The 2008 Recession and Biological Health: Psychological Well-Being and Social Disadvantage Modify Vulnerability

Racial minorities and educationally disadvantaged experienced more housing loss, unemployment, and financial strain during the 2007-2009 Great Recession. These hardships may heighten stress and amplify persistent and growing health inequities, which were further worsened by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. It is therefore essential to identify factors that contribute to individual differences in vulnerability so that more effective interventions can be implemented, especially in older adult populations who may face unique economic hardships tied to age discrimination. According to the reserve capacity model, higher levels of psychosocial resources, including psychological well-being, can protect against the negative health outcomes related to heightened stress exposure. This study tested the intersections between recession hardship, pre-existing vulnerability defined as racial and educational disadvantage, and psychological well-being as predictors of biological indicators of chronic allostatic load. Chronic allostatic load was assessed with cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to acute mental stress and systemic inflammation (basal indicators of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6). Biological data came from a national sample of adults known as the Midlife in the US Study ( MIDUS; age = 25-75, N=863) that completed assessments after the recession. Multiple regression models revealed that more widespread recession hardship predicted greater biological dysregulation. Tests of three-way interactions revealed that the association between recession hardship and biological dysregulation was strongest among respondents with combined disadvantages of low educational status and low levels of psychological well-being. This study connected a major economic event to individual variation in health vulnerability and identified potential biological pathways to future disease outcomes.

Work-related online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

The COVID-19 pandemic has made access to face-to-face learning opportunities—the most common form of adult learning—impossible. Many firms have scaled back their training investments due to economic uncertainty. One way to fill these gaps is through self-directed learning via the Internet. Learning opportunities via apps and online videos are available flexibly in terms of time and location. But can online learning substitute for the lack of face-to-face courses, especially in the workplace where constant skill updating becomes ever more important? We wanted to know if online learning opportunities were used more in the first months of the pandemic, and if so, for which purposes and by which groups. Using data from the Adult Cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC6) and a supplementary web survey conducted in May and June 2020, we show that the work-related use of online learning was stronger in these months than before the crisis. At the same time, however, educational inequalities in the use of such opportunities were larger than before the pandemic. Thus, the expansion of online learning seems to benefit highly educated workers rather than educationally disadvantaged groups.

The perceptions of female breadwinner parents regarding their children’s distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic

Covid-19 has affected the everyday educational lives of students, teachers, administrators, and parents. Parents who are living in low-income and disadvantaged communities are probably more likely than others to have been affected by the pandemic in relation to their children’s distance learning. This study focused on the perceptions, predictions, and suggestions of female breadwinner parents from low-income families regarding their children’s distance learning. Data were collected from 12 mothers who participated in a three-stage focus group study. The data from the focus group discussions were thematically analyzed into three categories: (1) financial issues, (2) social and cultural issues, and (3) educational issues. Additionally, the findings presented the breadwinners’ general and technological reasons for their predictions for enhancing education in the future if schools return to face-to-face learning or pursue a blended learning approach. The breadwinners suggested three approaches to teaching and learning for the following academic year. The findings of this study may be useful in the development of educational policies and training programs to provide essential social and technological support to low-income families to address their needs in the online learning environment and to improve digital equity for low-income families who are likely to be educationally disadvantaged.

Preterm Birth: A Concerning Global Issue

This article reviewing literature to focus the problem- “Increase preterm child birth” analysis through problem tree, which is the participatory tool of mapping out main problems, along with their causes and effects. Child born preterm has a greater effect on their life than infants born at term in respect of mortality and a variety of health and developmental problems. However, those children born nearer to term represent the greatest number of infants born preterm and also experience more complications than infants born at term. The enormous effects of preterm birth include acute unstable health, central nervous system, hearing, and vision problems, as well as longer -term motor, cognitive, visual, hearing, behavioral, social-emotional, health, and growth problems. The birth of a preterm infant can also bring considerable emotional and economic costs to families and have implications for socioeconomic sector. The impact of preterm child birth is the raising number of mort ality and economic burden to the family as well as to the society. Preterm birth is a complex cluster of problems with a set of overlapping factors of influence. Its causes may include maternal health related problems, individual-level behavioral and psychosocial factors, environmental exposures, medical conditions. Many of these factors occurring combination, particularly in those who are socioeconomically and educationally disadvantaged

Violence and Voice

Historically marginalized populations in the US, although culturally different, have come under similarly intensified macrosocial pressures that have increasingly challenged their resilience and well-being. These populations have been both geographically set apart through discriminatory practices and educationally disadvantaged through exclusionary institutional practice and the imbalanced allocation of public resources. They have inevitably developed as displaced communities – whose access to resources and participation in local decision-making have been systematically limited or blocked. Many of the communities with which UC Links works have found themselves facing this pervasive displacement in ways that bring their university partners into action with them. In this context, the difficulties of coordinating program activity at times challenge their capacity to sustain their work, and at other times have the effect of deepening their collaborations as they co-construct a zone for listening to each other's voices and expanding understandings of each other's perspectives.

