Music Therapy Pre-internship Education and Training: Support for a Methods-Based Approach

As music therapists, music is our primary realm of understanding and action and our distinctive way of joining with a client to help them attain optimal health and well-being. As such, we have adopted and advocate for a music-focused, methods-based (M-B) approach to music therapy pre-internship education and training. In an M-B approach, students’ learning is centered on the 4 music therapy methods of composing, improvising, re-creating, and listening to music and how these music experiences can be designed and implemented to address the health needs of the diverse clientele whom they will eventually encounter as practicing clinicians. Learning is highly experiential, with students authentically participating in each of the methods and reflecting on these self-experiences as a basis for their own clinical decision-making. This is differentiated from a population based (P-B) approach, wherein students’ attention is directed at acquiring knowledge about the non-musical problems of specific “clinical populations” and the “best practice” music interventions that are presumed to address these problems. Herein, we discuss both approaches, identifying the limitations of a P-B perspective and outlining the benefits of an M-B curriculum and its relevance to 21st-century music therapy practice.

Initiations of Employer Engagement in Training Delivery of TVET Programmes

Engagement of employers in the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system is needed not only to increase the training capacity but to ensure the TVET is demand-driven, quality oriented, future focused and provides the economy with the skilled workers it needs. Employer engagement in TVET system covers a spectrum of cooperation and involves small participation to build the trust required to develop more robust long-term engagement strategies. Developing engagements with employer and employer’s associations at all levels of the training programmes life cycle facilitate the development of workable solutions for training-to-work transitions. The employer has a crucial role to play in the delivery of training programmes. Engagement of employer is an essential component of overall training programmes and leads to developing responsive labour market skill needs, supporting priority economic sectors, training design and development, training delivery and post training support to develop ongoing dialogue with employer and employer associations. The need to increase the engagement of employers in TVET programmes has been known for many years in the country, however, employer engagement in training delivery of TVET programme is under-explored in Nepal. This article addresses the existing situation, explores issues, and share some practicable initiations of employer engagement in the TVET programme.

Continuing the Journey of Education, Training and Research

Issue 6, Volume 6 of the Journal of Training and Development has been published with the objectives of sharing the recent research findings in the field of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in research, training and development. This publication has a collection of valuable articles from TVET experts, scholars and educationalist. This training and development journals are considered to be valuable resources for the scholars, educationist and TVET experts and stakeholders. This issue consists of seven articles on different aspects of Training and Development. The first article by Jiwak Raj Bajrachrya examines the existing models and framework that has been used to integrate technology into Teaching and Training (2Ts). As described in numerous literatures, currently instructors use TPACK, SMAR, and TPACK-based ID models such as TPACK-COPR model, TPACK-IDDIRR1 model, and TPACK-IDDIRR2 model to achieve the specific goal of an effective 2Ts. He highlighted a few hurdles found in the empirical-based studies in the above-mentioned models and framework and how those hurdles could be alleviated by addressing an extraneous cognitive load of an instructors carrying out technology integration as well as future recommendations for research. The article by Rajendra Bahadur Shrestha highlights the current situation, discovers issues, and share some feasible initiations of employer engagement in the TVET programme. The involvement of employer in TVET system is important to ensure the TVET is demand-driven, quality oriented, future focused and provides skills workers who contributes to the economy’s growth. It also assists to develop responsive labour market skill needs, training design and development, training delivery and post training support. Employer involvement in TVET programs has long been a priority in many nations, however in Nepal, employer involvement in training delivery of TVET programme is under-explored. The article by Thakur Prasad Bhatta aims to explore the governing issue of TVET in the framework of Nepal’s federal government. He focuses on qualitative research approach in scrutinizing policy and practice of TVET in Nepal. This paper explores how the process of governing TVET in Nepal has remained highly centralized despite the rhetoric of decentralization as the main agenda of regulating development over the decades. Arguably, there is a reluctant tendency in devolving TVET as per the new structure of federal governance. Instead, like in other development sectors, disputes between the three levels of government – federal, provincial, and local – are emerging in the case of TVET. He concludes the paper by drawing insights on the federal form of TVET governance. The article by Dr. Prakash C. Bhattarai, Durga Prasad Baral and Prakash Kumar Paudel focus on establishing a TVET fund and sketches the possible alternative approaches with a reformed TVET structure. The literature review focuses on international practices of implementing TVET fund. In addition, the authors have collected opinions from TVET stakeholders on the establishment of a TVET fund in Nepal and based on the findings, they have proposed five possible models for TVET fund mechanism in Nepal. They revealed that all the models have their strengths and challenges, so it would be rational to adopt the idea of strengthening an existing structure rather than attempting to make it stand alone. Its effective implementation requires strong research and innovation, an effective implementing body and an independent quality assurance and accreditation system. The instructors of TECS schools and their perspectives of profession is discussed by Bikash Ghaju, and Dr. Prakash C. Bhattarai. The authors focused to comprehend the experience of TECS instructors on their teaching profession. The narrative inquiry approach was utilized to study the cases in-depth for which four instructors from the Diploma in Civil Engineering program of two TECSs were purposively selected. The paper concludes that while instructors are interested in the teaching profession which assists in career growth but they are unwilling to work at remote TECS schools due to limited career advancement and earning opportunities. Mobile technology has brought about innovative changes in all aspects of life, including interpersonal communication, the economics, and teaching and learning.. Shesha Kanta Pangeni discusses the use of android mobile in education institute of Nepal. His paper is based on the persistence of encouraging the Mobile App for e-learning, which subsidizes access to e-learning resources and prompt communication for learning activities. He collected data through online survey, informal interaction and interview. He discovered that although the facilitators rarely used Mobile App, students used the Mobile App and they wanted the updated version with more user-friendly interface. He summarized that the responsibilities of institutions and facilitators are critical in creating and providing mobile-friendly learning options, and that the success of App use is dependent on facilitators' active role in technology learning facilitation. Devendra Adhikari explores the life experiences of workers in the construction-sector during and after the COVID-pandemic. He implements a qualitative approach under the socio-constructionism paradigm and selected three participants from different sectors masonry, house-painting, and plumbing for in-depth interviews. He discovers that the COVID-pandemic has brought new resilient strategies in the lives of the construction workers such as maintaining high concern for personal safety and the well-being of their families and exploring employment opportunities of the construction sector. Finally, the editorial team wishes to convey their profound gratitude to all of the authors who have contributed by sharing their relevant and significant creations. We would also like to express gratitude to the reviewers and TITI management team for their continuous support in publishing this journal. The team would also like to welcome articles from TVET experts, trainers and stakeholders in the field of training, development and research. We are also grateful to Tribhuvan University Central Library (TUCL) for providing their professionals support and encouragement to publish this journal online. Last but not least, we are thankful to the publisher for the publication of the print version of this journal.

