Factors that influence elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion of visually impaired children in Turkey

There is a scarcity of research on inclusion of visually impaired children in Turkey. Specifically, a gap exists concerning the attitudes of elementary school teachers towards the inclusion of visually impaired children in mainstream schools. This article uses data from two questionnaires, leveraging the responses of 253 teachers from rural and urban areas. The results demonstrate that elementary school teachers commonly hold positive attitudes towards the inclusion of visually impaired children and that teachers’ initial and in-service training about inclusion positively influenced their attitudes. Our findings are in contrast with earlier research which argues that teachers do not hold positive attitudes to inclusion, and highlights that a key barrier to inclusion stems from elementary school teachers feeling unprepared to teach visually impaired children. We conclude that greater post-qualification training is required to enable teachers to operationalise different approaches that facilitate the inclusion of visually impaired children.     

Teaching International Social Work in a Global Classroom

Social work educators are challenged with preparing students for international social work and work with immigrant and refugee populations. This pilot project aimed to develop an online global classroom to teach an international social work course to social work students participating from five different locations: United States (N=25), South Africa (N=4), Mexico (N=11), Hong Kong (N=6), and Australia (N=2). Qualitative data were collected from students regarding their experiences in this global classroom. Thematic analysis revealed the development of rich authentic learning, where their interactions with international classmates led to a transformative learning experience and a beginning sense of social work in a global context. Implications for future leaning and teaching of social work content across global borders are discussed.     

Participatory shaping of community futures in e‐waste processing hubs: Complexity,conflict and stewarded convergence in a Palestinian context

This article describes an unconventional participatory development approach carried out in an informal e‐waste hub in South‐West Hebron, an area that has collected and processed the bulk of Israeli e‐waste for over a decade. Our approach contributes to the critique and recovery of community representation in participatory development and the search for ways to facilitate representative community engagement. Specifically, we describe our use of a novel Delphi‐like method that allowed us to facilitate a broadly endorsed development trajectory within a heterogeneous and conflicted community. We show how the results yielded by this approach diverged from those that were likely to emerge from more facile forms of participation in ways that are important for other similar e‐waste hubs internationally, which face a destructive status quo on the one hand, or the economically ruinous international policies that ban e‐waste trade from “developed” to “developing” countries on the other. Despite real tensions and cleavages within the affected communities, the process described facilitated a shift from deadlocked environmental versus livelihood positions towards building capacity and regulating existing informal e‐waste trades to preserve livelihoods dependent on these.     

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.     

Understanding How Case Managers Use ‘Sabotage’ as a Frame for Clinically Difficult Situations

Case managers are among the direct service providers responsible for engaging people with severe mental illnesses. Understanding how they interpret and respond to clinically difficult situations can inform ways to intervene and reduce service disengagement. This qualitative study explored clinically difficult situations when case managers invoked the term ??sabotage??. Interviews were conducted with 21 case managers and analyzed by co-coders focusing on how case managers used the term sabotage to describe service user behavior. Themes that emerged were attributing sabotage to; fear of success, fear of attaining what you desire, avoidance of responsibility and change, and a lack of structured support. Drawing on the concepts of clinical case management and mental health recovery, we consider implications for the training and supervision of case managers and how services are structured.     

Good health and the bridging of structural holes

Bridges that span structural holes are often explained in terms of the entrepreneurial personalities or rational motivations of brokers, or structural processes that lead to the intersection of social foci. I argue that the existence and use of bridges in interpersonal networks also depends on individuals’ health. Poor health may make it more difficult to withstand the pressures and to execute some of the common tasks associated with bridging (e.g., brokerage). I examine this possibility using egocentric network data on over 2500 older adults drawn from the recent National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). Multivariate regression analyses show that both cognitive and functional health are significantly positively associated with bridging, net of sociodemographic and life-course controls. The relationship between functional (kinesthetic) health and bridging appears to be partially mediated by network composition, as older adults who have poorer functional health also tend to have networks that are richer in strong ties. Several potential mediation mechanisms are discussed. Cognitive function remains significantly associated with bridging net of network composition, suggesting that the inherent challenges of maintaining bridging positions may be more difficult to cope with for those who have cognitive impairments than for those who have functional impairments such as limited mobility. An alternative explanation is that cognitively impaired individuals have more difficulty recognizing (and thus strategically using) bridges in their networks. Theoretical implications and possibilities for future research are discussed.