Descriptive Study of Safety and Health Training Content in Iranian Universities and Higher Education Institutes

The root cause of many workplace incidents is the lack of knowledge on occupational safety and health principles. Despite the safety and health authorities in organizations, safety and health is the general responsibility of all other experts working in an organization. Experts and managers are expected to think, decide and work safely in workplaces. However, we don’t have enough information about the level of safety and health-related education when they were in universities. In addition, there is not too much reliable published reports on the academic teaching of safety and health courses and syllabus in higher education in Iran. Therefore, the current study was aimed to provide a general view of the status of occupational safety and health teaching subjects in different academic disciplines (excluding specialized fields in occupational safety and health) in the Iranian higher educational system. Firstly, the latest edition of the entire program (curricula) of all academic disciplines held in Iranian universities was downloaded. Secondly, the required information, including discipline title, program’s degree, number of required (core) and elective (non-core) courses, and program’s date of approval, were recorded in an Excel sheet. Every course’s title and syllabus were then studied to find out any safety and health-related topics. Finally, data were analyzed and reported. 251 academic disciplines in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) and 771 disciplines in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT) were investigated. Most of the curriculums have been revised by both ministries since 2011. Results showed that 20 percent of the MOHME‎ ‎disciplines and 10.4 percent of MSRT‎ disciplines were included in the occupational safety and health courses. The number of courses with health and safety content (syllabus outline) in the MOHME ‎‎and the MSRT‎ were 168 and 173. Most health and safety courses presented in the MOHME academic majors were in the basic medical sciences category of disciplines. A majority of MSRT covered academic safety and health courses and topics were presented in the engineering category of disciplines. Presenting lessons with health and safety content at the MOHME ‎was more practical than that of the MSRT. The quality and quantity of teaching on safety and health topic were not at satisfactory levels. Revising the course syllabus of the academic disciplines and adding theoretical and practical courses related to each field's specific health and safety curriculum can make a significant contribution in improving the general knowledge of the safety and health of the university graduates. In turn, it improves future workplace safety and health conditions, managers’ insights and decision-makers on the importance of safety and health at work. It protects the people's life and the property of the organization.

Pandemics and Social Work

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 confronted health and also social services globally with unprecedented challenges. These amounted to a combination of increased demands for support to individuals and families whose physical and mental health and economic security were threatened by the rapid spread of the virus and the imposed limitations to direct contacts with service users. This constituted a situation for which there was no immediate historical parallel but from which important lessons for better preparedness for future global disasters and pandemics can be drawn. There existed no specific introductions to or textbooks on social work responses to pandemics and the nearest usable references concerned social work involvement in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and in the aftermath of natural disasters. Frontline social workers were at first forced to improvise ways of establishing and maintaining contacts with service users partly through electronic means and partly by taking personal risks. This is reflected in an initial delay in the production of comprehensive theoretical reflections on the practice implications of the new situation. Practitioners resorted to pragmatism, which became manifest in numerous episodic practice accounts and brief statements in social work journals which nevertheless contain important messages for new practice developments. Notably, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) opened an online exchange and advice platform for social workers globally and also hosted a series of webinars. Nevertheless, books with collections of contributions from various practice fields and geographical areas soon began to appear. In view of the interdisciplinary nature of social work responses required in the pandemic the use of publications from a wider range of academic disciplines and related professions was indicated for this review.

Entertainment Video Games for Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

Entertainment video games are very popular among young audiences. Nevertheless, despite their potential to improve cognitive functioning, they are still studied rarely as a tool for digital game-based learning. To better understand video gaming practices’ value in the classroom, this article provides a systematic review of literature on the effect of entertainment video games on academic learning. Our literature search yielded 49 relevant intervention studies published between 2005 and 2019 that integrated entertainment video games into academic curricula from preschool to college. Our review revealed that entertainment video games can be an effective educational tool and are beneficial in almost all academic disciplines, particularly in foreign language and science. However, research on entertainment video gaming’s effects on academic learning is still not extensive enough and remains mostly qualitative. Future studies need to provide a quantitative approach to complete and confirm already-existing literature, particularly in the environmental and social sciences, physical education, and programming. Given entertainment video games’ popularity and benefits on cognition and learning, it seems essential to investigate their practical value further in the education sector and to determine the mechanisms that mediate their effects on academic learning.

