Women and technology: A review of training initiatives

This paper considers the entry of women into technological areas of work, their subsequent career progression and return to work after a career break. It considers the development of those training programmes and related initiatives which have attempted to encourage girls and young women to enter non-traditional areas of work, and others which help women return to work after a career break. It emphasizes that such training needs to address the psychological and social issues which arise, as well as provide for new technical knowledge and skills. In doing so it reviews some of the courses which are currently available and comments on their apparent success. In its concluding problems it refers to the on-going problem of funding such training and of providing a supportive database.     

Clinical trends on tendinitis

Tendinitis has dramatically risen over the last few years. Some instances of tendinitis are resistant to traditional management aimed at decreasing the inflammatory process leaving clinicians to wonder whether or not they are truly dealing with an inflammatory condition. An understanding is essential for the appropriate clinical management of tendon disorders. The focus of this article will be to review tendon injuries, their healing, and to present an illustrative case treated successfully with an innovative form of treatment.     

Developing intercultural communication skills through intergroup interaction

The call to internationalise the curriculum has become firmly ensconced in Australian educational discourse and university mission statements. Yet, scholars in this area agree that there are few concrete examples of how educators actually set about internationalising the curriculum in a tangible and easily replicable way. This paper adopts a definition of internationalisation of the curriculum which takes into account the experiential aspects of the process of becoming an intercultural communicator. The goal of internationalising the curriculum responds to the recognition that students need to develop a degree of intercultural competence in order to function efficiently in an increasingly globalised environment. Both international and local students need to be partners in this process, and the cultural diversity of contemporary universities in the west is an ideal setting to foster the ability to mediate across cultures. In this paper, we explore some practical ways in which key issues in intercultural communication can be implemented into university curricula through programmes that promote interaction across groups.

La llamada a internacionalizar el currículo se encuentra firmemente afianzada en el discurso académico y en las declaraciones de las universidades australianas. Sin embargo, estudios en esta área convienen que hay pocos ejemplos concretos que indiquen cómo los educadores pueden internacionalizar el currículo de una manera tangible y fácilmente replicable. Este artículo adopta una definición de la internacionalización del currículo que considera los aspectos experienciales en el desarrollo del proceso de comunicación intercultural. La meta de internacionalizar el currículo responde al reconocimiento de que los estudiantes necesitan desarrollar un grado de capacidad intercultural para desempeñarse eficientemente en un ambiente cada vez más global. Tanto los estudiantes internacionales como los locales necesitan colaborar en este proceso. La diversidad cultural que caracteriza a las universidades contemporáneas en occidente hace de éstas un ámbito ideal para fomentar la capacidad de mediar entre culturas. En este artículo exploramos algunos programas prácticos que pueden ser implementados en currículos universitarios para promover la interacción entre grupos.     

Gender, Ethnicity and Vulnerability in Young Women in Local Authority Care

Correspondence to Sue Lees, University of North London, 9 Northolme Road, London N2 2VZ, UK. E-mail: S.Lees{at}unl.ac.uk Summary This paper analyses the impact of gender and ethnicity, takentogether, on the experience of being looked after away fromhome. It presents the findings from a study of young women,aged over 12, who came into care in one local authority between1990 and 1999. It reports that the over-representation of youngblack women in care is associated with the greater tendencyof African-Caribbean and mixed heritage young women to run awayfrom home rather than put up with abusive relationships; thelack of cross-generational support resulting from migrationand the effects of poverty and racism which place added strainon family relationships. The implications of these findingsfor social work practice are considered.     

‘I was bored so…’: motivational accounts of participation in an online emo group

We examine members' spontaneous accounts for joining and participating in an online emo forum. The Internet and social networking sites are central features of contemporary youth cultures; the analysis of interaction on emo forums can thus provide a way of appreciating emo as a ‘Community in Practice’. We analyse popular discussion threads collected from a key emo website, using membership categorisation and conversation analysis. In these threads, members introduce themselves and account for joining and posting pictures in response to a prior request to do so. Analysis shows that newbies establish their emo attributes and hence entitlement to participate while dismissing emo-related motivation for joining the forum, claiming instead a desire to relieve boredom. Participants similarly accounted for posting photos of themselves and for producing fan pics as due to boredom. We show how claiming to be bored allows members to engage with the group while negotiating potentially problematic inferences that attend subcultural membership. We conclude that our approach provides a useful methodology for furthering our understanding of an important aspect of contemporary youth subcultures.     

Associations between ongoing COVID-19 lockdown and the financial and mental health experiences of Australian families

In 2020, Australia's successful COVID-19 public health restrictions comprised a national “initial lockdown” (March–May) and “ongoing lockdown” (July–November) for metropolitan Victorian residents only. We evaluated associations between ongoing lockdown and family finances and mental health. In the June and September 2020 Royal Children's Hospital National Child Health Polls, caregivers of children in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) reported the following: job/income loss; material deprivation (inability to pay for essential items); income poverty; mental health (Kessler-6); perceived impact on caregiver/child mental health; and caregiver/child coping. Data from caregivers (N = 1207/902) in June/September were analysed using difference-in-difference modelling (NSW provided the comparator). During Victoria's ongoing lockdown, job/income loss increased by 11% (95%CI: 3%–18%); Kessler-6 poor mental health by 6% (95%CI: −0.3%–12%) and perceived negative mental health impacts by 14% for caregivers (95%CI: 6%–23%) and 12% for children (95%CI: 4%–20%). Female (vs. male) caregivers, metropolitan (vs. regional/rural) families, and families with elementary school-aged children (vs. pre-/high-school) were the most affected. The ongoing lockdown was associated with negative experiences of mental health, employment and income, but not deprivation or poverty, likely because of government income supplements introduced early in the pandemic. Future lockdowns require planned responses to outbreaks and evidence-informed financial and mental health supports.     

Evaluating the psychometrics of the SSIS SEL in a socio-economically diverse sample

The increasing interest in implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions within schools calls for more reliable and valid assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of SEL programs. We investigated the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Social Skills Improvement System – Social-Emotional Learning Edition (SSIS SEL) with a group of ethnically and socio-economically diverse grade 3 students in Ontario, Canada (n = 427). The SSIS SEL is an age-normed measure used for the evaluation of interventions and prevention initiatives. Data collected included both teacher-report and student self-report measures. The factor structure proposed by the scale developers was not replicated using this smaller single grade sample. However, the study demonstrates evidence of good construct and convergent validity supporting the novel factor structure. Results from this study suggest that more research on the SSIS SEL's application in real-world intervention research programs is needed.