensive experience outside of HR, different titles such as “people and capability”, mentors, and close working relationship with CEOs. Successful professionals tended to have unitarist outlooks that helped resolve many tensions and ambiguities in the HR role

Towards a 'Community for Practice'—A Narrative Analysis of the Evolution of Higher Education Scholars

In higher education (HE), collaborative activities that revolve around a core idea, practice, or knowledge base, such as learning circles, communities of practice or inquiry, peer observation, and peer-assisted teaching, are known to support professional learning. This paper explores the experiences of eight HE scholars from Australia and New Zealand, across four years, as they recognized a new means of collaborative professional development that transcends known approaches and extends beyond an immediate focal point. The group originally formed to support the development of HE fellowship applications, but evolved to what they now consider a community for practice (CfP), where the purpose of collaboration has changed to meet the unique learning needs of each member. During their four years of collaboration, meeting discussions were recorded, and individual and community narrative reflections about participation in the group were created. A thematic analysis of these collective data sources revealed the group’s evolution, and the authors draw on their experiences to tell their story with an aim to enhance professional learning in HE. The study highlights that individuals’ distinct and varied needs can be developed and supported through scholarly, collegial engagements such as a CfP, which does not necessarily require an immediate point of practice

Epidermal Keratinocyte Self-Renewal Is Dependent upon Dermal Integrity

The epidermis is a major site of self-renewal in which there is constant replacement by cell division in the basal layers of cells lost by desquamation in the superficial layers. such a tissue is therefore likely to contain stem cells and in this study we have examined the role of the dermis in the maintenance of epidermal self-renewal. We have developed a mouse model to address the question of whether the maintenance of epidermal self-renewal is dependent, as in the hemopoietic system, upon a heterologous cell type. Intact epidermis separated from disaggregated epidermal cells, can reconstitute a stratified squamous epithelium when grafted onto the lumbo-dermal fascia of the mouse or onto an experimentally induced granulation tissue bed. However, we have shown that, after grafting the clonogenic capacity of the keratinocytes declines sharply and the colonies that are produced are incapable of self-renewal in vitro. Although initially hyperplastic, these epidermal grafts assume an atrophic appearance after 40–70 d this may be related to the loss of self-renewal observed in vitro. With both experimental murine grafts and clinical grafts the failure of keratinocytes to self-renew can be alleviated, partially, by the presence of the dermis in full-thickness or split-thickness grafts, which implies that the dermis has a functional role in epidermal role in epidermal stem cell maintenance. The relevance of these observations to the clinical experience with cultured autologous keratinocyte sheets as would dressings to patients is discussed

Anatomy ontologies and potential users: bridging the gap.

MOTIVATION: To evaluate how well current anatomical ontologies fit the way real-world users apply anatomy terms in their data annotations. METHODS: Annotations from three diverse multi-species public-domain datasets provided a set of use cases for matching anatomical terms in two major anatomical ontologies (the Foundational Model of Anatomy and Uberon), using two lexical-matching applications (Zooma and Ontology Mapper). RESULTS: Approximately 1500 terms were identified; Uberon/Zooma mappings provided 286 matches, compared to the control and Ontology Mapper returned 319 matches. For the Foundational Model of Anatomy, Zooma returned 312 matches, and Ontology Mapper returned 397. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that for our datasets the anatomical entities or concepts are embedded in user-generated complex terms, and while lexical mapping works, anatomy ontologies do not provide the majority of terms users supply when annotating data. Provision of searchable cross-products for compositional terms is a key requirement for using ontologies.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Risk factors for eating disorder symptoms at 12 years of age: A 6-year longitudinal cohort study

Eating disorders pose risks to health and wellbeing in young adolescents, but prospective studies of risk factors are scarce and this has impeded prevention efforts. This longitudinal study aimed to examine risk factors for eating disorder symptoms in a population-based birth cohort of young adolescents at 12 years. Participants from the Gateshead Millennium Study birth cohort (n = 516; 262 girls and 254 boys) completed self-report questionnaire measures of eating disorder symptoms and putative risk factors at age 7 years, 9 years and 12 years, including dietary restraint, depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction. Body mass index (BMI) was also measured at each age. Within-time correlates of eating disorder symptoms at 12 years of age were greater body dissatisfaction for both sexes and, for girls only, higher depressive symptoms. For both sexes, higher eating disorder symptoms at 9 years old significantly predicted higher eating disorder symptoms at 12 years old. Dietary restraint at 7 years old predicted boys' eating disorder symptoms at age 12, but not girls'. Factors that did not predict eating disorder symptoms at 12 years of age were BMI (any age), girls’ dietary restraint at 7 years and body dissatisfaction at 7 and 9 years of age for both sexes. In this population-based study, different patterns of predictors and correlates of eating disorder symptoms were found for girls and boys. Body dissatisfaction, a purported risk factor for eating disorder symptoms in young adolescents, developed concurrently with eating disorder symptoms rather than preceding them. However, restraint at age 7 and eating disorder symptoms at age 9 years did predict 12-year eating disorder symptoms. Overall, our findings suggest that efforts to prevent disordered eating might beneficially focus on preadolescent populations