scholarly journals Lessons learnt from a large-scale curriculum reform: The strategies to enhance development work and reduce reform-related stress

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotta Tikkanen ◽  
Kirsi Pyhältö ◽  
Janne Pietarinen ◽  
Tiina Soini
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Implementation Strategy ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Well Being ◽  
School Development ◽  
Development Work ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Related Stress

AbstractSustainable school development is suggested to result in both meaningful learning and enhanced well-being for those involved in the reform work. The aim of the study was to gain a better understanding of the relations between the strategies utilised in school development work, school impact of the reform and burdening in the context of curriculum reform in Finland. Altogether 550 district-level stakeholders responsible for curriculum reform at the local level responded to the survey. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to explore the interrelations between the reform implementation strategy, collective proactive strategies of well-being, as well as reform-related stress and the perceived school impact of the reform. The results showed that the top-down–bottom-up implementation strategy was related to the school impact of the reform and to the use of collective proactive strategies and reduced levels of stress. Collective proactive strategies also contributed to lower stress levels and enhanced school impact. The results indicate that the top-down–bottom-up implementation strategy provides an effective way to promote sustainable school reform in terms of enhancing the collective and cumulative learning and reducing burdening of those involved in the reform.

Children's Perspective on Transition From Kindergarten to Primary School

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-59
Author(s):  
Adrijana Višnjić Jevtić ◽  
Ivana Visković
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Educational Transitions ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Children’S Participation ◽  
Children's Participation

Access to educational transitions is determined by public educational policies, community culture in which someone grew up, and personal paradigms of all participants in the process – parents, teachers, and children. Although most educational policies demand accepting children as active participants in their own education, the actual children's participation is challenging. It is still linked to the adults' interpretation of understanding children's participation. How well we understand their perspective is often a predictor of initiating higher or lower quality transition processes. To appreciate a child's perspective, we should move away from the “top-down” view and consider the children's “bottom-up” interpretation of their own thinking and well-being. It is therefore justified to research children's opinions. This chapter discusses children's understanding of the transition process, based on 40 interviews with children in ECE settings.

Tourism as a Pathway to the Good Life: Comparing the Top–Down and Bottom–Up Effects

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 866-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-Chu Chen ◽  
Sukjoon Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Novelty Seeking ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

This research examined the relationships among tourism, well-being, and novelty-seeking as a personality trait based on the top–down and bottom–up theories of well-being. A structural model that includes a direct effect of novelty-seeking on life satisfaction (top–down influence) and an indirect effect through tourism experiences (bottom–up influence) were proposed and tested using a sample of 556 American residents. Results showed that novelty-seekers were well aware of travel benefits and traveled more frequently. It was also found that the top–down influence of novelty-seeking on life satisfaction was significantly greater than the bottom–up influence. These findings highlight the crucial role of personality as a predictor of well-being as well as the importance of applying positive psychology principles to further enhance the potential contribution of tourism experiences to tourists’ well-being.

Transition to Knowledge-intensive Growth in Russia

2003 ◽  
pp. 4-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Policy ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Institutional Innovation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Credible Commitments ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Intensive Growth

The paper proposes a strategy to trigger knowledge-intensive growth based on a combination of bottom up and top down reforms. When both market and government failures are pervasive, institutional innovation (new ways of doing things and reach credible commitments) becomes paramount for growth and reform. The paper discusses entry points to trigger institutional innovation at a local level and proposes a mechanism of incremental self-reinforcing reform (bootstrapping). A three-stage approach to reform is proposed: top down reforms to enhance even playing field; a contest between regions to unleash institutional innovation; active federal industrial policy.

scholarly journals Investigating multilevel pathways of developmental consequences of maltreatment

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (04) ◽  
pp. 1227-1236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie E. DePasquale ◽  
Elizabeth D. Handley ◽  
Dante Cicchetti
Keyword(s):  
Externalizing Behavior ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Peer Aggression ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Maltreated Children ◽  
Model Driven ◽  
Developmental Domains ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe impact of maltreatment spreads across many developmental domains and extends across the entire life span. Identifying unidirectional or bidirectional drivers of developmental cascades of the effects of maltreatment experiences is critical to efficiently employing interventions to promote resilient development in maltreated children. This 1-year longitudinal study utilized a multiple-levels approach, investigating “bottom-up” and “top-down” cascades using structural equation modeling between cortisol regulation, externalizing behavior, and peer aggression. Neither a bottom-up model driven by cortisol regulation nor a top-down model driven by peer aggression fit the data well. Instead, lower rates of externalizing behavior at Year 1 most strongly predicted improvements at all levels of analysis (reduced cortisol, externalizing behavior, and peer aggression) at Year 2. These results provide initial indication of a mechanism through which interventions for maltreated children may be most effective and result in the most substantial positive changes across developmental domains.

