Newer Research Approaches for Needed Change in American Education During Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Times

Looking ahead toward future empirical work conducted collaboratively by researchers and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic and in post-pandemic times, this chapter identifies contemporary and emerging types of research and research approaches to meet new challenges and answer newer questions. The chapter focuses on emergent research approaches for collaborative studies conducted in and on partnerships. Such emergent research approaches as design-based implementation research, improvement science, developmental evaluation research, impact research, netnography, and microethnograpy are included in the chapter. Each research approach is defined and described in the context of a partnership setting. The author concludes the chapter with remarks about paradigm wars and promising research (e.g., holism vs. reductionism).

Author(s):  
Katarina Galof ◽  
Zvone Balantič

The care of older adults who wish to spend their old age at home should be regulated in every country. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the steps for developing a community-based care process model (CBCPM), applied to a real-world phenomenon, using an inductive, theory-generative research approach to enable aging at home. The contribution to practice is that the collaboration team experts facilitate the application of the process in their own work as non-professional human resources. This means that each older adult is his or her own case study. Different experts and non-experts can engage in the process of meeting needs as required. The empirical work examined the number of levels and steps required and the types of human resources needed. The proposed typology of the CBCPM for older adults can provide insight, offer a useful framework for future policy development, and evaluate pilots at a time when this area of legislation is being implemented.


Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 691
Author(s):  
Chukwudi A. Nnaji ◽  
Charles S. Wiysonge ◽  
Maia Lesosky ◽  
Hassan Mahomed ◽  
Duduzile Ndwandwe

Despite South Africa’s substantial investments in and efforts at ensuring universal access to immunisation services, progress has stalled and remains suboptimal across provinces and districts. An additional challenge is posed by the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has disrupted immunisation services globally, including in South Africa. While there is growing evidence that missed opportunities for vaccination (MOV) are a major contributor to suboptimal immunisation progress globally, not much is known about the burden and determinants of MOV in the South African context. Herein, we make a case for assessing MOV as a strategy to address current immunisation coverage gaps while mitigating the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on immunisation services. We illustrate a practical implementation research approach to assessing the burden of MOV among children in primary care settings; for understanding the factors associated with MOV; and for designing, implementing, and evaluating context-appropriate quality improvement interventions for addressing missed opportunities. Such efforts are vital for building health system resilience and maintaining immunisation programme capacity to optimally deliver essential health services such as routine childhood immunisation, even during pandemics.


Author(s):  
Valile Valindawo M. Dwayi

This article reports on the evaluation researchproject, which focussed on the viability and sustainability challenges in one particular case of a university over a period of five years. Such a university remains categorised as structurally disadvantaged despite almost thirty years into constitutional democracy in South Africa. As such, the research project was conducted against the complexity of the university transformation project, which take place against the enduring social ills as high unemployment rate, increasing inequalities and abject poverties especially from the enduring legacy of the old racist apartheid system. The role of university education in such a context becomes the reflexive imperative in consideration of university, not only as the public good and equity, but for social justice and equity discourses. Such discourses need to be made more loud than is presently the case. The research therefore focussed on the role of entrepreneurship skills development, which then were juxtaposed with the espoused values of of science, innovation and technology as the key performance indicators for the academic project. As such, the article will revolve around the main argument that scholarship of engagament in univeristy spaces, where entrepreneurship skills development ought to be the enabling system, need to be reimagined in terms of the contemporary research disciplines. Critical realist philosophy, and the realist social theory as the explanatory program, provide the alternative research approach to the mainstream approaches due to their explanatory power for for transcendentalism and based on retroductive arguemnts about the social world. Such an approach does not only foreground the contemporary debates in social sciences, and the emerging fields of study within it, but also help to elaborate on the purist positions that tend to be promoted in some business science fields and their inadvertent pragmatic and black box logic. Keywords: Viability, Sustainability, Entrepreneurship skills development, Historically disadvantaged universities, realist evaluative research


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Creed

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the experiences in working collaboratively with physically impaired visual artists and other stakeholders (e.g. disability arts organisations, charities, personal assistants, special needs colleges, assistive technologists, etc.) to explore the potential of digital assistive tools to support and transform practice. Design/methodology/approach – The authors strategically identified key organisations as project partners including Disability Arts Shropshire, Arts Council England, the British Council, SCOPE, and National Star College (a large special needs college). This multi-disciplinary team worked together to develop relationships with disabled artists and to collaboratively influence the research focus around investigating the current practice of physically impaired artists and the impact of digital technologies on artistic work. Findings – The collaborations with disabled artists and stakeholders throughout the research process have enriched the project, broadened and deepened research impact, and enabled a firsthand understanding of the issues around using assistive technology for artistic work. Artists and stakeholders have become pro-active collaborators and advocates for the project as opposed to being used only for evaluation purposes. A flexible research approach was crucial in helping to facilitate research studies and enhance impact of the work. Originality/value – This paper is the first to discuss experiences in working with physically impaired visual artists – including the benefits of a collaborative approach and the considerations that must be made when conducting research in this area. The observations are also relevant to researchers working with disabled participants in other fields.


