Enhancing practitioner-led education in social work: developing a secondment project

ABSTRACT

This paper illustrates the development of a secondment project designed to enhance practitioner-led social work education in a Higher Education Institution. The project was developed as part of a Teaching Partnership initiative to establish joint working and standardized approaches to social work education between Higher Education Institutes and Local Authorities across a UK region. Highlighted is how the project utilized a six-stage strategy designed to gather information to produce an evidence-base to support the implementation of a pilot practitioner secondment arrangement. The paper discusses strategies used to gather information from a range of stakeholders to inform the project, the project outcome and some considerations for future secondment arrangements. Contributing to a limited source of literature, challenges and limitations of developing formal secondment arrangements and delivering practitioner-led education in Higher Education Institutes are highlighted. This paper will assist Higher Education Institutes and Local Authorities in the design and implementation of formal secondment arrangements where these are identified as in need of development.     

基于OBE教育理念的土木工程专业英语教学改革实践

为提高土木工程专业学生的英语应用能力和《土木工程专业英语》课程的教学效果，本次教改实践以OBE（成果导向教育）教育理念为教改指导思想，以土木工程专业英语教学为教改对象，设计了土木工程专业英语教学的教学内容、教学组织和教学评价等教学环节，在河北工程大学土木工程专业学生中进行了教改实践。教改实践结果表明，基于OBE的土木工程专业英语教学模式在提升土木工程专业学生英语应用能力方面具有很好的效果。本次教改实践的成果值得本校其他工科专业和其他兄弟院校借鉴。     

提升中小学生阅读兴趣的实证研究——基于MIMIC模型的教学效能分析

提升学生的阅读素养是当前我国阅读课程教学改革的重要目标之一。本研究首次尝试将群文阅读这种新兴的阅读教学方式与传统的单本阅读教学方式进行对比研究，主要从提升学生阅读兴趣的效能方面进行分析与探讨。实验涉及我国中西部5个省市、6个区县共计1 231名中小学生，并使用MIMIC模型，在有效控制测量误差的基础上，对实证数据进行了量化建模与分析，通过分析发现，群文阅读教学对激发学生阅读的“情境兴趣”有更加显著的作用，具体表现为对学生阅读注意力、情感体验、探索意愿、价值感知的影响更大，同时也验证了Knogler提出的“情境兴趣模型”在阅读教学领域的适用性，从而为进一步推进我国中小学阅读课程教学改革提供了科学的数据支撑。因此，为提升中小学生阅读素养，在阅读教学中引入群文阅读这一新兴的教学方式，具有重要的实践价值和现实意义。     

Teaching technologies for immigrant children: an exploratory study of elementary school teachers in Russia*

ABSTRACT

Educational institutions are an important setting where psychological, pedagogical, sociocultural, and language adaptation of immigrant children occurs. A number of teaching strategies, practices, approaches, and methods have been described in the literature. In the Russian context, such strategies have been called ‘technologies’. The purpose of the present exploratory study was to describe teaching technologies used by teachers in Russia when working with immigrant students in elementary schools. Responses of forty-five elementary school teachers to open-ended questions describing technologies they use when teaching children with migration backgrounds were analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that Russian elementary school teachers used ethno-cultural group, communicative technologies, games, individualized instruction, and differentiated teaching. Many approaches mentioned can be used inclusively with groups of immigrant and non-immigrant students. Importantly, while teachers supplemented classroom instruction with additional Russian language lessons, none mentioned specific techniques for teaching Russian as a non-native language. These findings are discussed in relation to teaching strategies described in the international literature focused on migrant students. Finally, implications for further research are discussed.     