Digital cultural heritage standards: from silo to semantic web

This paper is a survey of standards being used in the domain of digital cultural heritage with focus on the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) created by the Library of Congress in the United States of America. The process of digitization of cultural heritage requires silo breaking in a number of areas—one area is that of academic disciplines to enable the performance of rich interdisciplinary work. This lays the foundation for the emancipation of the second form of silo which are the silos of knowledge, both traditional and born digital, held in individual institutions, such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Disciplinary silo breaking is the key to unlocking these institutional knowledge silos. Interdisciplinary teams, such as developers and librarians, work together to make the data accessible as open data on the “semantic web”. Description logic is the area of mathematics which underpins many ontology building applications today. Creating these ontologies requires a human–machine symbiosis. Currently in the cultural heritage domain, the institutions’ role is that of provider of this open data to the national aggregator which in turn can make the data available to the trans-European aggregator known as Europeana. Current ingests to the aggregators are in the form of machine readable cataloguing metadata which is limited in the richness it provides to disparate object descriptions. METS can provide this richness.

A disruptive model for delivering higher education programs within the context of entrepreneurship education

PurposeThe purpose of this practitioner paper is to explore whether the principles of Design Thinking and the Lean Startup could be employed in developing a disruptive model for delivering educational programs within higher education in a way that attempts to eliminate the multitude of problems facing this industry, while simultaneously adhering to the principles of frugal innovation and meeting relevant sustainability goals.Design/methodology/approachThe authors followed a design thinking approach, employing tools such as empathy mapping, customer journey, value proposition and semi-structured interviews to obtain a deep level of understanding of the problems educators and students within the context of entrepreneurship education are facing. Throughout the process they drew on the practice of emergent inquiry and customer co-creation to help guide decision making.FindingsThe authors successfully derived a conceptual solution in the form of a Minimum Viable Product of which the features were tested against the multitude of user needs and requirements. It was possible to demonstrate how the solution meets all nine of the requirements for frugal innovations while simultaneously adhering to applicable sustainability principles.Practical implicationsThe proposed solution offers a potential opportunity to first-movers in chosen academic disciplines to become leaders in online education.Originality/valueEven in an industry such as higher education there is a dire need for frugality and finding sustainable solutions for educators and students in both developed and developing markets. With this paper the authors succeed in presenting innovative combinations of digital artefacts, platforms and infrastructure to arrive at a novel crowd-sourced solution that is unique in its design.

Voluntary Sustainability Standards: State of the Art and Future Research

In this feature paper, we introduce voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and canvas the research that has been conducted on VSS from different academic disciplines. We identify four main areas of research on VSS and explore them. First, we focus on research on the institutional design of VSS, which highlights the diversity among VSS. Next, we explore studies that try to assess the impact of VSS on key sustainability dimensions. Third, we zoom in on studies that analyse the uptake or adoption of VSS. Finally, we focus on the interaction between VSS and public policies. For each of the four areas, we summarise the main research findings and identify opportunities for future research.

Slow Scholarship: Propositions for the Extended Curriculum Programme

Higher education has been deeply affected by neoliberalism and corporatisation, with their emphasis on efficiency, competitiveness and valorisation of quantity over quality. This article argues that in the context of South African higher education, and in the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) more particularly, such commodification of education is problematic. The article explores what the Slow movement has to offer ECP in terms of scholarship. It seeks to answer the question: How might ECP be reconfigured using Slow imaginaries? Various academic disciplines and practices have incorporated Slow philosophy to develop alternative ways of doing academia; however, it has hitherto not been considered for programmes such as ECP. This article approaches Slow pedagogy for ECP using posthuman and feminist new materialist sensibilities that are predicated on a relational ontology. The article puts forward the following 10 propositions for a Slow scholarship in ECP using ideas from posthumanism and feminist new materialism: practice attentiveness through noticing, engage in responsible relations, diffract rather than reflect (thinking together affirmatively), render each other capable, enable collective responsiveness, explore creatively, making thoughts and feelings possible, enact curiosity, ask the right questions politely, foreground process rather than product, and create conditions for trust by wit(h)nessing. It is argued that by practising Slow scholarship with these propositions, ECPs might resist market-driven imperatives that characterise contemporary academia.

