Search results for: school stakeholders

Authors: Ifeanyi Adigwe

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The influence of television on adolescents is prevalent and widespread because television is a powerful sex educator for adolescents. This study examined the relationship between viewing sexual content on television and sexual behaviour of adolescents in public senior secondary schools in Lagos, Nigeria. The study employed a survey research design with a structured questionnaire as instrument. The multi-stage sampling technique was adopted. Firstly, purposive sampling was adopted in selecting 3 educational districts namely: Agege, Maryland, and Agboju. These educational districts were chosen for convenience and its wide coverage area of public senior secondary schools in Lagos State. Secondly, the researcher adopted systematic sampling to select the schools. The schools were listed in alphabetical order in each district and every 10th school were selected, yielding 13 schools altogether. A total of 501 copies of questionnaire were administered to the students and a total 491 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved. Only 453 copies of the questionnaire met the inclusion criteria and were used for analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation, Principal components analysis, and regression analysis. Results of correlation analysis showed a positive and significant relationship between adolescent sexual belief and their preference for sexual content in television (r =0.117, N =453, p=0.13), viewing sexual content on television and adolescent sexual behavior, (r =-0.112, N =453, p<0.05), adolescent television preference and their preference for sexual content in television (r =0.328, N =453, p<0.05), adolescent television preference and adolescent’s sexual behavior (r=0.093, N =453, p<0.05). However, a negative but significant relationship exists between adolescent’s sexual knowledge and their sexual behavior (r=-122, N=453, p=0.0009). Pearson’s correlation between adolescents’ sexual knowledge and sexual behavior shows that there is a positive significant but strong relationship between adolescent’s sexual knowledge and their sexual behavior (r=0.967, N=453, p<0.05). The results also show that adolescent’s preference for sexual content in television informs them about their sexuality, development and sexual health. The descriptive and inferential analysis of data revealed that the interaction among adolescent sexual belief, knowledge and adolescents’ preference of sexual in television and its resultant effect on adolescent sexual behavior is apparent because sexual belief and norms about sex of an adolescent can induce his television preference of sexual content on television. The study concludes that exposure to sexual content in television can impact on adolescent sexual behaviour. There is no doubt that the actual outcome of television viewing and adolescent sexual behavior remains controversial because adolescent sexual behavior is multifaceted and multi-dimensional. Since behavior is learned overtime, the frequency of exposure and nature of sexual content viewed overtime induces and hastens sexual activity.

Keywords: adolescent sexual behavior, Nigeria, sexual belief, sexual content, sexual knowledge, television preference

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Authors: Inkeri Jaaskelainen

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The aim of this study is to shed light on what is it like to study in apprenticeship training using intermediate (or even lower level) Finnish. The aim is to find out and describe these students' experiences and feelings while acquiring a profession in Finnish as it is important to understand how immigrant background adult learners learn and how their needs could be better taken into account. Many students choose apprenticeships and start vocational training while their language skills in Finnish are still very weak. At work, students should be able to simultaneously learn Finnish and do vocational studies in a noisy, demanding, and stressful environment. Learning and understanding new things is very challenging under these circumstances, and sometimes students get exhausted and experience a lot of stress - which makes learning even more difficult. Students are different from each other, and so are their ways to learn. Both duties at work and school assignments require reasonably good general language skills, and, especially at work, language skills are also a safety issue. The empirical target of this study is a group of students with an immigrant background who studied in various fields with intensive L2 support in 2016–2018 and who by now have completed a vocational upper secondary qualification. The interview material for this narrative study was collected from those who completed apprenticeship training in 2019–2020. The data collection methods used are a structured thematic interview, a questionnaire, and observational data. Interviewees with an immigrant background have an inconsistent cultural and educational background - some have completed an academic degree in their country of origin while others have learned to read and write only in Finland. The analysis of the material utilizes thematic analysis, which is used to examine learning and related experiences. Learning a language at work is very different from traditional classroom teaching. With evolving language skills, at an intermediate level at best, rushing and stressing makes it even more difficult to understand and increases the fear of failure. Constant noise, rapidly changing situations, and uncertainty undermine the learning and well-being of apprentices. According to preliminary results, apprenticeship training is well suited to the needs of an adult immigrant student. In apprenticeship training, students need a lot of support for learning and understanding a new communication and working culture. Stress can result in, e.g., fatigue, frustration, and difficulties in remembering and understanding. Apprenticeship training can be seen as a good path to working life. However, L2 support is a very important part of apprenticeship training, and it indeed helps students to believe that one day they will graduate and even get employed in their new country.

Keywords: apprenticeship training, vocational basic degree, Finnish learning, wee-being

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Authors: Hsiu Tan Liu, Chun Jung Liu

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It has multiple purposes to develop a sign language receptive skills test. For example, this test can be used to be an important tool for education and to understand the sign language ability of deaf children. There is no available test for these purposes in Taiwan. Through the discussion of experts and the references of standardized Taiwanese Sign Language Receptive Test for adults and adolescents, the frame of Taiwanese Sign Language Receptive Skills Test (TSL-RST) for deaf children was developed, and the items were further designed. After multiple times of pre-trials, discussions and corrections, TSL-RST is finally developed which can be conducted and scored online. There were 33 deaf children who agreed to be tested from all three deaf schools in Taiwan. Through item analysis, the items were picked out that have good discrimination index and fair difficulty index. Moreover, psychometric indexes of reliability and validity were established. Then, derived the regression formula was derived which can predict the sign language receptive skills of deaf children. The main results of this study are as follows. (1). TSL-RST includes three sub-test of vocabulary comprehension, syntax comprehension and paragraph comprehension. There are 21, 20, and 9 items in vocabulary comprehension, syntax comprehension, and paragraph comprehension, respectively. (2). TSL-RST can be conducted individually online. The sign language ability of deaf students can be calculated fast and objectively, so that they can get the feedback and results immediately. This can also contribute to both teaching and research. The most subjects can complete the test within 25 minutes. While the test procedure, they can answer the test questions without relying on their reading ability or memory capacity. (3). The sub-test of the vocabulary comprehension is the easiest one, syntax comprehension is harder than vocabulary comprehension and the paragraph comprehension is the hardest. Each of the three sub-test and the whole test are good in item discrimination index. (4). The psychometric indices are good, including the internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α coefficient), test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, and content validity. The sign language ability are significantly related to non-verbal IQ, the teachers’ rating to the students’ sign language ability and students’ self-rating to their own sign language ability. The results showed that the higher grade students have better performance than the lower grade students, and students with deaf parent perform better than those with hearing parent. These results made TLS-RST have great discriminant validity. (5). The predictors of sign language ability of primary deaf students are age and years of starting to learn sign language. The results of this study suggested that TSL-RST can effectively assess deaf student’s sign language ability. This study also proposed a model to develop a sign language tests.

Keywords: comprehension test, elementary school, sign language, Taiwan sign language

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Authors: Loha Hashimy, Isabella Castillo

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In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, the importance of precise navigation and mapping systems cannot be understated. As various sectors undergo transformative changes, the market potential for Advanced Mapping and Management Systems (AMMS) emerges as a critical focus area. The Galileo/GNSS-Based Autonomous Mobile Mapping System (GAMMS) project, specifically targeted toward high-definition mapping (HDM), endeavours to provide insights into this market within the broader context of the geomatics and navigation fields. With the growing integration of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) into our transportation systems, the relevance and demand for sophisticated mapping solutions like HDM have become increasingly pertinent. The research employed a meticulous, lean, stepwise, and interconnected methodology to ensure a comprehensive assessment. Beginning with the identification of pivotal project results, the study progressed into a systematic market screening. This was complemented by an exhaustive desk research phase that delved into existing literature, data, and trends. To ensure the holistic validity of the findings, extensive consultations were conducted. Academia and industry experts provided invaluable insights through interviews, questionnaires, and surveys. This multi-faceted approach facilitated a layered analysis, juxtaposing secondary data with primary inputs, ensuring that the conclusions were both accurate and actionable. Our investigation unearthed a plethora of drivers steering the HD maps landscape. These ranged from technological leaps, nuanced market demands, and influential economic factors to overarching socio-political shifts. The meteoric rise of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and the shift towards app-based transportation solutions, such as Uber, stood out as significant market pull factors. A nuanced PESTEL analysis further enriched our understanding, shedding light on political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal facets influencing the HD maps market trajectory. Simultaneously, potential roadblocks were identified. Notable among these were barriers related to high initial costs, concerns around data quality, and the challenges posed by a fragmented and evolving regulatory landscape. The GAMMS project serves as a beacon, illuminating the vast opportunities that lie ahead for the HD mapping sector. It underscores the indispensable role of HDM in enhancing navigation, ensuring safety, and providing pinpoint, accurate location services. As our world becomes more interconnected and reliant on technology, HD maps emerge as a linchpin, bridging gaps and enabling seamless experiences. The research findings accentuate the imperative for stakeholders across industries to recognize and harness the potential of HD mapping, especially as we stand on the cusp of a transportation revolution heralded by Autonomous Vehicles and advanced geomatic solutions.