地方高校推行教师学术休假制度的现实意义与实施策略

教师学术休假是促进教师专业发展的重要形式，是教师自我完善的需要，是提升教师理论水平、科研能力和教学技能的主要手段，是提高教学质量的有效途径。探讨地方高校推行学术休假制的必要性，提出地方高校推行学术休假的建议，对地方高校教师队伍建设具有重要的现实意义。在实施策略上，应注重4个方面：（1）明确参加学术休假的对象主要是教师和教学科研人员；（2）根据教师职业发展的阶段性确定学术休假的时间；（3）合理设置学术休假人员遴选条件，首先应考虑为工作满5年以上的青年教师提供学术休假，其次应考虑为高级职称教师提供学术休假；（4）明确学术休假期间的教师待遇，并加强对学术休假人员的管理。     

Max‐infinitely divisible models and inference for spatial extremes

For many environmental processes, recent studies have shown that the dependence strength is decreasing when quantile levels increase. This implies that the popular max‐stable models are inadequate to capture the rate of joint tail decay, and to estimate joint extremal probabilities beyond observed levels. We here develop a more flexible modeling framework based on the class of max‐infinitely divisible processes, which extend max‐stable processes while retaining dependence properties that are natural for maxima. We propose two parametric constructions for max‐infinitely divisible models, which relax the max‐stability property but remain close to some popular max‐stable models obtained as special cases. The first model considers maxima over a finite, random number of independent observations, while the second model generalizes the spectral representation of max‐stable processes. Inference is performed using a pairwise likelihood. We illustrate the benefits of our new modeling framework on Dutch wind gust maxima calculated over different time units. Results strongly suggest that our proposed models outperform other natural models, such as the Student‐t copula process and its max‐stable limit, even for large block sizes.     

How much is too much: Does the size of income support transfers affect labor supply?

Cash transfer programs pursue mainly protective objectives, but can also impact rural livelihoods by inducing investments in productive activities and changing household labor allocation. We adopt a continuous treatment approach to quantify how households’ labor supply responds to transfer size. We find a shift from paid labor to own farm labor and find that the transfer size is well within a level that would have disincentive effects on time spent on own farm activities. The switch from paid to own farm labor occurs at lower levels of transfers for labor-constrained households, and at higher levels for non-labor constrained households.     

Finding common ground: how superdiversity is unsettling social work education

For social work education in the Netherlands, the rapid transition towards superdiversity means that its capacity to adapt to this new reality and to adjust to diverse students’ backgrounds is fiercely challenged. The key aim of this article is to discuss how social work educators are dealing with the unsettling challenges of increasing diversity, based on the research outcomes of an explorative study amongst Turkish–Dutch and Moroccan–Dutch female professionals. Two different groups of educators were asked to comment on the outcomes of this study. One of the dilemmas for educators is to determine what can be considered supportive and inclusive and as reducing inequality in education. The authors used two key theoretical concepts, ‘superdiversity’ and ‘the capability approach’. These theoretical perspectives were used to deconstruct the rather massive concepts of diversity and social justice, by emphasising contextual approaches. Both perspectives stress the urgent need to involve students as ‘active agents of change’, by building a social work community to stimulate and facilitate an on-going dialogue. To successfully fulfil a pivotal role in the upward mobility or emancipation of ethnic minority students, social work education needs to be adjusted to accommodate diverse student groups.     

信息技术背景下教育教学多维度创新体系研究

“互联网+”、3D打印技术为代表的信息化浪潮已经到来，创新创业教育的已经在全国展开，这既是高等教育教学的挑战，更是不可多得的机遇。为适应信息技术的需求，高等院校要未雨绸缪，及时应对，从创新体系构建信息技术要先行、教育教学创新体系构建要结合学科、专业特点进行、二级学院联动、对教师要求及激励等多个方面探讨信息技术背景下教育教学多维度创新体系。     

Application of hybrid framework to facilitate lean six sigma implementation: a manufacturing company case experience

This study aims to propose a hybrid framework for lean six sigma (LSS) based on the prioritisation of barriers and solution approaches, to facilitate hassles free applications for handling the challenges of wastes reduction and quality improvement. The study identifies 27 LSS barriers and 22 solution approaches through literature review and utilises feedback from industry experts. For framework, study uses fuzzy AHP-PROMETHEE to prioritise LSS barriers and solution approaches. Incorporating fuzzy sets in analytical hierarchy process (AHP) ensures the optimality of barrier weights. Whereas, preference ranking organisation method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE) helps in pairwise comparisons of solution approaches with respect to each LSS barrier, facilitating fair judgements. This research guides regarding the development of framework and checks its suitability and robustness through case application of an Indian manufacturing organisation. Authors expect that researchers and practitioners will find study useful for LSS and multi criteria decision making(MCDM) domains.