scholarly journals Weighing In

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri A. Lasswell ◽  
Nicholas J. Pace ◽  
Gregory A. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Evaluation ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Teacher Evaluations ◽  
Convenience Store ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Teaching Standards ◽  
Accountability Movement ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Practice Teaching ◽  
The Way

As the accountability movement has gained momentum, policy makers and educators have strived to strike a difficult balance between the sometimes competing demands at the local, state, and federal levels. Efforts to improve accountability and teacher evaluation have taken an especially unique route in Iowa, where local control and resistance to state mandated curricular standards have been popular topics from the statehouse to the convenience store. This research explores principals’ impressions of Iowa’s state-mandated standards for best-practice teaching (as opposed to state mandated curricular standards). Further, the research examined the extent to which the Iowa Teaching Standards (ITS) and accompanying Iowa Evaluator Approval Training Program (IEATP) have impacted the way teacher evaluations are conducted in the state’s rural schools. Evidence indicates that most principals felt that ITS and the accompanying IEATP made them feel adequately or very well prepared to conduct teacher evaluations. In addition, 65% of respondents reported that IAETP had changed the way teachers are evaluated.  

scholarly journals What Counts as Best Practice Teaching for Teacher Educators: Theory and Practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 298-306
Author(s):  
Aurelia Atukwase
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Novice Teachers ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Practice Teaching ◽  
The Way

The aim of this essay is to operationalize best practice in teaching, what it is, what it constitutes and the kind of knowledge teacher educators need in order to become best practitioners. This is because some authors often use the phrase ‘best practices’ whenever debating about what teachers should portray in view of preparing teacher trainees for the teaching profession . What always occupies my mind, however, is not only the exploit of the phrase, but also the way different educational researchers even go ahead to suggest the benefits of best practices in teacher education without unpacking the phrase itself. My argument here is that not until teachers as practitioners re-define the scope of teaching in view of best practice, it might continue posing challenges for novice teachers to know the kind of knowledge they need to posses if they are to showcase best practices in teaching.

scholarly journals A more comprehensive approach offering instruments in one portal to facilitate higher uptake

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
C Rossmann ◽  
F De Bock
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Evidence Synthesis ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Community Setting ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Assessment Instruments ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Activity Promotion

Abstract The good practice portal of the Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA) consists of a nationwide collection of projects and interventions to promote the health of socially disadvantaged groups at community/setting level. An exchange platform (inforo) is also offered via the operating agency, although its use is still limited. The results of the evaluation of the platform suggest that the provision of practical projects and exchange of knowledge alone is not sufficient to support policy makers and practitioners who want to promote health in the community/setting. There is a need for advice on needs assessment, selection and appropriate implementation of health promotion measures. A comprehensive approach currently being tested in the field of activity promotion for older people is the provision of a web-based “toolbox” comprising the following tools: assessment instruments for analysing the need for health promotion measures, a user-friendly intervention/project database and broader evidence synthesis documents, as well as information on project management (organisational, legal, financial). Following the example of other best practice portals, a ranking methodology was developed to make the level of effectiveness of interventions visible and the evaluation requirements transparent. Evidence synthesis documents provide an entry point to learn more generally what works in a particular area of health promotion. In order to make the “toolbox” accessible to policy-makers and practitioners, information from previous studies was used in the development with regard to content and graphical presentation. BZgA is currently working on integrating evidence into the good practice portal. The evaluation of the toolbox in a small area of health promotion will provide initial insights into the inclusion of evidence and its added value. This presentation will conclude with a discussion of possibilities for improvement, challenges and limitations of this approach.

scholarly journals 343 - Best Practice Guidance on Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia – Recommendations from the INDUCT Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (S1) ◽  
pp. 103-103
Author(s):  
Rose-Marie Dröes ◽  
Yvette Vermeer ◽  
Sébastien Libert ◽  
Sophie Gaber ◽  
Sarah Wallcook ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
International Training ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Informal Carers ◽  
Care Technology

