Rhythms of learning — a model of practice supporting youth mental health in the era of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in demand for mental health services for young people. This demand comes on top of a preexisting surge in mental health presentations for our youth, and it places extraordinary demand on support services and the professionals who deliver them. Concurrently, it is recognised that engaging and working with young people and their mental health has its own unique challenges, and that many young people find direct ‘talk-based’ therapies confronting. This article examines the use of a model of group work practice combining the benefits of rhythmic music with reflective discussions as a response to the dual challenges of workplace burnout and client engagement. It reflects on the important role music has to play in young lives and how this can be extended into therapy in a fun and uplifting manner. It draws attention to the long history of rhythmic music within traditional healing practices and the emerging scientific evidence supporting this approach.

Enterprising or Enterprise? Sustainable rural training centre models in the Solomon Islands

<p>This thesis assesses the educational relevance, impact and operational sustainability, of community rural training centres (RTCs) and external ‘development’ practice across the Solomon Islands over the last five years. It further legitimises RTCs as effective hubs of ‘development’ for informal livelihoods and rural community interests. The thesis adopts a post-development lens in its assessment of insights obtained from qualitative interviews with 87 participants, spanning four RTC locations and in consultation with other stakeholders. Particular attention is given to Escobar’s local models of practice (Escobar, 1995) in understanding processes of ‘development’ at the community level. It assessed the nature and purpose of RTCs for community conceptions of ‘development’ and ‘modernity’, identifying their impact in this regard. Alongside this, the thesis assessed the impact of external ‘development’ programming on the RTC model of practice, including considerations of output relevance and sustainability. Overall, a social enterprise model (Ridley-Duff & Bull, 2018) was found to be insufficient to understanding the RTC model of practice. Such a model failed to account for the varied conceptions of ‘modernity’ at the local level, and instead a more holistic model of RTC operation was proposed. This helps to expand discourses of localised practice in the context of ‘development’. Evidence from participants showed clear positive impacts of the model in supporting different stakeholders’ goals for ‘development’ at the community level. Mainstream discourses of ‘knowledge’ transfer were challenged by showing the agency and, at times, power, community actors possessed in localising new learnings into current understandings as they saw fit. While external programming played a key part in these processes, its role was as a facilitator of RTC models of practice rather than as the main driver of community ‘development’. Rather than simply replacing one set of ‘knowledge’ with another, this expands discourses of localised ‘knowledge’ to show community understandings as separate and adaptable domains of knowledge that should be supported rather than replaced. Finally, this thesis assessed the position of RTCs in wider discourses of Solomon Islands’ ‘sustainable development’, including wider outcomes and implications of this position on their ‘sustainability’, and for community education. National and global processes of ‘development’ we found to have great influence on the successes and challenges of RTCs, showing ongoing and evolving challenges to ‘informal’ livelihoods and practice. External expectations were shown to create a sustainability paradox for rural training centres (Devine, 2003), between conforming to external perceptions to support their ‘development’ or maintaining their relevance in informal settings with few options for growth. A case is therefore made to expand discourses of ‘sustainable development’ to conceive of sustainable outcomes in a more holistic way, acknowledging history and community-level intent over external economic ‘development’ pressures.</p>

Enterprising or Enterprise? Sustainable rural training centre models in the Solomon Islands