Early-Stage Venture Incubation and Mentoring Promote Learning, Scaling, and Profitability Among Disadvantaged Entrepreneurs

Socially and educationally disadvantaged entrepreneurs often lack the knowledge and prior experience to develop and scale their businesses. Owing to limited educational and employment opportunities, poverty, and discrimination, these entrepreneurs frequently experience low business growth and performance. What factors influence the effectiveness of early-stage venture incubation and mentoring for promoting learning, scaling, and profitability among these entrepreneurs? Two studies in a business incubator serving low-income, underprivileged entrepreneurs in South Africa evaluate this question. Study 1 uses a matched, two-period case-control design to investigate the effects of incubation on business growth by comparing selected and incubated companies to similar also-selected but not incubated ones. The findings show that incubated companies grew 22% more in revenue and 15% more in employment than not incubated companies over the six months between applying to and graduating from the incubator. Study 2 uses instrumental-variable models to evaluate the role that mentoring played in improving business performance by analyzing data from seven cohorts of participants in the incubator randomly assigned to mentors. The findings show that participants assigned to high-ability (versus low-ability) mentors had 3.2% higher revenue and 3.5% higher profits one year after incubation. Further, the benefits of being mentored were more significant for businesses whose entrepreneurs had less pre-entry knowledge and experience, suggesting that mentoring supplemented gaps in human capital. These findings have implications for ways to support disadvantaged entrepreneurs and their businesses through mentoring and early-stage venture incubation.

Local socioeconomic status and paramedic students' academic performance

Research indicates that students of lower socioeconomic status are educationally disadvantaged. This study sought to examine differences in paramedic students' academic performance from counties with varied socioeconomic status in the United States of America. Student performance data and socioeconomic status data were combined for counties within the states of California, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia. Linear multiple regression modelling was performed to determine the relationship between income, high school graduation rate, poverty and food insecurity, with first-attempt scores on the Fisdap Paramedic Readiness Exam versions 3 and 4. Linear regression models indicated that there was a significant relationship between county-level income, poverty, graduation rate, food insecurity, and paramedic student academic performance. It remains unclear what type of relationship exists between individual socioeconomic status and individual academic performance of paramedic students. These findings support the future collection of individual student socioeconomic data to identify issues and mitigate impact on academic performance.

Language Policy and Conflict as Learning Barriers: The Plight of Linguistic Minority Schoolchildren in Darfur, Sudan

This paper investigates learning difficulties of the linguistic minority schoolchildren (LMS) in Darfur, Sudan, in the contexts of the current conflict and the official monolingual policy. Employing quantitative and qualitative data gathering tools, we examined how the LMS at the internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps were educationally disadvantaged due to their low proficiency in Arabic, curricula developed insensitively to their identities and cultures, and how parents and teachers perceived of teaching the children in Arabic as the sole medium of instruction. The study concluded that monolingualism in education resulted in the underachievement of the IDPs schoolchildren; the vast majority of the parents and a great number of teachers believed the children could have achieved better had the teachers used, besides Arabic, native languages in teaching; and that learning of the children could be improved if their ethnic identities and cultures were integrated in curricula. Preferences of teaching the children in Arabic among the parents were primarily attributed to the current conflict, which gave rise to the revitalisation of native languages in Darfur. The teachers’ preferences thereof, however, differed – crudely traceable between one group of monolingual supporters whose perceptions were informed by their internalised state ideology of Arabicisation and another group of multilingual proponents whose viewpoints were derived from the trendy approaches favouring multilingualism in education. The findings also suggested that the government deliberately distanced itself from taking remedial interventions to mitigate the underachievement of the children with the expectation the displacement would expedite their linguistic and cultural assimilation, which have not only rendered them the most linguistically disenfranchised children in Sudan, but created the most profound de facto government language policy of its kind as well.

Effects of Fluency Oriented Instruction on Motivation for Reading of Struggling Readers

This paper looks at the effects of an intervention, based on fluency oriented reading instruction (FORI), on the motivation for reading among struggling readers in First Class in Irish primary schools. The intervention took place in learning support settings in three primary schools located in urban educationally disadvantaged communities in North Dublin. The study was conducted through a pragmatic lens with research questions framed to shed light on the motivation for reading of students in First Class from disadvantaged backgrounds. A mixed methods design with a concurrent triangulation strategy was employed, facilitating the exploration of multiple research questions using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with teachers and parents and conversational interviews and surveys with students. The perspective of reading motivation guiding the study recognised the overlapping influences of teachers, parents and the student himself or herself. Findings, as reported by these research informants, indicate that the FORI intervention had a positive impact on the motivation for reading of struggling readers in First Class. In particular, the intervention was found to decrease students’ perceived difficulty with reading and increase their reading self-efficacy and orientation towards reading.

Six critical dimensions: A model for widening participation in open, online and blended programs

Working from the perspective of open and online learning for widening participation in higher education, this article advances a new conceptual model to guide practitioners and researchers in maximising the enablers and minimising the constraints to foundation level online learning for equity students. The model is adapted from technology for social inclusion research addressing persistent inequalities in Internet use. First, the proposed model is introduced with definitions for the six dimensions (course purpose, technology, social support, autonomy, learning materials and skills) and research propositions for how the dimensions enable and constrain learning. A qualitative synthesis of empirically tested open and online programs (including massive open online courses) is used to clarify how the six critical dimensions interact to enable and constrain diverse learners in distance and blended modes. Results support the model with new definitions for each dimension in light of unexpected findings: courses designed to enable particular groups; breadth of learner supports; technology amplifying other dimensions; and aspects of the model designed to empower disadvantaged learners. This model should assist course design research and practice at higher education institutions where open and online provision for diverse and educationally disadvantaged learners is the current or approaching reality.