Dismantling white supremacy in environmental studies and sciences: an argument for anti-racist and decolonizing pedagogies

Many academic disciplines are presently striving to reveal and dismantle structures of domination by working to reform and reimagine their curricula, and the ethics and values that underpin classroom settings. This trend is impelled by momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement in tandem with a worldwide call from Indigenous scholars and their allies for more equality in research and epistemological plurality. We contribute to such efforts through applying perspective and analysis concerning anti-racist and decolonized approaches to teaching environmental studies and sciences (ESS). This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of embracing a decolonized and anti-racist approach with an emphasis on courses in higher education in North America. We conclude with guidance for educators about strategies for incorporating such approaches.

Authorship Equity and Gender Representation in Global Oncology Publications

PURPOSE Authorship gender disparities persist across academic disciplines, including oncology. However, little is known about global variation in authorship gender distribution. METHODS This retrospective cross-sectional study describes the distribution of author gender as determined from the first name across variables such as authorship position (first, middle, and last), country region, and country income level. The 608 articles with 5,302 authors included in this analysis were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Global Oncology, from its inception in October 2015 through March 2020. Primary outcome measure was author gender on the basis of first name probabilities assessed by genderize.io. World Bank classification was used to categorize the country region and income level. Odds ratios were used to describe associations between female last authorship and representation in other authorship positions. RESULTS Although female authors were in the minority across all authorship positions, they were more under-represented in the last author position with 190 (32.1%) female, compared with 252 (41.4%) female first authors and 1,564 (38.1%) female middle authors. Female authors were most under-represented among authors from low-income countries, where they made up 21.6% of first authors and 9.1% of last authors. Of all the regions, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had the lowest percentage of female authors. Compared with articles with male last authors, those with female last authors had odds ratios (95% CI) of 2.2 (1.6 to 3.2) of having female first authors and 1.4 (0.9 to 2.1) of having 50% or more female middle authors. CONCLUSION There are wide regional variations in author gender distribution in global oncology. Female authors remain markedly under-represented, especially in lower-income countries, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Future interventions should be tailored to mitigate these disparities.

Development of the national cultural identity of students of humanitarian specialties in the learning process

Introduction. The formation and strengthening of the national cultural identity of students is an important condition for maintaining the continuity of generations, fostering personal responsibility for solving global problems of our time. The aim of the article is to present the process of teaching humanitarian students as one of the possibilities for the development of national cultural identity. Materials and methods. When interpreting the results of the experiment, characterizing the features of teaching narrative, the method of observing the process of creating narrative texts by students was used. In assessing the effectiveness of teaching the narrative, the method of qualitative (φ-Fisher's statistical test) and quantitative analysis of written works was used. A total of 167 students from the Department of Philology and Media Communications at Vyatka State University (Kirov, Russia) participated in various stages of the study. Results. Summarized the results of a theoretical and experimental study of the process of teaching students to narrative. It is substantiated that the telling of personal stories is a social practice that develops cultural identity. The psychological and pedagogical conditions, which serve as a starting point for creating their own narrative texts, reflecting the student's personal experience, have been studied. The mechanisms are revealed that contribute to the strengthening of the national code, namely: the establishment in the process of creating a narrative of close bilateral relations between the author's personal experience and its comprehension (the description of personal experience leads to the need to comprehend it, and the generation of new meanings, in turn, enriches personal experience). Fisher's angular transformation was used for statistical verification. As a result, it was revealed that after conducting special training, the number of students who do not experience difficulties in understanding the text based on the development of skills to apply methods of working with a narrative text increased (p≤ 0.01). Teaching narrative creates conditions for a deeper, more complete and detailed understanding of one's cultural identity. Conclusion. The developed scheme of experimental teaching, which describes the features of its content and structure, can be used in teaching university students. The data obtained in the course of the research can be used in the organization of psychological and pedagogical support, in the framework of individual and group work carried out within the boundaries of various academic disciplines at the university.