Keywords: high-definition mapping (HDM), autonomous vehicles, PESTEL analysis, market drivers

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Authors: Friman Hen, Banner Ifaa, Shalom-Tuchin Bosmat, Einav Yulia

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The action learning course is an academic course which involves academic learning and social activities. The courses deal with processes and social challenges, reveal different ideologies, and develop critical thinking and pragmatic ideas. Students receive course credits and a grade for being part of such courses. Participating students enroll in courses that involve action and activities to engage in the experiential learning process, thereby creating a dialogue and cross-fertilization between being taught in the classroom and experiencing the reality in the real world. A learning experience includes meeting with social organizations, institutions, and state authorities and carrying out practical work with diverse populations. Through experience, students strengthen their academic skills, formulate ethical attitudes toward reality, develop professional and civilian perspectives, and realize how they can influence their surrounding in the present and the hereafter. Under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Hen Friman, H.I.T. has built an innovative course that combines action and activities to increase the awareness and accessibility of the community in an experiential way. The end goal is to create Green Ambassadors—children with a high level of environmental awareness. This course is divided into two parts. The first part, focused on frontal teaching, delivers knowledge from extensive environmental fields to students. These areas include introduction to ecology, the process of electricity generation, air pollution, renewable energy, water economy, waste and recycling, and energy efficiency (first stage). In addition to the professional content in the environment field, students learn the method of effective and experiential teaching to younger learners (4 to 8 years old). With the attainment of knowledge, students are divided into operating groups. The second part of the course shows how the theory becomes practical and concrete. At this stage, students are asked to introduce to the first- and second-graders of ‘Revivim’ School in Holon a lesson of 90 minutes focused on presenting the issues and their importance during the course (second stage). This course is the beginning of a paradigm shift regarding energy usage in the modern society in Israel. The objective of the course is to expand worldwide and train the first and second-graders, and even pre-schoolers, in a wide scope to increase population awareness rate, both in Israel and all over the world, for a green future.

Keywords: air pollution, green ambassador, recycling, renewable energy

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Authors: Vaiddehi Bansal, Ridhi Sahai, Kareem Kysia

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Overseas labor migration is currently one of the most important contributors to the economy of Bangladesh and is a highly profitable form of labor for Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries. In 2019, 700,159 migrant workers from Bangladeshtraveled abroad for employment. GCC countries are a major destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers, with Saudi Arabia being the most common destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers since 2016. Despite the high rate of migration between these countries every year, the OLR industry remains complex and often leaves migrants susceptible to human trafficking, forced labor, and modern slavery. While the prevalence of forced labor among Bangladeshi migrants in GCC countries is still unknown, the IOM estimates international migrant workers comprise one fourth of the victims of forced labor. Moreover, the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed migrant workers to additional adverse situations, making them even more vulnerable to forced labor and health risks. This paper presents findings from a rapid assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on OLR in Bangladesh, with an emphasis on the increased risk of forced labor among vulnerable migrant worker populations, particularly women.Rapid reviews are a useful approach to swiftly provide actionable evidence for informed decision-making during emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team conducted semi-structured key information interviews (KIIs) with a range of stakeholders, including government officials, local NGOs, international organizations, migration researchers, and formal and informal recruiting agencies, to obtain insights on the multi-facted impacts of COVID-19 on the OLR sector. The research team also conducted a comprehensive review of available resources, including media articles, blogs, policy briefs, reports, white papers, and other online content, to triangulate findings from the KIIs. After screening for inclusion criteria, a total of 110 grey literature documents were included in the review. A total of 31 KIIs were conducted, data from which was transcribed and translated from Bangla to English, andanalyzed using a detailed codebook. Findings indicate that there was limited reintegration support for returnee migrants. Facing increasing amounts of debt, financial insecurity, and social discrimination, returnee migrants, were extremely vulnerable to forced labor and exploitation. Growing financial debt and limited job opportunities in their home country will likely push migrants to resort to unsafe migration channels. Evidence suggests that women, who are primarily domestic works in GCC countries, were exposed to increased risk of forced labor and workplace violence. Due to stay-at-home measures, women migrant workers were tasked with additional housekeeping working and subjected to longer work hours, wage withholding, and physical abuse. In Bangladesh, returnee women migrant workers also faced an increased risk of domestic violence.

Keywords: forced labor, migration, gender, human trafficking

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Authors: Claude Nsobya, Alice Moncaster, Karen Potter, Jed Ramsay

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The shift in Flood Risk Governance (FRG) has moved away from traditional approaches that solely relied on centralized decision-making and structural flood defenses. Instead, there is now the adoption of integrated flood risk management measures that involve various actors and stakeholders. This new approach emphasizes people-centered approaches, including adaptation and learning. This shift to a diversity of FRG approaches has been identified as a significant factor in enhancing resilience. Resilience here refers to a community's ability to withstand, absorb, recover, adapt, and potentially transform in the face of flood events. It is argued that if the FRG merely focused on the conventional 'fighting the water' - flood defense - communities would not be resilient. The move to these people-centered approaches also implies that communities will be more involved in FRG. It is suggested that effective flood risk governance influences resilience through meaningful community involvement, and effective community engagement is vital in shaping community resilience to floods. Successful community participation not only uses context-specific indigenous knowledge but also develops a sense of ownership and responsibility. Through capacity development initiatives, it can also raise awareness and all these help in building resilience. Recent Flood Risk Management (FRM) projects have thus had increasing community involvement, with varied conceptualizations of such community engagement in the academic literature on FRM. In the context of overland floods, there has been a substantial body of literature on Flood Risk Governance and Management. Yet, groundwater flooding has gotten little attention despite its unique qualities, such as its persistence for weeks or months, slow onset, and near-invisibility. There has been a little study in this area on how successful community involvement in Flood Risk Governance may improve community resilience to groundwater flooding in particular. This paper focuses on a case study of a flood risk management project in the United Kingdom. Buckinghamshire Council is leading Project Groundwater, which is one of 25 significant initiatives sponsored by England's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme. DEFRA awarded Buckinghamshire Council and other councils 150 million to collaborate with communities and implement innovative methods to increase resilience to groundwater flooding. Based on a literature review, this paper proposes a new paradigm for effective community engagement in Flood Risk Governance (FRG). This study contends that effective community participation can have an impact on various resilience capacities identified in the literature, including social capital, institutional capital, physical capital, natural capital, human capital, and economic capital. In the case of social capital, for example, successful community engagement can influence social capital through the process of social learning as well as through developing social networks and trust values, which are vital in influencing communities' capacity to resist, absorb, recover, and adapt. The study examines community engagement in Project Groundwater using surveys with local communities and documentary analysis to test this notion. The outcomes of the study will inform community involvement activities in Project Groundwater and may shape DEFRA policies and guidelines for community engagement in FRM.