The Interdisciplinary Network for Dementia Using Current Technology, INDUCT, is a Marie Sklodowska Curie funded International Training Network that aims to develop a multi-disciplinary, inter-sectorial educational research framework for Europe to improve technology and care for people with dementia, and to provide the evidence to show how technology can improve the lives of people with dementia. Within INDUCT (2016-2020) 15 Early Stage Researchers worked on projects in the areas of Technology to support every day life; technology to promote meaningful activities; and health care technology.Three transversal objectives were adopted by INDUCT: 1) To determine the practical, cognitive and social factors needed to make technology more useable for people with dementia; 2) To evaluate the effectiveness of specific contemporary technology; and 3) To trace facilitators and barriers for implementation of technology in dementia care.The main recommendations resulting from the research projects are integrated in a web-based digital Best Practice Guidance on Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia which will be presented at the congress. The recommendations are meant to be helpful for different target groups, i.e. people with dementia, their formal and informal carers, policy makers, designers and researchers, who can easily select the for them relevant recommendations in the Best Practice Guidance by means of a selection tool. The main aim of the Best Practice Guidance is to improve the development, usage and implementation of technology for people with dementia in the three mentioned technology areas.This Best Practice Guidance is the result of the intensive collaborative partnership of INDUCT with academic and non-academic partners as well as the involvement of representatives of the different target groups throughout the INDUCT project.Acknowledgements: The research presented was carried out within the Marie Sklodowska Curie International Training Network (ITN) action, H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015, grant agreement number 676265.

scholarly journals Challenges and Vulnerabilities on Public Finance Sustainability. A Romanian Case Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ionel Bostan ◽  
Carmen Toderașcu ◽  
Anca Gavriluţă (Vatamanu)
Keyword(s):  
Public Finance ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Scenario Analysis ◽  
Financial System ◽  
Formal Proof ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
The Way

Given the contradiction between the current demands for sustainability and the way that the financial system works, this paper explored in a retrospective and a prospective view, Romanian Public Finance Sustainability, highlighting the major challenges and vulnerabilities. Relating to the retrospective part, we concentrated mainly on empirical tests on Romanian government solvency between the period 1990–2020, by applying un it root and co-integration tests. To gain a better, general understanding of the behavior of policy-makers, in the second part we used a scenario analysis of budgetary adjustment in the short and medium run under alternative hypotheses. The results provided formal proof that policy makers decisions face critical and complex questions, and the way in which they manage fiscal stimuli has a direct implication on the sustainability of the country and on the lax implementation of fiscal policy.

scholarly journals A spectrum of assessments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rina Shvartsman ◽  
Stephen Abblitt
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Assessment Methods ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Knowledge Domain ◽  
Assessment Design ◽  
Practice Teaching ◽  
Academic Courses ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Teaching Learning

Different methods of assessment are used to measure learning outcomes in different academic disciplines. Many learning designers, despite being predisposed to certain assessment methods as they draw on their own specific academic background, work with a broad range of academic disciplines. This can result in difficulties advising academics from a discipline with which they are less familiar on best-practice teaching, learning, and assessment. This paper offers a tool for learning designers and subject matter experts to use when working together to design assessments in various academic courses, based on the characteristics of subject matter within the relevant disciplines. Specifically, we map a set of disciplines and a set of assessment methods on two axes: Pure vs. Applied and Hard vs. Soft (PAHS). For the set of disciplines, we can justify our choice of map locations based on attributes required by relevant accreditation organisations. The scattering of the assessment methods on the map is based on a proposed taxonomy of assessment design and common practice as observed by the authors. Learning designers are encouraged to refer to this paper as a guide when designing assessments for courses outside their knowledge domain.

Patterns of Prejudice from Henri Massis to Walter Bedell Smith

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-180
Author(s):  
Mircea Platon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Ideological Context ◽  
The Way

Astolphe de Custine’s collection of letters La Russie en 1839, first published in France in 1843, was rediscovered by Henri Massis in 1946. Massis re-introduced Custine’s by then long forgotten letters on Russia to the French public. Once American Cold Warriors such as George Kennan and General Walter Bedell-Smith discovered the book, they promptly promoted it to the status of the most prophetic book on the “Russian soul.” Denounced as “fictional,” by many nineteenth-century writers and by a host of twentieth-century scholars, Custine’s book was accepted as canonical by a large reading public and, more importantly, by successive generations of us policy makers. This article contributes to the historiography of Cold War propaganda by looking first at the context in which the book was initially resurrected by Massis, and then by analyzing the ways in which Cold War propaganda constructed its “relevance,” “actuality” and “prophetic” character. The article begins by taking a look at the way in which Massis, the first popularizer of the book, fitted it into his own ideological pattern. In a second movement, the article analyzes the ways in which the book functioned in the post-wwii ideological context, seeking to discover if the alleged relevance of the book had anything to do with the survival into the postwar world of the European Right’s interwar tangle of received ideas and patterns of prejudice.