<p>This thesis assesses the educational relevance, impact and operational sustainability, of community rural training centres (RTCs) and external ‘development’ practice across the Solomon Islands over the last five years. It further legitimises RTCs as effective hubs of ‘development’ for informal livelihoods and rural community interests. The thesis adopts a post-development lens in its assessment of insights obtained from qualitative interviews with 87 participants, spanning four RTC locations and in consultation with other stakeholders. Particular attention is given to Escobar’s local models of practice (Escobar, 1995) in understanding processes of ‘development’ at the community level. It assessed the nature and purpose of RTCs for community conceptions of ‘development’ and ‘modernity’, identifying their impact in this regard. Alongside this, the thesis assessed the impact of external ‘development’ programming on the RTC model of practice, including considerations of output relevance and sustainability. Overall, a social enterprise model (Ridley-Duff & Bull, 2018) was found to be insufficient to understanding the RTC model of practice. Such a model failed to account for the varied conceptions of ‘modernity’ at the local level, and instead a more holistic model of RTC operation was proposed. This helps to expand discourses of localised practice in the context of ‘development’. Evidence from participants showed clear positive impacts of the model in supporting different stakeholders’ goals for ‘development’ at the community level. Mainstream discourses of ‘knowledge’ transfer were challenged by showing the agency and, at times, power, community actors possessed in localising new learnings into current understandings as they saw fit. While external programming played a key part in these processes, its role was as a facilitator of RTC models of practice rather than as the main driver of community ‘development’. Rather than simply replacing one set of ‘knowledge’ with another, this expands discourses of localised ‘knowledge’ to show community understandings as separate and adaptable domains of knowledge that should be supported rather than replaced. Finally, this thesis assessed the position of RTCs in wider discourses of Solomon Islands’ ‘sustainable development’, including wider outcomes and implications of this position on their ‘sustainability’, and for community education. National and global processes of ‘development’ we found to have great influence on the successes and challenges of RTCs, showing ongoing and evolving challenges to ‘informal’ livelihoods and practice. External expectations were shown to create a sustainability paradox for rural training centres (Devine, 2003), between conforming to external perceptions to support their ‘development’ or maintaining their relevance in informal settings with few options for growth. A case is therefore made to expand discourses of ‘sustainable development’ to conceive of sustainable outcomes in a more holistic way, acknowledging history and community-level intent over external economic ‘development’ pressures.</p>

Ngā Raranga I Makere / Stitches Dropped In Time: An Oral History Study of Māori Community Archiving in Taranaki, 2014-2017.

<p>Community archiving is a movement with its origins in the grass-roots activities of documenting, recording and exploring community heritage in a way that focuses on community participation and ownership of records. This research was about a Māori archiving community of practice from Taranaki and investigated how the training they received created outcomes for their taonga archives and families. It did this by answering three research questions designed to identify how post-custodial trends in community archiving resonated with, or differed from, the methods employed by 11 former students of Te Pūtē Routiriata o Taranaki community archive in New Plymouth. This research took a qualitative oral history approach to data gathering and used thematic analysis to examine evidence gathered from three generations of whānau archivists. It investigated whether community archiving had enhanced their collections of whānau history passed down from generation to generation and connected the close family groups that were looking after them. This study proposes a concept of whānau-led collection management as a model of practice for flax-roots communities and public heritage institutions that work with taonga Māori. It explains the link between collectively caring for archival collections and positive outcomes for whānau engagement with te reo Māori and other forms of cultural identity building. It draws on international examples to suggest ways that practices of community archiving, such as digitisation and digital archiving, can bridge the gap between community-led and institutional methods of caring for tangible and intangible cultural heritage.</p>

Ngā Raranga I Makere / Stitches Dropped In Time: An Oral History Study of Māori Community Archiving in Taranaki, 2014-2017.

<p>Community archiving is a movement with its origins in the grass-roots activities of documenting, recording and exploring community heritage in a way that focuses on community participation and ownership of records. This research was about a Māori archiving community of practice from Taranaki and investigated how the training they received created outcomes for their taonga archives and families. It did this by answering three research questions designed to identify how post-custodial trends in community archiving resonated with, or differed from, the methods employed by 11 former students of Te Pūtē Routiriata o Taranaki community archive in New Plymouth. This research took a qualitative oral history approach to data gathering and used thematic analysis to examine evidence gathered from three generations of whānau archivists. It investigated whether community archiving had enhanced their collections of whānau history passed down from generation to generation and connected the close family groups that were looking after them. This study proposes a concept of whānau-led collection management as a model of practice for flax-roots communities and public heritage institutions that work with taonga Māori. It explains the link between collectively caring for archival collections and positive outcomes for whānau engagement with te reo Māori and other forms of cultural identity building. It draws on international examples to suggest ways that practices of community archiving, such as digitisation and digital archiving, can bridge the gap between community-led and institutional methods of caring for tangible and intangible cultural heritage.</p>

Mauri Ora: Creating a model of practice using Indigenous Tikanga.