Keywords: flood risk governance, community, resilience, groundwater flooding

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Authors: Margo O'Sullivan, Xuefeng Chen, Qi Zhao, J. Jiang, Ning Fu

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Early childhood development, or ECD, is about the 'whole child' – the physical, social and emotional, cognitive thinking and language progression of each young individual. Overwhelming evidence is now available to support investment in Early Childhood Development internationally, attendance at ECD leads to: improved learning outcomes; improved completion and reduced less dropout rates; and most notably, Professor Heckman, Nobel Laureate’s, findings that for every dollar invested, there is an economic return of up to 17%. Notably, ECD has been included in the 2015-2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The Government of China (GOC) has embraced this research and in 2010, State Council, announced focus on ECD setting a target to provide access to ECD for 85% of 3-6 year olds by 2020; to date, the target has surpassed expectations and reached 70.4%. GoC is also increasingly focusing on the even more critical 0-3 age group, when the plasticity of the brain is at its peak and neurons form connections as fast as 1,000 per second. Key to ECD are parents and caregivers of young children, with parental education critical to fully exploiting the significant potential of the early years of children. In China, with such vast numbers, one in seven pre-school age children in the world live in China, the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the National Centre for Education Technology, explored how to best provide parental education and provide key child developmental related knowledge to parents and caregivers. In response, MoE and UNICEF created a resource for parenting information that began with a computer website in 2012, followed by piloting a kiosk service in 2013 for parents in remote areas without access to the internet, and then a mobile phone application in 2014. The resource includes 269 ECD messages and 200 micro-videos covering critical issues of early childhood development from birth to age 6 years: daily care, nutrition and feeding, disease prevention, immunization, development and education, and safety and protection. To date, there have been 397,599 unique views on the website, and data for the mobile app currently being analysed (Links: http://yuer.cbern.gov.cn/; App: https://appsto.re/cn/OiKPZ.i). This paper will explore the development of this resource, its use by parents and the public, efforts to assess the effectiveness in improving parenting and child development, and future plans to roll an updated version in 2016 to all parents.

Keywords: early childhood development, mobile apps for education, parental education, China

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Authors: O. O. Oku, K. S. Jerry-Alagbaoso

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It is universally acknowledged that the primary function of universities is the generation and dissemination of knowledge. This mission is pursued through the research component of the university programme especially at the post-graduate level. The senior academic staff teach, supervise and provide general academic leadership to post-graduate students who are expected to carry out research leading to the presentation of dissertation as requirement for the award of doctoral degree in their various disciplines. Carrying out the research enterprises involves a lot of corroboration among individuals and communities. The need to safeguard the interest of everyone involved in the enterprise makes the development of ethical standard in research imperative. Ensuring the development and effective application of such ethical standard falls within the leadership role of the vice –chancellors, Deans of post-graduate schools/ faculties, Heads of Departments and supervisors. It is the relevance and application of such ethical standard in Nigerian university research efforts that this study discussed. The study adopted the descriptive research design. A researcher-made 4 point rating scale was used to elicit information from the post-graduate dissertation supervisors sampled from one university each from the six geo-political zones in Nigeria using the purposive sampling technique. The data collected was analysed using the mean score and standard deviation. The findings of the study include among others that there are several cases of unethical practices by Ph.D dissertation students in Nigerian universities. Prominent among these include duplicating research topics, making unauthorized copies of data paper or computer programme, failing to acknowledge contributions of relevant people and authors, rigging an experiment to prempt the result among others. Some of the causes of the unethical practices according to the respondents include inadequate funding of universities resulting in inadequate remuneration for university teachers, inadequacy of equipment and infrastructures, poor supervision of Ph.D students,’ poverty on the side of the student researchers and non-application of sanctions on violators. Improved funding of the Nigerian universities system with emphasis on both staff and student research efforts, admitting academic oriented students into the Ph.D programme and ensuring the application of appropriate sanctions in cases of unethical conduct in research featured prominently in the needed leadership imperatives. Based on the findings of the study, the researchers recommend the development of university research policies that is closely tied to each university’s strategic plan. Such plan should explain the research focus that will attract more funding and direct students interest towards it without violating the principle of academic freedom. The plan should also incorporate the establishment of a research administration office to provide the necessary link between the students and funding agencies and also organise training for supervisors on leadership activities expected of them while educating students on the processes involved in carrying out a qualitative and acceptable research study. Such exercise should include the ethical principles and guidelines that comprise all parts of research from research topic through the literature review to the design and the truthful reporting of results.

Keywords: academic leadership, ethical standards, research stakeholders, research enterprise

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Authors: Shanaka Gunasekara, Maleen Jayasuriya, Nalin Harischandra, Lilantha Samaranayake, Gamini Dissanayake

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One serious facet of the worsening Human-Elephant conflict (HEC) in nations such as Sri Lanka involves elephant-train collisions. Endangered Asian elephants are maimed or killed during such accidents, which also often result in orphaned or disabled elephants, contributing to the phenomenon of lone elephants. These lone elephants are found to be more likely to attack villages and showcase aggressive behaviour, which further exacerbates the overall HEC. Furthermore, Railway Services incur significant financial losses and disruptions to services annually due to such accidents. Most elephant-train collisions occur due to a lack of adequate reaction time. This is due to the significant stopping distance requirements of trains, as the full braking force needs to be avoided to minimise the risk of derailment. Thus, poor driver visibility at sharp turns, nighttime operation, and poor weather conditions are often contributing factors to this problem. Initial investigations also indicate that most collisions occur in localised “hotspots” where elephant pathways/corridors intersect with railway tracks that border grazing land and watering holes. Taking these factors into consideration, this work proposes the leveraging of recent developments in Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) technology to detect elephants using an RGB/infrared capable camera around known hotspots along the railway track. The CNN was trained using a curated dataset of elephants collected on field visits to elephant sanctuaries and wildlife parks in Sri Lanka. With this vision-based detection system at its core, a prototype unit of an early warning system was designed and tested. This weatherised and waterproofed unit consists of a Reolink security camera which provides a wide field of view and range, an Nvidia Jetson Xavier computing unit, a rechargeable battery, and a solar panel for self-sufficient functioning. The prototype unit was designed to be a low-cost, low-power and small footprint device that can be mounted on infrastructures such as poles or trees. If an elephant is detected, an early warning message is communicated to the train driver using the GSM network. A mobile app for this purpose was also designed to ensure that the warning is clearly communicated. A centralized control station manages and communicates all information through the train station network to ensure coordination among important stakeholders. Initial results indicate that detection accuracy is sufficient under varying lighting situations, provided comprehensive training datasets that represent a wide range of challenging conditions are available. The overall hardware prototype was shown to be robust and reliable. We envision a network of such units may help contribute to reducing the problem of elephant-train collisions and has the potential to act as an important surveillance mechanism in dealing with the broader issue of human-elephant conflicts.

Keywords: computer vision, deep learning, human-elephant conflict, wildlife early warning technology

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Authors: I. Martinez-Conesa, E. Garcia-Meca, M. Barradas-Quiroz

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The objective of this study is to assess the impact on earnings management of latest two Hofstede cultural dimensions: long-term orientation and indulgence. Long-term orientation represents the alignment of a society towards the future and indulgence expresses the extent to which a society exhibits willingness, or restrain, to realise their impulses. Additionally, this paper tests if there are relevant differences by testing the moderating role of the legal tradition, Continental versus Anglo-Saxon. Our sample comprises 15 countries: Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, and Thailand, with a total of 12,936 observations from 2003 to 2013. Our results show that managers in countries with high levels of long-term orientation reduce their levels of discretionary accruals. The findings do not confirm the effect of indulgence on earnings management. In addition, our results confirm previous literature regarding the effect of individualism, noting that firms in countries with high levels of collectivism might be more inclined to use earnings discretion to protect the welfare of the collective group of firm stakeholders. Uncertainty avoidance results in downwards earnings management as well as high disclosure, suggesting that less manipulation takes place when transparency is higher. Indulgence is the cultural dimension that confronts wellbeing versus survival; dimension is formulated including happiness, the perception of live control and the importance of leisure. Indulgence shows a weak negative correlation with power distance indicating a slight tendency for more hierarchical societies to be less indulgent. Anglo-Saxon countries are a positive effect of individualism and a negative effect of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and disclosure. With respect to continental countries, we can see a significant and positive effect of individualism and a significant and negative effect of masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence. Therefore, we observe the negative effect on earnings management provoked by higher disclosure and uncertainty avoidance only happens in Anglo-Saxon countries. Meanwhile, the improvement in reporting quality motivated by higher long-term orientation and higher indulgence is dominant in Continental countries. Our results confirm that there is a moderating effect of the legal system in the association between culture and earnings management. This effect is especially relevant in the dimensions related to uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation, indulgence, and disclosure. The negative effect of long-term orientation on earnings management only happens in those countries set in continental legal systems because of the Anglo-Saxon legal systems is supported by the decisions of the courts and the traditions, so it already has long-term orientation. That does not occur in continental systems, depending mainly of contend of the law. Sensitivity analysis used with Jones modified CP model, Jones Standard model and Jones Standard CP model confirm the robustness of these results. This paper collaborates towards a better understanding on how earnings management, culture and legal systems relate to each other, and contribute to previous literature by examining the influence of the two latest Hofstede’s dimensions not previously studied in papers.