scholarly journals A Bottom-Up and Top-Down Participatory Approach to Planning and Designing Local Urban Development: Evidence from an Urban University Center

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodoro Semeraro ◽  
Zaccarelli Nicola ◽  
Alejandro Lara ◽  
Francesco Sergi Cucinelli ◽  
Roberta Aretano
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
University Center ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban University

The urban area is characterized by different urban ecosystems that interact with different institutional levels, including different stakeholders and decision-makers, such as public administrations and governments. This can create many institutional conflicts in planning and designing the urban space. It would arguably be ideal for an urban area to be planned like a socio-ecological system where the urban ecosystem and institutional levels interact with each other in a multi-scale analysis. This work embraces a planning process that aims at being applied to a multi-institutional level approach that is able to match different visions and stakeholders' needs, combining bottom-up and top-down participation approaches. At the urban scale, the use of this approach is sometimes criticized because it appears to increase conflicts between the different stakeholders. Starting from a case study in the Municipality of Lecce, South Italy, we apply a top-down and bottom-up participation approach to overcome conflicts at the institutional levels in the use of the urban space in the Plan of the Urban University Center. The bottom-up participation action analyzes the vision of people that frequent the urban context. After that, we share this vision in direct comparison with decision-makers to develop the planning and design solutions. The final result is a draft of the hypothetical Plan of the Urban University Center. In this way, the bottom-up and top-down approaches are useful to match the need of the community that uses the area with the vision of urban space development of decision-makers, reducing the conflicts that can arise between different institutional levels. In this study, it also emerges that the urban question is not green areas vs. new buildings, but it is important to focus on the social use of the space to develop human well-being. With the right transition of information and knowledge between different institutional levels, the bottom-up and top-down approaches help develop an operative effective transdisciplinary urban plan and design. Therefore, public participation with bottom-up and top-down approaches is not a tool to obtain maximum consensus, but mainly a moment of confrontation to better address social issues in urban planning and design.

Relationships between psychological contract violation, stress and well-being in firefighters

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 120-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fazeelat Duran ◽  
Darren Bishopp ◽  
Jessica Woodhams
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Contract ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Multiple Mediation ◽  
Work Related Stress ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Related Stress

Purpose Negative emotions resulting from the broken promises by the organisation or employers, as perceived by an employee are called psychological contract (PC) violation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between perceived feelings of violation, work-related stress, anxiety and depression. Fairness and self-efficacy are used as mediators to understand the underlying mechanism of associations. Design/methodology/approach In total, 97 firefighters completed an online-survey and structural equation modelling was used to examine the multiple mediation models. Findings PC violation was positively associated with occupational stress and job-related well-being. Together, fairness and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between feelings of violation and job-related depression. Therefore, the results partially supported the hypotheses. Originality/value As the first quantitative study of its kind, this study makes an important contribution to the firefighters literature by investigating the potential influence of PC violation on their work-related stress and well-being. Also, previous studies have failed to identify fairness and self-efficacy as potential mediators of the PC violation.

Model (my) neighbourhood – a bottom-up collective approach for crime-prevention in Portugal and Lithuania

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Saraiva ◽  
Irina Matijosaitiene ◽  
Mónica Diniz ◽  
Vilius Velicka
Keyword(s):  
Crime Prevention ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Content Type

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to respond to the need for comparative studies on methodologies for implementing Crime Prevention through Urban Design and Planning (CP-UDP) at the local level, particularly in peripheral Europe where CP-UDP’s top-down standards have poor dissemination and acceptance. This paper debates how local partnerships can help reduce crime and how a CP-UDP-based model can be introduced into municipal planning. Design/methodology/approach The paper discusses the challenge of CP-UDP in the framework of a post-crisis Europe and Europe 2020. Because there is a large gap between theory and practice, lack of a shared holistic approach, and scepticism, or lack of knowledge, of public authorities, at local-level planning professionals and the police have devised bottom-up initiatives based on interdisciplinary partnerships with the community. The paper describes, discusses and compares the implementation of such approaches in Lisbon (Portugal) and Vilnius (Lithuania). Findings The paper addresses the processes and challenges of establishing synergies and working relationships between police officers, public officials and the community, and it discusses six main causes for its (un)success. When these conditions were met, crime and social constraints reduced. Practical implications Lessons learned are deemed crucial to disseminate knowledge and best practices, paving the way for proper top-down policies and planning legislations in these and other countries. Originality/value This paper analyses the potentialities and shortcomings of local-level implementation of CP-UDP strategies as an alternative to failed top-down strategies in two realities mostly unknown of the international scientific community. The case study material is previously unpublished internationally.

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