Structural Investigation of Export Assistance and Performance of Handloom Exporters

The previous literature highlighted the importance of export assistance to uplift export activities of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). However, those studies could not test the feasibility of introduced export assistance for the targeted population. This study focuses on export assistance provided by the government institutions to the handloom exporters and its relationship with their perceived quantitative export performance. A detailed literature review of the existing export assistance programmes led to the categorization in four aspects, that is, financial support, informational support, facilitating support, and education/training support. A model is proposed based on identified variables depicting the relationship between export assistance and handloom exporters’ perceived quantitative export performance. In order to develop the model, first-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was initially applied for validity measures. Subsequently, second-order CFA was applied due to the presence of multicollinearity among the variables due to the undistinguishable response of the chosen sample units towards export assistance. Thus, the study investigated the relationship of each of the four identified export assistance elements with the quantitative performance of Handloom exporters.

Development of Sustainable Energy Use with Attention to Fruitful Policy

There are different energy approaches around the world to the development of sustainable energy systems. In this regard, the role of governments, local governments, and people in the development and use of sustainable energy is remarkable. This research, concerning the present epistemic and normative differences, aims to investigate the societal debate on citizen inclusion, local and national attempts to develop clear procedures and guidelines in the transition to sustainable energy use in different countries. Existing theories, subjectivities, and policy implications for different countries are first carefully analyzed. Based on theories, evidence, and policy implications, the behavioural insights for sustainable energy use are then examined. The results show that national governments should never ignore the psychology and behaviour of people, especially in terms of economic behaviour, performance applicable and knowledge of local governments and people in sustainable energy development. Channels of communication between local, people, and national governments, can make a robust shared network and implement simple policies such as increasing their authority. They can also encourage and build capacity through the training, support, trust and knowledge capacity of local governments and people to move toward sustainable energy development. Therefore, focusing on government and maintaining national authority should be departed from any approaches that local government and the public should be constrained as minor actors in sustainable energy governance networks. This work demonstrates that local governments can develop sustainable energy. Moreover, national governments can overcome issues and further control sustainable energy public policy goals under difficult national political conditions.

DPWSS: differentially private working set selection for training support vector machines

Support vector machine (SVM) is a robust machine learning method and is widely used in classification. However, the traditional SVM training methods may reveal personal privacy when the training data contains sensitive information. In the training process of SVMs, working set selection is a vital step for the sequential minimal optimization-type decomposition methods. To avoid complex sensitivity analysis and the influence of high-dimensional data on the noise of the existing SVM classifiers with privacy protection, we propose a new differentially private working set selection algorithm (DPWSS) in this paper, which utilizes the exponential mechanism to privately select working sets. We theoretically prove that the proposed algorithm satisfies differential privacy. The extended experiments show that the DPWSS algorithm achieves classification capability almost the same as the original non-privacy SVM under different parameters. The errors of optimized objective value between the two algorithms are nearly less than two, meanwhile, the DPWSS algorithm has a higher execution efficiency than the original non-privacy SVM by comparing iterations on different datasets. To the best of our knowledge, DPWSS is the first private working set selection algorithm based on differential privacy.