Keywords: Hofstede, long-term-orientation, earnings management, indulgence

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Authors: Sevim Ugur, Cemile Kutmec Yilmaz, Omer Us, Sevdenur Koksaldi

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Aim: This study aims to investigate the effect of digital game playing and Internet addiction on perceived stress levels in university students. Method: The descriptive study was conducted through face-to-face interview method with a total of 364 university students studying at Aksaray University between November 15 and December 30, 2017. The research data were collected using personal information form, a questionnaire to determine the characteristics of playing digital game, the Internet addiction scale and the perceived stress scale. In the evaluation of the data, Mann-Whitney U test was used for two-group comparison of the sample with non-normal distribution, Kruskal-Wallis H-test was used in the comparison of more than two groups, and the Spearman correlation test was used to determine the relationship between Internet addiction and the perceived stress level. Results: It was determined that the mean age of the students participated in the study was 20.13 ± 1.7 years, 67.6% was female, 35.7% was sophomore, and 62.1% had an income 500 TL or less. It was found that 83.5% of the students use the Internet every day and 70.6% uses the Internet for 5 hours or less per day. Of the students, 12.4% prefers digital games instead of spending time outdoors, 8% plays a game as the first activity in leisure time, 12.4% plays all day, 15.7% feels anger when he/she is prevented from playing, 14.8% prefers playing games to get away from his/her problems, 23.4% had his/her school achievement affected negatively because of game playing, and 8% argues with family members due to the time spent for gaming. Students who play games on the computer for a long time were found to feel back pain (30.8%), headache (28.6%), insomnia (26.9%), dryness and pain in the eyes (26.6%), pain in the wrist (21.2%), feeling excessive tension and anger (16.2%), humpback (12.9), vision loss (9.6%) and pain in the wrist and fingers (7.4%). In our study, students' Internet addiction scale mean score was found to be 45.47 ± 16.1 and mean perceived stress scale score was 28.56 ± 2.7. A significant and negative correlation (p=0.037) was found between the total score of the Internet addiction scale and the total score of the perceived stress scale (r=-0.110). Conclusion: It was found in the study that Internet addiction and perceived stress of the students were at a moderate level and that there was a negative correlation between Internet addiction and perceived stress levels. Internet addiction was found to increase with the increasing perceived stress levels of students, and students were found to have health problems such as back pain, dryness in the eyes, pain, insomnia, headache, and humpback. Therefore, it is recommended to inform students about different coping methods other than spending time on the Internet to cope with the stress they perceive.

Keywords: digital game, internet addiction, student, stress level

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Authors: Marie-Josee Lavallee

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Adorno’s reputation as an abstract and pessimistic thinker who indulged in a critic of capitalist society and culture without bothering himself with opening prospects for change, and who has no interest in political activism, recently begun to be questioned. This paper, which has a twofold objective, will push revisionist readings a step further by putting forward the thesis that revolutionary praxis has been an enduring concern for Adorno, surfacing throughout his entire work. On the other hand, it will hold that his understanding of the relationships between theory and praxis, which will be explained by referring to Ernst Bloch’s distinction between the warm and cold currents of Marxism, can help to interpret the paralysis of revolutionary practice in our own time under a new light. Philosophy and its tasks have been an enduring topic of Adorno’s work from the 1930s to Negativ Dialektik. The writings in which he develops these ideas stand among his most obscure and abstract so that their strong ties to the political have remained mainly overlooked. Adorno’s undertaking of criticizing and ‘redeeming’ philosophy and metaphysics is inseparable from a care for retrieving the capacity to act in the world and to change it. Philosophical problems are immanent to sociological problems, and vice versa, he underlines in his Metaphysik. Begriff and Problem. The issue of truth cannot be severed from the contingent context of a given idea. As a critical undertaking extracting its contents from reality, which is what philosophy should be from Adorno's perspective, the latter has the potential to fully reveal the reification of the individual and consciousness resulting from capitalist economic and cultural domination, thus opening the way to resistance and revolutionary change. While this project, according to his usual method, is sketched mainly in negative terms, it also exhibits positive contours which depict a socialist society. Only in the latter could human suffering end, and mutilated individuals experiment with reconciliation in an authentic way. That Adorno’s continuous plea for philosophy’s self-critic and renewal hides an enduring concern for revolutionary praxis emerges clearly from a careful philosophical analysis of his writings on philosophy and a selection of his sociological work, coupled with references to his correspondences. This study points to the necessity of a serious re-evaluation of Adorno’s relationship to the political, which will impact on the interpretation of his whole oeuvre, is much needed. In the second place, Adorno's dialectical conception of theory and praxis is enlightening for our own time, since it suggests that we are experiencing a phase of creative latency rather an insurmountable impasse.

Keywords: Frankfurt school, philosophy and revolution, revolutionary praxis, Theodor W. Adorno

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Authors: Champa Gunawardana, Anishka Hettiarachchi

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Conducive Architecture for learning environments is an area of interest for many scholars around the world. Loss of sense of hearing leads to the assumption that deaf students are visual learners. Comprehending favorable non-hearing attributes of architecture can lead to effective, rich and friendly learning environments for hearing impaired. The objective of the current qualitative investigation is to explore the nature and parameters of a sense of place of deaf children to support optimal learning. The investigation was conducted with hearing-impaired children (age: between 8-19, Gender: 15 male and 15 female) of Yashodhara deaf and blind school at Balangoda, Sri Lanka. A sensory ethnography study was adopted to identify the nature of perception and the parameters of most preferred and least preferred spaces of the learning environment. The common perceptions behind most preferred places in the learning environment were found as being calm and quiet, sense of freedom, volumes characterized by openness and spaciousness, sense of safety, wide spaces, privacy and belongingness, less crowded, undisturbed, availability of natural light and ventilation, sense of comfort and the view of green colour in the surroundings. On the other hand, the least preferred spaces were found to be perceived as dark, gloomy, warm, crowded, lack of freedom, smells (bad), unsafe and having glare. Perception of space by deaf considering the hierarchy of sensory modalities involved was identified as; light - color perception (34 %), sight - visual perception (32%), touch - haptic perception (26%), smell - olfactory perception (7%) and sound – auditory perception (1%) respectively. Sense of freedom (32%) and sense of comfort (23%) were the predominant psychological parameters leading to an optimal sense of place perceived by hearing impaired. Privacy (16%), rhythm (14%), belonging (9%) and safety (6%) were found as secondary factors. Open and wide flowing spaces without visual barriers, transparent doors and windows or open port holes to ease their communication, comfortable volumes, naturally ventilated spaces, natural lighting or diffused artificial lighting conditions without glare, sloping walkways, wider stairways, walkways and corridors with ample distance for signing were identified as positive characteristics of the learning environment investigated.

Keywords: deaf, visual learning environment, perception, sensory ethnography

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Authors: David A. Scott, Michelle G. Scott

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The problem of juvenile crime, school suspensions and oppositional behaviors indicates a need for a wide range of intervention programs for at-risk youth. Juvenile court systems and mental health agencies are examining alternative ways to deal with at-risk youth that will allow the adolescent to live within their home community. The previous trend that treatment away from home is more effective than treatment near one's community has shifted. Research now suggests that treatment be close to home for several reasons, such as increased treatment success, parental involvement, and reduced costs. Treatment options consist of a wide range of interventions, including outpatient, inpatient, and community-based services (therapeutic group homes, foster care and in-home preservation services). The juvenile justice system, families and other mental health agencies continue to seek the most effective treatment for at-risk youth in their communities. This research examines two possible treatment modalities, a multi-systemic outpatient program and a residential program. Research examining effective, evidence- based counseling will be discussed during this presentation. The presenter recently completed a three-year research grant examining effective treatment modalities for at-risk youth participating in a multi-systemic program. The presenter has also been involved in several research activities gathering data on effective techniques used in residential programs. The data and discussion will be broken down into two parts, each discussing one of the treatment modalities mentioned above. Data on the residential programs was collected on both a sample of 740 at- risk youth over a five-year period and also a sample of 63 participants during a one-year period residing in a residential programs. The effectiveness of these residential services was measured in three ways: services are evaluated by primary referral sources; follow-up data is obtained at various intervals after program participation to measure recidivism (what percentage got back into trouble with the Department of Juvenile Justice); and a more sensitive, "Offense Seriousness Score", has been computed and analyzed prior to, during and after treatment in the residential program. Data on the multi-systemic program was gathered over the past three years on 190 participants. Research will discuss pre and post test results, recidivism rates, academic performance, parental involvement, and effective counseling treatment modalities.