As an Adult Educator, combined creative thinking and critical thinking can often provide learners with the tools to be innovative through their practices. He Pūawai is an Adult Tertiary Teaching L5 program at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. The course is a 20-week program comprised of four learning modules providing skills and learning tools for facilitators, tutors or trainers teaching Adults. I have collaborated with a tauira to extend a Kaiako perspective and tauira vision that created a model of practice and framework. The tauira were the Semester A He Pūawai program. This framework applies Ngā Takepū, Ahurutanga, Kaitiakitanga, Koha and Mauri Ora, and these principles are embedded in Adult Teaching through the delivery and learning practices at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Takepū is about caring for people, relationships and cultures through a holistic approach in an educational context for all learners (Pohatu & Timata, 2008). I will discuss how ‘Mauri’ informed and balanced innovation and creative skills that enhance relationship building. Pohatu & Pohatu (2011) refer to ‘Mauri’ as the formation of human relationships. Mauri emphasises the “how and why” we shape how we learn, teach and behave (p. 1).

Practice-Oriented Teaching in Preparing Future TeachersPsychologists for Professional Activity

In this article, devoted to the problem of professional training of future teachers-psychologists based on practice-oriented teaching, the research results, tested during the educational process, are presented. They are as follows: the essence of the concept "professional competence" of a teacher is specified; based on the analysis of existing approaches to the study of the structure of professional readiness, personal, intellectual-operational, motivational, communicative, and reflexive components are determined; the structural and functional model of practice-oriented teaching of future teachers-psychologists has been developed following the pedagogical features of practice-oriented teaching and the identified pedagogical conditions, which includes four interrelated blocks: the target, the methodological, the content-procedural, the learning outcome. The criteria of professional training of future teachers-psychologists on the basis of practice-oriented teaching (personal, intellectual-operational, motivational, communicative, and reflexive) and levels of readiness are defined: reproductive (low), adaptive (medium), and integrative (high). The development and consolidation of skills in students is carried out by solving specific tasks of professional activity, during which students try to explain the procedure for solving a specific professional task and check the actual material in practice. The practice-oriented content of the educational material allows bringing teaching closer to specific situations of professional activity, the chosen specialty, to form the life experience of students, thus increasing the level of knowledge and skills, cognitive interest, and, as a result, to form the level of professional competence of students.

An Integrated Framework of Leadership for Healthcare Organizations to Navigate Through COVID-19 Crisis

COVID-19 crisis has strained healthcare systems immensely creating a multi-front challenge to overcome. Healthcare leaders face stressful situations like long arduous hours of work, isolation from their loved ones, immense mental health issues along with fighting false narratives and campaigns by social media. Hence, there is a dire need for leaders to embrace this uncertainty and evolve by adopting a strategic shift in their mindset. To propose an effective functional leadership model of practice during crisis, author has undertaken a qualitative approach to understand the various literature published on crisis management, reviewed the literature on healthcare leadership, contextualized the papers about unique challenges posed by a crisis like COVID-19, and utilize the learnings to design an integrated framework for healthcare organizations to be applied during a crisis. Author presents a systems-based view of leadership challenges in healthcare organizations during a crisis and proposes a unique framework of 3A- Acknowledge, Activate, and Agility which could serve a comprehensive tool of strategic leadership for healthcare leaders to adopt during a crisis. When healthcare organizations adopt the principles embedded within 3A model elements, it would help them realize better patient outcomes, develop compassionate organizational culture, and enhance professional satisfaction within their teams.

A Model of Practice for Improving Autism Knowledge in Teachers of Mainstream Students on the Autism Spectrum in Australia

Australian mainstream school teachers report a severe shortage of accessible autism-focused resources, strategies, and professional development (PD). This 2-part mixed methods study investigated the effect of using a web-based model of practice (MoP) for PD. The MoP contains evidence-based, autism-specific educational practices and resources designed for mainstream teachers of students on the autism spectrum. The aim was to examine teacher responses to using the MoP and the impact of the mode of delivery. In Part 1, 3 PD delivery conditions for using the MoP were trialled (8 weeks): face-to-face support, online support, or web-based access to detailed resources only. Support was provided by expert autism educators. Teachers (N = 15) reported that the MoP was an accessible, comprehensive, and practical support for educational decision-making, and that support encouraged implementation of the MoP practices. Part 2 trialled a hybrid PD model in 6 regional schools. Limited face-to-face and online support plus access to the MoP was trialled. Interview data indicated that a hybrid model can be an effective method of providing immediate support for teachers.