The Elements: Transforming Teaching through Curriculum-Based Professional Learning

The Elements: Transforming Teaching through Curriculum-Based Professional Learning is a Challenge Paper from Carnegie Corporation of New York that explores how professional learning anchored in high-quality curriculum materials can allow teachers to experience instruction as their students will, change instructional practices, and lead to better student outcomes

Money and markets in Australia's healthcare system

The provision of social services in Australia has changed dramatically in recent decades. Governments have expanded social provision without expanding the public sector by directly subsidising private provision, by contracting private agencies, both non-profit and for-profit, to deliver services, and through a number of other subsidies and vouchers. Private actors receive public funds to deliver social services to citizens, raising a range of important questions about financial and democratic accountability: 'who benefits', 'who suffers' and 'who decides'. This book explores these developments through rich case studies of a diverse set of social policy domains. The case studies demonstrate a range of effects of marketisation, including the impact on the experience of consumer engagement with social service systems, on the distribution of social advantage and disadvantage, and on the democratic steering of social policy

The Right to Health in Evidence-based Policymaking

The right to health is included in United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) number 3, “Good health and well-being”. This goal aims to ensure healthy life and to promote well-being for all, at all ages. The SDGs, which build on the Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), provide a significant expansion to the development agenda. Inclusive development is part and parcel of the SDGs. Evidence-based policymaking studies provide explanations of normative and legitimate expectations for policymakers, namely, to use scientific evidence and specific indicators in their policymaking process. The right to health, as constructed, in evidence-based policymaking discourse is in contention. This paper addresses the various types of meaning Indonesian policymakers attach to the right to health through their discourses in norms of health policy. This study provides an analysis of discourses, regulatory analysis, and historical narratives (based on analysis of health regulations and newspaper articles) pertaining to evidence-informed policy in the health sector in Indonesia from 2009-2017. Our findings elucidate how the right to health manifests in the processes of evidence-based policymaking. We do so by way of a two-pronged analysis, i) discourse analysis at the macro level in Indonesia about the right to health as a norm and ii) health policymaking at the micro level, in the Indonesian district of Gunungkidul,within the region of Yogyakarta

Allied health education for disability rights: A Case study from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Health Sciences

Introduction: Persons with disabilities are vulnerable to rights violations when accessing healthcare. As allied health professionals play a significant role in the care of persons with disabilities, it is important that allied health professional competencies and education recognise the rights of persons with disabilities. However, a preliminary literature review indicated that the incorporation of disability rights within allied health professional competencies and education has not been researched. The University of Sydney's Faculty of health Sciences offers health professional education to six allied health disciplines: Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Counselling, Speech Pathology, Physiotherapy, Diagnostic Radiography and Exercise Physiology. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the nature and extent to which the competencies and education of thee six allied health professions focus on disability rights, and to explore the supports, barriers and recommendation for the future incorporation of human right within allied health professional education. Method: This study used a mixed method design involving quantitative keyword searches and qualitative content analyses of competency documents, education documents and transcripts of interviews conducted with co-ordinators of disability rights subjects. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) was used as a theoretical framework during data analysis. Results: An allied health continuum emerged from the results, suggesting the extent to which the professions focus on disability rights varies. Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Counselling and Speech Pathology had the strongest human rights focus. Conversely disability rights were no recognised by Physiotherapy, Diagnostic Radiography or exercise Physiology education. Interviews attributed this phenomenon to a biomedical rather than a rights-based approach to disability. Conclusion: There is considerable scope for allied health professions to strengthen human eights-based education through ethical codes, competencies, and accreditation and registration requirements, with the aim of reducing rights violations experienced by persons with disabilities when accessing allied health care

The complexity of social practice : understanding inertia and change in maternity care organizations

Beyond the limited efficiency and economy goals of neoliberal health policy lies the promise of genuine health services reform. In maternity care in particular, recent policy developments have sought to make the management of birth more &lsquo;women-centred and family-friendly&rsquo;. Interprofessional collaboration and greater consumer participation in policy and decision-making are key means to achieve this goal, but changing the entrenched system of medicalised birth remains difficult. Recent social contestation of maternity care has destabilised but not eradicated pervasive medical hegemony. Further reform requires analysis both of institutionalised patterns of power, and attention to the fluidity and situated knowledge shaping organisational and professional practices. Accordingly, this paper outlines a framework with which to explore the multi-layered social processes involved in implementing organisational and cultural change in maternity care. Analysis of social interventions in health systems, we suggest, can be advanced by drawing on strands from critical organization studies, complexity and critical discourse theories and social practice approaches.<br /

Eighteen Rootstock and Five Scion Tomato Varieties: Seedling Growth Rates Before Grafting and Success in Grafting the Ninety Variety Combinations

This is a compilation of 30 research trial reports from four land-grant universities in the Midwestern United States. Crops include cantaloupe, pickling cucumber, pepper, potato, pumpkin, summer squash and zucchini, sweet corn, tomato, and watermelon. Somecrops were evaluated in high tunnels or hoophouses. Most trials evaluated different cultivars or varieties. One report addressed plant spacing for sweet corn and one addressed soil block for production of tomato seedlings. A list of vegetable seed sources and a list of other online sources of vegetable trial reports are also included

High Time for Conservation: Adding the Environment to the Debate on Marijuana Liberalization

The liberalization of marijuana policies, including the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana, is sweeping the United States and other countries. Marijuana cultivation can have significant negative collateral effects on the environment that are often unknown or overlooked. Focusing on the state of California, where by some estimates 60% -- 70% of the marijuana consumed in the United States is grown, we argue that (a) the environmental harm caused by marijuana cultivation merits a direct policy response, (b) current approaches to governing the environmental effects are inadequate, and (c) neglecting discussion of the environmental impacts of cultivation when shaping future marijuana use and possession policies represents a missed opportunity to reduce, regulate, and mitigate environmental harm

Health Workforce Migration in the Asia Pacific: implications for the achievement of sustainable development goals

The maldistribution of health workers globally and within the Asia Pacific region remains problematic. While globalisation, and the increasing mobility of capital and labour, helps to reduce inequalities between countries, it increases inequality within countries. This study examines health workforce data and densities in the Asia Pacific region through a health workforce migration lens. The main implication relevant to achievement of sustainable development goals is the need for countries to work in a co-ordinated way in this region to increase substantially health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention&nbsp;of the health workforce in developing countries, especially in least developed countries and small island developing states, most notably the Maldives, Timor- Leste, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Abbreviations: OECD – Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development; SDG – Sustainable Development Goals; SIDS – Small Island Development States

Health Workforce Migration in the Asia Pacific: implications for the achievement of sustainable development goals

The maldistribution of health workers globally and within the Asia Pacific region remains problematic. While globalisation, and the increasing mobility of capital and labour, helps to reduce inequalities between countries, it increases inequality within countries. This study examines health workforce data and densities in the Asia Pacific region through a health workforce migration lens. The main implication relevant to achievement of sustainable development goals is the need for countries to work in a co-ordinated way in this region to increase substantially health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention&nbsp;of the health workforce in developing countries, especially in least developed countries and small island developing states, most notably the Maldives, Timor- Leste, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Abbreviations: OECD – Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development; SDG – Sustainable Development Goals; SIDS – Small Island Development States