Keywords: at-risk youth, group homes, therapeutic group homes, recidivism rates

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Authors: Yeliz Cakir Kocak, Hafize Ozturk Can, Sibel Icke, Ummahan Yucel, Esin Ceber Turfan

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Introduction: Midwifery organization in Turkey became official in 1954 with the foundation of Midwifery Association. Today there are two Professional organizations representing midwives: ‘Midwifery Association’ and ‘Association for Education, Research and Development in Midwifery (AERDM)’. In recent years, conjuction with the increase in the numbers of midwives, professional consciousness and professional organization conscious is increasing. The undergraduates of Midwifery Department of Ege University İzmir Ataturk School of Health have come together for their professions when they’re stil students, so they founded ‘Midwifery Community of Ege University (MCEU) (EGEBET in Turkish)’ in counseling within structors and the confirmation of the university in 2013. Objective: The aim of this presentation is to reveal the activities and grades of an undergraduate community in-three-years, founded by the undergraduates in order to raise awareness in pregraduate Professional organization. Thus it is aimed to be aware towards postgraduate Professional organization, and to reflect Professional unity and solidarity, alongside personal development to midwifery services by maintaining Professional development. In-the-presentation it is aimed to explain what dimension the organization of midwifery students in Turkey is, and to be a stimulus so that ICM can be more active on undergraduate communities. Findings: MCEU’s an activity that has launched in the scope of Social Responsibility Lecture instructed in curricula of second grade in the Midwifery Department. The community have performed lots activities to reach their objectives between the years of 2013-2016. MCEU have had 65 members in a very-soon period. Today the community that goes on its activities on social network in order to abolish the distances and reach more midwifery students’ve 444 members. MCEU aiming to make all the students of the Midwifery Department a member of this association also accepts the applications of national and international midwifery students. More over the community has published two student periodical magazine and carries out activities on Midwifery Day each year. Conclusion: In conjuction with the national introduction of MCEU in the student congress in 2013, it has received consultancy from the members of MCEU as a sample model in the student organization of midwifery department of other universities in Turkey, and stil remains receiving. Furthermore a student community has been founded under the roof of association with the demand of community’s members. Also academician has a responsibility to give direction to the future and shape the future. Therefore, it is thought that the study can be an instance for all branches of science students and academics. Acknowledgment: We thank to founder members of MCEU and all the other students remaining to perform activities because of their contributions to Professional organization.

Keywords: current situation, midwifery, organization, student

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Authors: Linneth Nkateko Mabila, Patrick Hulisani Demana, Tebogo Maria Mothiba

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Background: Sustaining adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) over the long term by people, especially children living with Human-Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), requires accurate and consistent monitoring, and this is a particular challenge for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the regularity and punctuality in monthly antiretroviral treatment collections indicate medication adherence to a certain extent since it has been revealed to be a significant determinant of the outcome of ART. Aim: This study assessed and described the pattern of monthly antiretroviral treatment collections among a cohort of virally unsuppressed HIV-positive children initiated and managed on ART in the rural public clinics of Mopani District, Limpopo, and explored the nurses' perceptions and views of the findings. Methods: A facility-based mixed-methods study was conducted to assess the honoring of scheduled monthly treatment collection practices by a cohort of HIV-positive children under 15 years initiated and managed on ART by Nurse Initiated Management of Antiretroviral Treatment (NIMART)-trained professional nurses (PNs) from 01 January 2015 to 31 December 2015 in public PHC clinics of Mopani District Municipality. This was followed by the exploration of the nurses' perceptions and views regarding this issue to share their experiences and knowledge acquired through managing these children on ART. Results: From a total of 7105 analysable visits, only 44% (3134) were honored as scheduled, with 40% (2828) of children presenting to the clinics after the scheduled appointment date – they missed their appointments, and 11% (768) of treatment collections that took place before the scheduled appointment date. This finding was further confirmed by 90% (97) of the nurses, who reported that they have children who miss scheduled appointments in their public clinics. The primary reasons for children missing appointments were related to caregivers' forgetfulness and conflict between the school schedule and the dates of clinic visits. Conclusion: We confirmed a high prevalence of non-adherence to scheduled monthly ART collections and the existence of health system, social, and caregiver-related factors that threaten treatment adherence and proper clinical outcomes. These findings suggest an urgent need for intervention since non-adherence to ARV therapy can be life-threatening to the child and poses the danger of reduced life expectancy.

Keywords: antiretroviral therapy (art), nimart, virally unsuppressed children, missed appointments

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Authors: Sandra Smart-Akande, Chaminda Hewage, Imtiaz Khan, Thanuja Mallikarachchi

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According to UK police-recorded data, there has been a substantial increase in knife-related crime and youth violence in the UK since 2014 particularly in the London boroughs. These crime rates are disproportionally distributed across London with the majority of these crimes occurring in the highly deprived areas of London and among young people aged 11 to 24 with large discrepancies across ethnicity, age, gender and borough of residence. Comprehensive studies and literature have identified risk factors associated with a knife carrying among youth to be Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs), poor mental health, school or social exclusion, drug dealing, drug using, victim of violent crime, bullying, peer pressure or gang involvement, just to mention a few. ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood, this can be experiences or stressful events in the early life of a child and can lead to an increased risk of damaging health or social outcomes in the latter life of the individual. Research has shown that children or youths involved in youth violence have had childhood experience characterised by disproportionate adverse childhood experiences and substantial literature link ACEs to be associated with criminal or delinquent behavior. ACEs are commonly grouped by researchers into: Abuse (Physical, Verbal, Sexual), Neglect (Physical, Emotional) and Household adversities (Mental Illness, Incarcerated relative, Domestic violence, Parental Separation or Bereavement). To the author's best knowledge, no study to date has investigated how household mental health (mental health of a parent or mental health of a child) and domestic violence (domestic violence on a parent or domestic violence on a child) is related to knife homicides across the local authorities areas of London. This study seeks to address the gap by examining a large sample of data from the London Metropolitan Police Force and Characteristics of Children in Need data from the UK Department for Education. The aim of this review is to identify and synthesise evidence from data and a range of literature to identify the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and youth violence in the UK. Understanding the link between ACEs and future outcomes can support preventative action.

Keywords: adverse childhood experiences, domestic violence, mental health, youth violence, prediction analysis, London knife crime

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Authors: Rui Wang, Luodi Yu, Dan Huang, Hsuan-Chih Chen, Yang Zhang, Suiping Wang

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Enhanced discrimination of pure tones but diminished discrimination of speech pitch (i.e., lexical tone) were found in children with autism who speak a tonal language (Mandarin), suggesting a speech-specific impairment of pitch perception in these children. However, in tonal languages, both lexical tone and vowel are phonemic cues and integrally dependent on each other. Therefore, it is unclear whether the presence of phonemic vowel dimension contributes to the observed lexical tone deficits in Mandarin-speaking children with autism. The current study employed a multi-feature oddball paradigm to examine how vowel and tone dimensions contribute to the neural responses for syllable change detection and involuntary attentional orienting in school-age Mandarin-speaking children with autism. In the oddball sequence, syllable /da1/ served as the standard stimulus. There were three deviant stimulus conditions, representing tone-only change (TO, /da4/), vowel-only change (VO, /du1/), and change of tone and vowel simultaneously (TV, /du4/). EEG data were collected from 25 children with autism and 20 age-matched normal controls during passive listening to the stimulation. For each deviant condition, difference waveform measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) was derived from subtracting the ERP waveform to the standard sound from that to the deviant sound for each participant. Additionally, the linear summation of TO and VO difference waveforms was compared to the TV difference waveform, to examine whether neural sensitivity for TV change detection reflects simple summation or nonlinear integration of the two individual dimensions. The MMN results showed that the autism group had smaller amplitude compared with the control group in the TO and VO conditions, suggesting impaired discriminative sensitivity for both dimensions. In the control group, amplitude of the TV difference waveform approximated the linear summation of the TO and VO waveforms only in the early time window but not in the late window, suggesting a time course from dimensional summation to nonlinear integration. In the autism group, however, the nonlinear TV integration was already present in the early window. These findings suggest that speech perception atypicality in children with autism rests not only in the processing of single phonemic dimensions, but also in the dimensional integration process.