Author(s):  
Shahad Raad Hamed ◽  
Safaa Al-deen Hussein Ali

Contemporary life has been accompanied by a series of technological developments and inventions, which enthuses the designer in new challenges and on a number of its levels, whether architectural or structural, and how to combine the two in a product whose structure reflects the creators' high creative expression. Which may lead to dazzling by employing a number of styles to produce a dazzling structure. And from it emerged the research problem is (The lack of detailed studies of the strategies and mechanisms for the generation of dazzling structures in contemporary architecture) The aim of the research was to construct a theoretical framework that describes the forms of generation of dazzling structures in contemporary architecture, The research approach were concentrated in three stages of the analytical descriptive, The first is to clarify the dimensions of the research and to extract the research problem, the second is to construct a theoretical framework on the concept of dazzling and ways to achieve it; the third is to conduct the case study on the samples. It was concluded that the strategy of creation is the mother strategy to generate the dazzling structure and the other strategies revolve around its mechanisms.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M Belcher ◽  
Karl Hughes

Abstract Researchers and research organizations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their work contributes to positive change and helps solve pressing societal challenges. There is a simultaneous trend towards more engaged transdisciplinary research that is complexity-aware and appreciates that change happens through systems transformation, not only through technological innovation. Appropriate evaluation approaches are needed to evidence research impact and generate learning for continual improvement. This is challenging in any research field, but especially for research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and intervenes in complex systems. Moreover, evaluation challenges at the project scale are compounded at the programme scale. The Forest, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) research programme serves as an example of this evolution in research approach and the resulting evaluation challenges. FTA research is responding to the demand for greater impact with more engaged research following multiple pathways. However, research impact assessment in the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) was developed in a technology-centric context where counterfactual approaches of causal inference (experimental and quasi-experimental) predominate. Relying solely on such approaches is inappropriate for evaluating research contributions that target policy and institutional change and systems transformation. Instead, we propose a multifaceted, multi-scale, theory-based evaluation approach. This includes nested project- and programme-scale theories of change (ToCs); research quality assessment; theory-based outcome evaluations to empirically test ToCs and assess policy, institutional, and practice influence; experimental and quasi-experimental impact of FTA-informed ‘large n’ innovations; ex ante impact assessment to estimate potential impacts at scale; and logically and plausibly linking programme-level outcomes to secondary data on development and conservation status.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Sven Ulrich ◽  
Alice Timmermann ◽  
Vanessa Frank

PurposeThe starting point for the considerations the authors make in this paper are the special features of family businesses in the area of management discussed in the literature. It has been established here that family businesses sometimes choose different organizational setups than nonfamily businesses. This has not yet been investigated for cybersecurity. In the context of cybersecurity, there has been little theoretical or empirical work addressing the question of whether the qualitative characteristics of family businesses have an impact on the understanding of cybersecurity and the organization of cyber risk defense in the companies. Based on theoretically founded hypotheses, a quantitative empirical study was conducted in German companies.Design/methodology/approachThe article is based on a quantitative-empirical survey of 184 companies, the results of which were analyzed using statistical-empirical methods.FindingsThe article asked – based on the subjective perception of cybersecurity and cyber risks – to what extent family businesses are sensitized to the topic and what conclusions they draw from it. An interesting tension emerges: family businesses see their employees more as a security risk, but do less than nonfamily businesses in terms of both training and organizational establishment. Whether this is due to a lack of technical or managerial expertise, or whether family businesses simply think they can prevent cybersecurity with less formal methods such as trust, is open to conjecture, but cannot be demonstrated with the research approach taken here. Qualitative follow-up studies are needed here.Originality/valueThis paper represents the first quantitative survey on cybersecurity with a specific focus on family businesses. It shows tension between awareness, especially of risks emanating from employees, and organizational routines that have not been implemented or established.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-359
Author(s):  
Lia Amalia ◽  
Neti Karnati ◽  
Nurhatatti Fuad

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the policy of the nine-year learning compulsory of basic education from the objectives context. The research method used evaluation research approach through descriptive qualitative method. The data collection methods used interviews, observations, and documents. The data analysis technique used three stages, namely data reduction, data presentation, discussion, and drawing conclusions. The findings conclude that the objective of the nine-year compulsory education is in accordance with the government rule from the central and local governments. The methods used by the Serang government in achieving the goal of the nine-year compulsory education are the use of both natural and human resources, the participation of all parties in a comprehensive manner to carry out educational activities, and an interactive system of coordination between all parties. The implication of this research is seen in the implementation of education and management of education policies in the city of Serang.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-341
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. Zeamer

This article describes the unique benefits of discourse analysis, a qualitative sociolinguistic research methodology, for evaluating financial literacy counseling. The methodology is especially promising for organizations that may lack the resources to implement “gold standard” large scale, randomized, experimental, or quasi-experimental longitudinal designs. We begin with an overview of problems with program evaluation research on financial literacy interventions, particularly for smaller community service agencies. We lay out the advantages of discourse analysis as an alternative method of assessing program quality. We include a pilot study demonstrating the use of the research approach, and we conclude the description of this study with specific guidelines as to “best practices” indicated from the results. We believe discourse analysis has the potential to make data collection and analysis easier and more effective for counselors and agency staff at community service organizations, especially when the work of program evaluation is being done by the service providers themselves and the client needs may be atypical, complex, or very specific.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document