The Use of Postage Stamps to Teach Social Studies Topics

In recent studies, youths in the United States have demonstrated a remarkable lack of cultural literacy. As the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, it is imperative that students enhance their understanding of other cultures. A classroom correspondence match with a Peace Corps volunteer through the Coverdell Peace Corps World Wise Schools program can help students make this improvement by traveling the globe and raising their cross-cultural awareness—without leaving the classroom. In this article, a returned Peace Corps volunteer and current classroom instructor presents classroom strategies he has used from the Coverdell Peace Corps World Wise Schools program. Using Robert Hanvey's (1976) four levels of cross-cultural awareness, the author demonstrates how this unique program can dramatically improve students' cross-cultural awareness.     

Brazilian Gold,Cuban Copper and the Final Frontier of British Anti-Slavery

This paper concerns the problems that transnational mining companies posed for British abolitionists in the years after emancipation in Britain's Caribbean empire. British-owned mines, operating in Cuba and Brazil, were the largest slave enterprises in the western hemisphere c. 1840. Abolitionists were, of course, outraged by the existence of London-based companies that exploited slave labour, but an attempt in 1843 to prohibit the owning of slaves by British subjects anywhere in the world, regardless of local jurisdiction, proved ineffectual. This paper explores the reasons for this failure and raises questions about the potency of abolitionism within early Victorian political culture.     

Partnership for continuing professional development: The impact of the Post Qualifying Award for Social Workers (PQSW) on social work practice

This article is based on a small-scale inquiry to evaluate the impact of the Post Qualifying Award for Social Workers (PQSW) on social work practice. The author sought the views of key stakeholders in one of the regional UK Post Qualifying Consortia, although practical constraints prevented the direct inclusion of service users' views. A post-hoc questionnaire and semi-structured interviews explored the impact of the PQSW awards on individual social work candidates and their employing agencies. The findings contribute to current debates around how training can be used to ensure delivery of the modernised social services required by the Government. While this is a small, locally based inquiry, its findings are relevant to ongoing national developments across the continuum of social work training and education. The findings suggest that the awards in general have a positive impact on practice for both individuals and organisations. Factors which increase or impede that impact were multi-faceted and complex, involving individuals, organisational cultures and wider contextual influences. The key to success, it is suggested, is partnership - proactive and committed working together between employers, individual workers and those prescribing/providing the training and education.     

The Right Tools for the Right Job: Social Work Students Learning Community Development

The place of community development within social work varies across nations and time. The tensions in the 1970s in the UK gave way to decades when social work has been dominated by issues relating to protecting and caring for individuals. We now have a resurgence of community development activity, bringing together varied disciplines such as urban planning and health promotion as well as social work. Within the UK there are now requirements for community development knowledge and skills within qualifying social work training. This paper reflects on experiences in promoting community development practice learning in social work qualifying placements within Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland. Issues are raised about the diversity and complexity of expectations on qualifying training, and the challenges that face universities, colleges and employing organisations in developing practice learning in this curriculum area. The prospects for improving community development learning within both qualifying and post qualifying education and training are considered particularly in the light of inter-professional and inter-organisational initiatives that put community development in the context of health promotion, housing, crime, poverty and other social issues that might be addressed at community level to improve the health and social well-being of citizens.     

Overcoming Liability Concerns in Vaccine Trials Involving Pregnant Women

Without the protection of vaccines, the health of pregnant women may be compromised. But assessing the safety and efficacy of vaccines in pregnancy requires research in pregnancy. Furthermore, vaccinating women while they are pregnant may convey immunity to the fetus in utero, but assessing this possible benefit of maternal immunization also requires research. This article argues that one factor inhibiting vaccine research involving pregnant women is that vaccine manufacturers fear incurring liability if they fund such research. We argue that vaccine research in pregnancy can be ethical, and we explore some methods for overcoming vaccine manufacturers' fear of liability.     

Child care subsidies and childhood obesity

In this paper, we study the impact of child care subsidy receipt on low-income children’s weight outcomes in the fall and spring of kindergarten using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort. Our results suggest that subsidy receipt is associated with increases in BMI and a greater likelihood of being overweight and obese. Using quantile regression methods, we find substantial variation in subsidy effects across the BMI distribution. Specifically, child care subsidies have no effect on BMI at the lower end of the distribution, inconsistent effects in the middle of the distribution, and large effects at the top of the distribution. Our results point to the use of non-parental child care, particularly center-based services, as the key mechanism through which subsidies influence children’s weight outcomes.     

Evolutionary Theory and Historical Fertility Change

Probably no issue divides social scientists and natural scientists more demonstrably than their attitudes on the value of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The present essay suggests the role that Darwinian theory can play in the study of human fertility. After examining the nature of Darwinian theory, the essay considers research carried out on fertility by biologists and anthropologists with methods based on it and possible reformulations of demographic methods and analyses that could benefit fertility research. It ends with suggestions for further research to explore the value of Darwinian approaches to demographic issues.     

Foster care and the educational attainment of Jamaican children

Though informal fostering, the placement of children in the care of relatives or friends, is common in developing countries little research has been performed to ascertain its implications for the welfare of foster children. Previous studies on fostering are generally concerned with the circumstances that result in fostering. We investigate the relationship between foster care and educational opportunities and achievement. The relationship between fostering and a childs educational achievement is crucial because education has a strong influence on the long-term welfare of the individual. Our findings are unique in that we redefine foster care to exclude children living with their biological father. This redefinition results in significantly different findings on the effect of foster care on the educational investment of the household towards foster boys. Under the new definition foster boys are significantly more likely to be educationally disadvantaged.     

Migration and Intergenerational Replacement in Europe

There are long‐standing concerns over low fertility levels in Europe and an increasingly important debate on the extent to which migration can compensate for below‐replacement fertility. To inform this debate, a wide array of indicators have been developed to assess the joint influence of fertility, mortality, and migration on birth replacement and intergenerational replacement. These indicators are based on various models and assumptions and some are particularly data demanding. In this article we propose a simple method to assess how far migration alters the extent of replacement for a birth cohort as it ages. We term the measure the overall replacement ratio (ORR). It is calculated by taking the size of a female birth cohort at selected ages divided by the average size of the cohorts of mothers in the year of birth. We present estimates of the ORR for a range of European countries representing different replacement regimes. We demonstrate that for many countries net migration has become a key factor in their population trends during the last few decades.     

An automatic-democratic approach to weight setting for the new human development index

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of constructing a multi-dimensional index is that of choosing weights for the components. This problem is often bypassed by adopting the ‘agnostic’ option of equal weights, as in the human development index. This is an annual ranking of countries produced by the United Nations Development Programme based on life expectancy, education, and per capita gross national income. These three dimensions are now aggregated multiplicatively. Whatever weights (exponents) are chosen for these dimensions, some nations will feel disadvantaged. To avoid the use of arbitrary weights, we propose for consideration a two-step approach: (1) find the most advantageous set of weights for each nation in turn, and (2) regress the associated optimal scores on the underlying indicators to find a single weight set. This approach has the properties of non-subjectivity, fairness, and convenience. The result is that the highest weight is placed on the life expectancy dimension.