Keywords: autism, event-related potentials , mismatch negativity, speech perception

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Authors: Sau Kam Adeline Chan

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World Health Organization had listed ‘Communication during Patient Care Handovers’ as one of its highest 5 patient safety initiatives. Clinical handover means transfer of accountability and responsibility of clinical information from one health professional to another. The main goal of clinical handover is to convey patient’s current condition and treatment plan accurately. Ineffective communication at point of care is globally regarded as the main cause of the sentinel event. Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR), a communication tool, is extensively regarded as an effective communication tool in healthcare setting. Nonetheless, just by scenario-based program in nursing school or attending workshops on SBAR would not be enough for freshly graduated nurses to apply it competently in a complex clinical practice. To what extend and in-depth of information should be conveyed during handover process is not easy to learn. As such, on-site coaching is essential to upgrade their expertise on the usage of SBAR and ultimately to avoid any clinical error. On-site coaching for all freshly graduated nurses on the usage of SBAR in clinical handover was commenced in August 2014. During the preceptorship period, freshly graduated nurses were coached by the preceptor. After that, they were gradually assigned to take care of a group of patients independently. Nurse leaders would join in their shift handover process at patient’s bedside. Feedback and support were given to them accordingly. Discrepancies on their clinical handover process were shared with them and documented for further improvement work. Owing to the constraint of manpower in nurse leader, about coaching for 30 times were provided to a nurse in a year. Staff satisfaction survey was conducted to gauge their feelings about the coaching and look into areas for further improvement. Number of clinical error avoided was documented as well. The nurses reported that there was a significant improvement particularly in their confidence and knowledge in clinical handover process. In addition, the sense of empowerment was developed when liaising with senior and experienced nurses. Their proficiency in applying SBAR was enhanced and they become more alert to the critical criteria of an effective clinical handover. Most importantly, accuracy of transferring patient’s condition was improved and repetition of information was avoided. Clinical errors were prevented and quality patient care was ensured. Using SBAR as a communication tool looks simple. The tool only provides a framework to guide the handover process. Nevertheless, without on-site training, loophole on clinical handover still exists, patient’s safety will be affected and clinical error still happens.

Keywords: freshly graduated nurse, competency of clinical handover, quality, clinical error

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Authors: Caroline Atef Shoukry Tadros

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Massive Urbanization growth threatens the sustainability of cities and the quality of city life. This raised the need for an alternate model of sustainability, so we need to plan the future cities in a smarter way with smarter mobility. Smart Mobility planning applications are solutions that use digital technologies and infrastructure advances to improve the efficiency, sustainability, and inclusiveness of urban transportation systems. They can contribute to meeting the needs of Urbanization growth by addressing the challenges of traffic congestion, pollution, accessibility, and safety in cities. Some example of a Smart Mobility planning application are Mobility-as-a-service: This is a service that integrates different transport modes, such as public transport, shared mobility, and active mobility, into a single platform that allows users to plan, book, and pay for their trips. This can reduce the reliance on private cars, optimize the use of existing infrastructure, and provide more choices and convenience for travelers. MaaS Global is a company that offers mobility-as-a-service solutions in several cities around the world. Traffic flow optimization: This is a solution that uses data analytics, artificial intelligence, and sensors to monitor and manage traffic conditions in real-time. This can reduce congestion, emissions, and travel time, as well as improve road safety and user satisfaction. Waycare is a platform that leverages data from various sources, such as connected vehicles, mobile applications, and road cameras, to provide traffic management agencies with insights and recommendations to optimize traffic flow. Logistics optimization: This is a solution that uses smart algorithms, blockchain, and IoT to improve the efficiency and transparency of the delivery of goods and services in urban areas. This can reduce the costs, emissions, and delays associated with logistics, as well as enhance the customer experience and trust. ShipChain is a blockchain-based platform that connects shippers, carriers, and customers and provides end-to-end visibility and traceability of the shipments. Autonomous vehicles: This is a solution that uses advanced sensors, software, and communication systems to enable vehicles to operate without human intervention. This can improve the safety, accessibility, and productivity of transportation, as well as reduce the need for parking space and infrastructure maintenance. Waymo is a company that develops and operates autonomous vehicles for various purposes, such as ride-hailing, delivery, and trucking. These are some of the ways that Smart Mobility planning applications can contribute to meeting the needs of the Urbanization growth. However, there are also various opportunities and challenges related to the implementation and adoption of these solutions, such as the regulatory, ethical, social, and technical aspects. Therefore, it is important to consider the specific context and needs of each city and its stakeholders when designing and deploying Smart Mobility planning applications.

Keywords: smart mobility planning, smart mobility applications, smart mobility techniques, smart mobility tools, smart transportation, smart cities, urbanization growth, future smart cities, intelligent cities, ICT information and communications technologies, IoT internet of things, sensors, lidar, digital twin, ai artificial intelligence, AR augmented reality, VR virtual reality, robotics, cps cyber physical systems, citizens design science

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Authors: Joanne Ndirangu

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Delving into the intricate landscape of slum tourism in Kenya, this study critically evaluates its ethical implications, legal frameworks, and beneficiaries. By examining the complex interplay between tourism operators, visitors, and slum residents, it seeks to uncover the long-term consequences for the communities involved. Through an exploration of ethical considerations, legal parameters, and the distribution of benefits, this examination aims to shed light on the broader socio-economic impacts of slum tourism in Kenya, particularly on the lives of those residing in these marginalized communities. Assessing the ethical considerations surrounding slum tourism in Kenya, including the potential exploitation of residents and cultural sensitivities and examine the legal frameworks governing slum tourism in Kenya and evaluate their effectiveness in protecting the rights and well-being of slum dwellers. Identifying the primary beneficiaries of slum tourism in Kenya, including tour operators, local businesses, and residents, and analysing the distribution of economic benefits. Exploring the long-term socio-economic impacts of slum tourism on the lives of residents, including changes in living conditions, access to resources, and community development. Understanding the motivations and perceptions of tourists participating in slum tourism in Kenya and assess their role in shaping the industry's dynamics and investigate the potential for sustainable and responsible forms of slum tourism that prioritize community empowerment, cultural exchange, and mutual respect. Providing recommendations for policymakers, tourism stakeholders, and community organizations to promote ethical and sustainable practices in slum tourism in Kenya. The main contributions of researching slum tourism in Kenya would include; Ethical Awareness: By critically examining the ethical implications of slum tourism, the research can raise awareness among tourists, operators, and policymakers about the potential exploitation of marginalized communities. Beneficiary Analysis: By identifying the primary beneficiaries of slum tourism, the research can inform discussions on fair distribution of economic benefits and potential strategies for ensuring that local communities derive meaningful advantages from tourism activities. Socio-Economic Understanding: By exploring the long-term socio-economic impacts of slum tourism, the research can deepen understanding of how tourism activities affect the lives of slum residents, potentially informing policies and initiatives aimed at improving living conditions and promoting community development. Tourist Perspectives: Understanding the motivations and perceptions of tourists participating in slum tourism can provide valuable insights into consumer behaviour and preferences, informing the development of responsible tourism practices and marketing strategies. Promotion of Responsible Tourism: By providing recommendations for promoting ethical and sustainable practices in slum tourism, the research can contribute to the development of guidelines and initiatives aimed at fostering responsible tourism and minimizing negative impacts on host communities. Overall, the research can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of slum tourism in Kenya and its broader implications, while also offering practical recommendations for promoting ethical and sustainable tourism practices.