Taming the Monster: Arresting Excessive Sand Production Problem in ARAMU037

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Ako ◽  
Erasmus Nnanna ◽  
Odumodu Somtochukwu ◽  
Akinmade Moradeke
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Sand Production ◽  
Sand Control ◽  
Production Problem ◽  
Normal Production ◽  
The Way

Abstract Chemical Sand Consolidation (SCON) has been used as a means of downhole sand control in Niger Delta since the early 70s. The countries where SCON has been used include Nigeria (Niger Delta), Gabon (Gamba) and UK (North Sea). SCON provides grain-to-grain cementation and locks formation fines in place through the process of adsorption of the sand grains and subsequent polymerization of the resin at elevated well temperatures. The polymerized resin serves to consolidate the surfaces of the sand grain while retaining permeability through the pore spaces. In a typical Niger Delta asset, over 30% of the wells may be completed with SCON. A high percentage are still producing without failure since installation from1970s. Where the original SCON jobs have failed, re-consolidation has also been carried out successfully. Chemical Sand Consolidation development has evolved over the years from: Eposand 112A and B, Eposand 212A and B, Wellfix 2000, Wellfix 3000, Sandstop (resin based), Sandtrap 225, 350 & 500 (resin based) and lately Sandtrap 225,350, 500 (solvent based) and Sandtrap ABC (aqueous based). There have been mixed results experienced with the deployment of either of the latest recipes of SCON. This was due to the fact that the conventional deployment work procedure was followed with the tendency for one-size-fits-all approach to the treatment. This paper details the challenges faced with sand production in ARAMU037, the previous interventions and how an integrated approach to the design and delivery of the most recent intervention restored the way to normal production. The well has now produced for about 2 years with minimal interruption with the activity paying out in less than 6 months. The paper also recommends the best practice for remedial sand control especially for wells in mature assets.

scholarly journals The Mask of Aging: Doing Cultural Research for a ‘Social Problem’

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit-Ling Luk
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Debates about ‘social problems’ routinely raise questions: is the problem widespread?; how many people, and which people, does it affect?; is it getting worse?; what does it cost society?; what will it cost to deal with it? Convincing answers to such questions demand evidence, and that usually means numbers, measurements, statistics.  However,  the same group of statistics can be ‘manipulated’ by different sectors, including activists as well as policy makers. In this article the author explores was the way in which the impact of statistical dominance in social research was relayed by media coverage and also by social activists and policy makers.

scholarly journals Consuming heritage: counter-uses of the city and gentrification

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rogerio Proença Leite
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Spatial Segregation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Urban Policies ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Policy ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

Based on research in the old Recife Quarter in the city of Recife, capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil, this study examines processes of gentrification in areas of heritage value. The article focuses on the way in which these urban policies have transformed cultural heritage into a commodity, and urban space into social relationships mediated by consumerism. I argue that heritage sites that undergo processes of gentrification create strong spatial segregation and generate an appropriation of space by the excluded population that takes the form of counter-uses, undermining the uses imagined by urban and heritage policy makers.

scholarly journals Governing multisectoral action for health in low-income and middle-income countries: an agenda for the way forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (Suppl 4) ◽  
pp. e000890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumanan Rasanathan ◽  
Vincent Atkins ◽  
Charles Mwansambo ◽  
Agnès Soucat ◽  
Sara Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Implementation Research ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Implementation Processes ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
The Way

Drawing on experiences reviewed in the accompanying supplement and other literature, we present an agenda for the way forward for policy-makers, managers, civil society and development partners to govern multisectoral action for health in low-income and middle-income countries and consider how such an agenda might be realised. We propose the following key strategies: understand the key actors and political ecosystem, including type of multisectoral action required and mapping incentives, interests and hierarchies; frame the issue in the most strategic manner; define clear roles with specific sets of interventions according to sector; use existing structures unless there is a compelling reason not to do so; pay explicit attention to the roles of non-state sectors; address conflicts of interest and manage tradeoffs; distribute leadership; develop financing and monitoring systems to encourage collaboration; strengthen implementation processes and capacity; and support mutual learning and implementation research. To support countries to strengthen governance for multisectoral action, the global community can assist by further developing technical tools and convening peer learning by policy-makers (particularly from beyond the health sector), supporting knowledge management and sharing of experiences in multisectoral action beyond health, developing an agenda for and execution of implementation research and, finally, driving multilateral and bilateral development partners to transcend their own silos and work in a more multisectoral manner.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document