Co-designing a remote rehabilitation tool for Parkinson’s disease: exploratory values and challenges

Background Impaired motor function is one of the early symptoms shown in patients with Parkinson Disease (PD). For this reason, rehabilitative interventions have been used for many years to improve motor and non-motor symptoms. Among them, the use of music therapy has shown benefits in helping to overcome some of the most common motor dysfunction. Addressing the challenge of providing access to this type of therapy, this document presents the collaborative design process to develop a remote training support tool for PD based on music therapy. Methods A qualitative study with creative co-design methods was used in which different groups of healthcare professionals, patients, and relatives participated in six iterative sessions. Workshops were designed and structured to incrementally discover requirements and needs and validate the proposed prototype ideas. Results The study provided key aspects that were used for the development and validation of the proposed prototypes for the remote music-based training support tool for PD. Up to 20 factors that had a positive and/or negative influence on patient access to training were detected. These factors were classified into three common themes: daily activities and independence, participation in treatment and barriers to daily treatment, and self-management and personalization of information and telecommunication technologies (ICT). Conclusions This paper shows the results of a collaborative design process aimed at identifying the different factors, relevant to patients with PD, to improve their access to remote ICT-based training therapy and their expectations regarding alternative therapies, such as music. The participatory design methods and the iterative model used helped overcome many of the traditionally barriers that this type of technological support solutions usually have, facilitating the future participation.

O-EGS06 Trials and Tribulations: Educational Impact and Recommendations from the Implementation of Student-Led Recruitment in a Clinical Trial

Background Medical students have an essential role in medical research, yet often feel unprepared and lack opportunities for involvement as recruiters within research studies. This study aimed to understand the educational effect of involvement in clinical trial recruitment on medical students, and to derive generalisable future recommendations. Methods Tracking wound infection with smartphone technology (TWIST) was a randomised controlled trial enrolling adult emergency abdominal surgery patients across two university teaching hospitals. All recruiters underwent pre-recruitment training based on “Generating Student Recruiters for Randomised Trials” (GRANULE) principles, and completed pre-and post-recruitment surveys. Respondent agreement with statements were assessed using 5-point Likert scales (from 1 [“strongly disagree”] to 5 [“strongly agree”]). Quantitative data were analysed using paired t-tests to compare differences pre- and post-involvement, and a thematic analysis approach adopted for anonymised free-text answers. Results Of 492 patients recruited to TWIST from 2016 to 2020, 86.0% (n = 423) were recruited by medical students. Following student involvement, the monthly recruitment rate tripled (4.8 to 15.7 patients). Thirty student recruiters (96.8%), completed both surveys, reporting significant improvements in clinical and academic competencies. This included increased confidence in gaining and documenting consent, as well as interest in pursuing a clinical-academic career. Over half (58.2%) felt the undergraduate curriculum had not prepared them for involvement in clinical trials (mean:2.47, SD: 0.94). There were three emergent themes regarding recommendations for involvement of students, based on their engagement, preparation, and support during recruitment. Conclusions Student recruitment in clinical trials is feasible and provides a route to developing a research-active medical workforce. It also accelerates recruitment to clinical trials, as well as benefiting students through development of clinical competencies and provision of additional exposure to research. Adequate training, support, and selection of suitable trials are essential for successful student engagement.

Developing Equity-Focused Education in Academic Public Health: A Multiple-Step Model

Education and training support public health practitioners in identifying and addressing challenges related to equitable health concerns. This article details a four-step Curricular Responsive Review Model (CRRM) generated by educators in a Council on Education for Public Health–accredited public health program to systematically understand and gather feedback on how to develop a responsive curriculum for their students. A review of all course syllabi was conducted by two faculty members and a doctoral student to identify curricular gaps and overlap. These findings, critical team dialogues, and a review of the literature informed the development of a survey to identify the health equity concepts and skills needed by MPH students. Community partners ( n = 4) responded to health equity education questions to detail the essential concepts and skills needed to teach students. Health equity educators (HEEs; n = 4) were then consulted on how to address knowledge gaps through pedagogy and educational resources. Community partners provided a list of areas that students should be educated in to enrich their health equity understandings. Recommendations were generated for integrating those concepts/skills into course teaching plans. The four-step CRRM in health equity education provides an opportunity for public health programs to engage in systematic mapping and critically reflective review processes to address curricular gaps and overlap. Mechanisms to receive real-world knowledge on health equity from a variety of stakeholders are essential to ensure real-word practical learning. The CRRM identifies systematic, responsive curricular mapping and review in public health as essential for meaningful, real-world equity education in disciplines beyond public health and health promotion.