Keywords: slum tourism, dark tourism, ethical tourism, responsible tourism

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Authors: Christopher Pullen

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This paper explores the significance of British cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s as offering a renaissance of realist discourse, in the representation of everyday social issues. Offering a rejection of Hollywood cinema and the superficially of the middle classes, these ‘kitchen sink dramas’ often set within modest and sometimes squalid domestic and social environments, focused on the political struggle of the disenfranchised examining poverty, the oppressed and the outsider. While films like Look Back in Anger and Room at the Top looked primarily at male heterosexual subjectivity, films like A Taste of Honey and Victim focused on female and queer male narratives. Framing the urban landscape as a discursive architectural arena, representing basic living conditions and threatening social worlds, these iconic films established new storytelling processes for the outsider. This paper examines this historical context foregrounding the contemporary films Beautiful Thing (Hettie Macdonald, 1996), Weekend (Andrew Haigh, 2011) and Pride (Marcus Warchus, 2014), while employing the process of textual analysis in relation to theories of affect, defined by writers such as Lisa U. Marks and Sara Ahmed. Considering both romance narratives and public demonstrations of unity, where the queer ‘affective’ body is placed within architectural and social space, Beautiful Thing tells the story of gay male teenagers falling in love despite oppression from family and school, Weekend examines a one-night stand between young gay men and the unlikeliness of commitment, but the drive for sensitivity, and Pride foregrounds an historical relationship between queer youth activists and the miner’s union, who were on strike between 1984-5. These films frame the queer ‘affective’ body within politicized public space, evident in lower class men’s working clubs, tenement housing and brutal modernist tower blocks, focusing on architectural features such as windows, doorways and staircases, relating temporality, desire and change. Through such an examination a hidden history of gay male performativity is revealed, framing the potential of contemporary cinema to focus on the context of the outsider in encouraging social change.

Keywords: queer, affect, cinema, architecture, life chances

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Authors: Perpetua Modjadji, Sphiwe Madiba

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Background: The growth patterns of children are good nutritional indicators of their nutritional status, health, and socioeconomic level. However, the maternal factors and the belief system of the society affect the growth of children promoting undernutrition. This study determined the influence of maternal factors on growth patterns of schoolchildren in a rural site. Methods: A convergent mixed method study was conducted among 508 schoolchildren and their mothers in Dikgale Health and Demographic Surveillance System Site, South Africa. Multistage sampling was used to select schools (purposive) and learners (random), who were paired with their mothers. Anthropometry was measured and socio-demographic, obstetrical, household information, maternal influence on children’s nutrition, and growth were assessed using an interviewer administered questionnaire (quantitative). The influence of the cultural beliefs and practices of mothers on the nutrition and growth of their children was explored using focus group discussions (qualitative). Narratives of mothers were used to best understand growth patterns of schoolchildren (mixed method). Data were analyzed using STATA 14 (quantitative) and Nvivo 11 (qualitative). Quantitative and qualitative data were merged for integrated mixed method analysis using a joint display analysis. Results: Mean age of children was 10 ± 2 years, ranging from 6 to 15 years. Substantial percentages of thinness (25%), underweight (24%), and stunting (22%) were observed among the children. Mothers had a mean age of 37 ± 7 years, and 75% were overweight or obese. A depressed socio-economic status indicated by a higher rate of unemployment with no income (82.3%), and dependency on social grants (86.8%) was observed. Determinants of poor growth patterns were child’s age and gender, maternal age, height and BMI, access to water supply, and refrigerator use. The narratives of mothers suggested that the children in most of their households were exposed to poverty and the inadequate intake of quality food. Conclusion: Poor growth patterns were observed among schoolchildren while their mothers were overweight or obese. Child’s gender, school grade, maternal body mass index, and access to water were the main determinants. Congruence was observed between most qualitative themes and quantitative constructs. A need for a multi sectoral approach considering an evidence based and feasible nutrition programs for schoolchildren, especially those in rural settings and educating mothers, cannot be over-emphasized.

Keywords: growth patterns, maternal factors, rural context, schoolchildren, South Africa

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Authors: Gabriela Steffen

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Learning in a bilingual classroom not only implies learning in two languages or in an L2, it also means learning content subjects through the means of bilingual or plurilingual resources, which is of a qualitatively different nature than ‘monolingual’ learning. These resources form elements of a didactics of plurilingualism, aiming not only at the development of a plurilingual competence, but also at drawing on plurilingual resources for nonlinguistic subject learning. Applying a didactics of plurilingualism allows for taking account of the specificities of bilingual content subject learning in bilingual education classrooms. Bilingual education is used here as an umbrella term for different programs, such as bilingual education, immersion, CLIL, bilingual modules in which one or several non-linguistic subjects are taught partly or completely in an L2. This paper aims at discussing first results of a study on pupil group work in bilingual classrooms in several Swiss primary schools. For instance, it analyses two bilingual classes in two primary schools in a French-speaking region of Switzerland that follows a part of their school program through German in addition to French, the language of instruction in this region. More precisely, it analyses videotaped classroom interaction and in situ classroom practices of pupil group work in a mathematics lessons. The ethnographic observation of pupils’ group work and the analysis of their interaction (analytical tools of conversational analysis, discourse analysis and plurilingual interaction) enhance the description of whole-class interaction done in the same (and several other) classes. While the latter are teacher-student interactions, the former are student-student interactions giving more space to and insight into pupils’ talk. This study aims at the description of the linguistic and multimodal resources (in German L2 and/or French L1) pupils mobilize while carrying out a mathematical task. The analysis shows that the accomplishment of the mathematical task takes place in a bilingual mode, whether the whole-class interactions are conducted rather in a bilingual (German L2-French L1) or a monolingual mode in L2 (German). The pupils make plenty of use of German L2 in a setting that lends itself to use French L1 (peer groups with French as a dominant language, in absence of the teacher and a task with a mathematical aim). They switch from French to German and back ‘naturally’, which is regular for bilingual speakers. Their linguistic resources in German L2 are not sufficient to allow them to (inter-)act well enough to accomplish the task entirely in German L2, despite their efforts to do so. However, this does not stop them from carrying out the task in mathematics adequately, which is the main objective, by drawing on the bilingual resources at hand.

Keywords: bilingual content subject learning, bilingual primary education, bilingual pupil group work, bilingual teaching/learning resources, didactics of plurilingualism

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Authors: Hannele Kuusisto, Paivi Makila, Ursula Hyrkkanen

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Introduction: There have been arguments about the skills university students should have when graduated. Current trends argue that as well as the specific job-related skills the graduated students need problem-solving, interaction and networking skills as well as self-management skills. Skills required in working life are also considered in the Finnish national project called VALTE (short for 'prepared for working life'). The project involves 11 Finnish school organizations. As one result of this project, a five-credit independent online course in study and job engagement as well as in study and job crafting was developed at Turku University of Applied Sciences. The aim of the oral or e-poster presentation is to present the online course developed in the project. The purpose of this abstract is to present the development work of the online course and the feedback received from the pilots. Method: As the University of Turku is the leading partner of the VALTE project, the collaborative education platform ViLLE (https://ville.utu.fi, developed by the University of Turku) was chosen as the online platform for the course. Various exercise types with automatic assessment were used; for example, quizzes, multiple-choice questions, classification exercises, gap filling exercises, model answer questions, self-assessment tasks, case tasks, and collaboration in Padlet. In addition, the free material and free platforms on the Internet were used (Youtube, Padlet, Todaysmeet, and Prezi) as well as the net-based questionnaires about the study engagement and study crafting (made with Webropol). Three teachers with long teaching experience (also with job crafting and online pedagogy) and three students working as trainees in the project developed the content of the course. The online course was piloted twice in 2017 as an elective course for the students at Turku University of Applied Sciences, a higher education institution of about 10 000 students. After both pilots, feedback from the students was gathered and the online course was developed. Results: As the result, the functional five-credit independent online course suitable for students of different educational institutions was developed. The student feedback shows that students themselves think that the developed online course really enhanced their job and study crafting skills. After the course, 91% of the students considered their knowledge in job and study engagement as well as in job and study crafting to be at a good or excellent level. About two-thirds of the students were going to exploit their knowledge significantly in the future. Students appreciated the variability and the game-like feeling of the exercises as well as the opportunity to study online at the time and place they chose themselves. On a five-point scale (1 being poor and 5 being excellent), the students graded the clarity of the ViLLE platform as 4.2, the functionality of the platform as 4.0 and the easiness of operating as 3.9.

Keywords: job crafting, job engagement, online course, study crafting, study engagement

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Authors: Brooke Sweeney, David White, Felix Amparano, Nick A. Clark, Amy R. Beck, Mathew Lindquist, Lora Edwards, Julie Vandal, Jennifer Lisondra, Katie Cox, Renee Arensberg, Allen Cummins, Jazmine Cedeno, Jason D. Fraser, Kelsey Dean, Helena H. Laroche, Cristina Fernandez

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Background: National organizations call for standardized pre-surgical requirements and education to optimize postoperative outcomes. Since 2017 our surgery program has used defined protocols and educational curricula pre- and post-surgery. In response to patient outcomes, our educational content was refined to include quizzes to assess patient knowledge and surgical preparedness. We aim to optimize adolescent pre-bariatric surgery preparedness by improving overall aggregate pre-surgical assessment performance from 68% to 80% within 12 months. Methods: A multidisciplinary improvement team was developed within the weight management clinic (WMC) of our tertiary care, free-standing children’s hospital. A manual has been utilized since 2017, with limitations in consistent delivery and patient uptake of information. The curriculum has been improved to include quizzes administered during WMC visits prior to bariatric surgery. The initial outcome measure is the pre-surgical quiz score of adolescents preparing for bariatric surgery. Process measure was the number of questions answered correctly to test the questions. Baseline performance was determined by a patient assessment survey of pre-surgical preparedness at patient visits. Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles (PDSA) included: 1) creation and implementation of a refined curriculum, 2) development of 5 new quizzes based upon learning objectives, and 3) improving provider-lead teaching and quiz administration within clinic workflow. Run charts assessed impact over time. Results: A total of 346 quiz questions were administered to 34 adolescents. The outcome measure improved from a baseline mean of 68% to 86% following PDSA 2 cycles, and it was sustained. Conclusion/Implication: Patient/family comprehension of surgical preparedness improved with standardized education via team member-led teaching and assessment using quizzes during pre-surgical clinic visits. The next steps include launching redesigned teaching materials with modules correlated to quizzes and assessment of comprehension and outcomes post-surgically.

Keywords: bariatric surgery, adolescent, clinic, pre-bariatric training

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Authors: Osk Dagsdottir

Abstract:

Background—Gait classifying allows clinicians to differentiate gait patterns into clinically important categories that help in clinical decision making. Reliable comparison of gait data between normal and patients requires knowledge of the gait parameters of normal children's specific age group. However, there is still a lack of the gait database for normal children of different ages. Objectives—This study aims to investigate the kinematics of the lower limb joints during gait for normal children in different age groups. Methods—Fifty-three normal children (34 boys, 19 girls) were recruited in this study. All the children were aged between 5 to 16 years old. Age groups were defined as three types: young child aged (5-7), child (8-11), and adolescent (12-16). When a participant agreed to take part in the project, their parents signed a consent form. Vicon® motion capture system was used to collect gait data. Participants were asked to walk at their comfortable speed along a 10-meter walkway. Each participant walked up to 20 trials. Three good trials were analyzed using the Vicon Plug-in-Gait model to obtain parameters of the gait, e.g., walking speed, cadence, stride length, and joint parameters, e.g., joint angle, force, moments, etc. Moreover, each gait cycle was divided into 8 phases. The range of motion (ROM) angle of pelvis, hip, knee, and ankle joints in three planes of both limbs were calculated using an in-house program. Results—The temporal-spatial variables of three age groups of normal children were compared between each other; it was found that there was a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the groups. The step length and walking speed were gradually increasing from young child to adolescent, while cadence was gradually decreasing from young child to adolescent group. The mean and standard deviation (SD) of the step length of young child, child and adolescent groups were 0.502 ± 0.067 m, 0.566 ± 0.061 m and 0.672 ± 0.053 m, respectively. The mean and SD of the cadence of the young child, child and adolescent groups were 140.11±15.79 step/min, 129±11.84 step/min, and a 115.96±6.47 step/min, respectively. Moreover, it was observed that there were significant differences in kinematic parameters, either whole gait cycle or each phase. For example, RoM of knee angle in the sagittal plane in the whole cycle of young child group is (65.03±0.52 deg) larger than child group (63.47±0.47 deg). Conclusion—Our result showed that there are significant differences between each age group in the gait phases and thus children walking performance changes with ages. Therefore, it is important for the clinician to consider the age group when analyzing the patients with lower limb disorders before any clinical treatment.

Keywords: action research, creative learning, mathematics education, professional development

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Authors: Paola Montenegro, Maria de los Angeles Balaguera Villa

Abstract:

In February 2022 Colombia achieved a historic milestone in ensuring universal access to abortion rights with ruling C-055 of 2022 decriminalising abortion up to 24 weeks of gestation. In the context of this triumph and the expansion of telemedicine services in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, this research studied the acceptability of self-care abortion in young people (13 - 28 years) through a telemedicine service and also explored the primary needs that should be the focus of such care. The results shine light on a more comprehensive understanding of opportunities and challenges of teleabortion practices in a context that combines overall higher access to technology and low access to reliable information of safe abortion, stigma, and scarcity especially felt by transnational migrants, racialised people, trans men and non-binary people. Through a mixed methods approach, this study collected 5.736 responses to a virtual survey disseminated nationwide in Colombia and 47 in-person interviews (24 of them with people who were assigned female at birth and 21 with local key stakeholders in the abortion ecosystem). Quantitative data was analyzed using Stata SE Version 16.0 and qualitative analysis was completed through NVivo using thematic analysis. Key findings of the research suggest that self-care abortion is practice with growing acceptability among young people, but important adjustments must be made to meet quality of care expectations of users. Elements like quick responses from providers, lower costs, and accessible information were defined by users as decisive factors to choose over the abortion service provider. In general, the narratives in participants about quality care were centred on the promotion of autonomy and the provision of accompaniment and care practices, also perceived as transformative and currently absent of most health care services. The most staggering findings from the investigation are related to current barriers faced by young people in abortion contexts even when the legal barriers have: high rates of scepticism and distrust associated with pitfalls of telehealth and structural challenges associated with lacking communications infrastructure, among a few of them. Other important barriers to safe self-care abortion identified by participants surfaced like lack of privacy and confidentiality (especially in rural areas of the country), difficulties accessing reliable information, high costs of procedures and expenses related to travel costs or having to cease economic activities, waiting times, and stigma are among the primary barriers to abortion identified by participants. Especially in a scenario marked by unprecedented social, political and economic disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the commitment to design better care services that can be adapted to the identities, experiences, social contexts and possibilities of the user population is more necessary than ever. In this sense, the possibility of expanding access to services through telemedicine brings us closer to the opportunity to rethink the role of health care models in transforming the role of individuals and communities to make autonomous, safe and informed decisions about their own health and well-being.

Keywords: contraception, family planning, premarital fertility, unplanned pregnancy

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Authors: Satoshi Kusaka

Abstract:

The term ‘competency’ is attracting considerable scholarly attention worldwide with the advance of globalization in the 21st century and with the arrival of a knowledge-based society. In the current world environment, familiarity with varied disciplines is regarded to be vital for personal success. The idea of a competency-based educational system was mooted by the ‘Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo)’ project that was conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Further, attention to this topic is not limited to developed countries; it can also be observed in developing countries. For instance, the importance of a competency-based curriculum was mentioned in the ‘2013 Harmonized Curriculum Framework for the East African Community’, which recommends key competencies that should be developed in primary schools. The introduction of such curricula and the reviews of programs are actively being executed, primarily in the East African Community but also in neighboring nations. Taking Mozambique as a case in point, the present paper examines the conception of ‘competency’ as a target of frontline education in developing countries. It also aims to discover the manner in which the syllabus, textbooks and lessons, among other things, in primary-level math education are developed and to determine the challenges faced in the process. This study employs the perspective of competency-based education design to analyze how the term ‘competency’ is defined in the primary-level math syllabus, how it is reflected in the textbooks, and how the lessons are actually developed. ‘Practical competency’ is mentioned in the syllabus, and the description of the term lays emphasis on learners' ability to interactively apply socio-cultural and technical tools, which is one of the key competencies that are advocated in OECD's ‘Definition and Selection of Competencies’ project. However, most of the content of the textbooks pertains to ‘basic academic ability’, and in actual classroom practice, teachers often impart lessons straight from the textbooks. It is clear that the aptitude of teachers and their classroom routines are greatly dependent on the cultivation of their own ‘practical competency’ as it is defined in the syllabus. In other words, there is great divergence between the ‘syllabus’, which is the intended curriculum, and the content of the ‘textbooks’. In fact, the material in the textbooks should serve as the bridge between the syllabus, which forms the guideline, and the lessons, which represent the ‘implemented curriculum’. Moreover, the results obtained from this investigation reveal that the problem can only be resolved through the cultivation of ‘practical competency’ in teachers, which is currently not sufficient.

Keywords: competency, curriculum, mathematics education, Mozambique

Procedia PDF Downloads 164