Search results

In this chapter, I will outline the labels of giftedness and underachievement and present the theoretical debates surrounding these labels. A historicist examination of these labels follows, highlighting how the gifted underachievement (GUA) label emerges through the negation of “giftedness.” Subsequently, I explore the concept of GUA and its negative connotations, stemming from the positive valuation inherent in the term “giftedness” and its implications for what is considered “normal.” This chapter also reviews perspectives on shifting the focus away from the individual within the current paradigm of labeling giftedness and explores insights from systemic thinking and symbolic interactionism (SI). The conclusion underscores the necessity of a symbolic interactionist perspective to address the gaps in research on the labeling of giftedness and underachievement. Finally, I propose a generic definition that can be used in GUA research in the light of SI.

Culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) is a methodological paradigm that intertwines the principles of ethnography with community-centered approaches to amplify the authenticity and efficacy of program evaluations. This chapter explores the integration of ethnographic inquiry and methods to enhance evaluators' engagement with diverse stakeholders through a foundation of mutual respect, co-learning, and capacity building. Ethnography contributes depth to CREE by facilitating sustained participatory engagement, open-ended interviewing, and immersive observation, capturing the intricate cultural dynamics that inform context-specific recommendations. A crucial element of this integration is reflexivity concerning evaluators' privilege and positionality. By maintaining proactive transparency about their insider–outsider status and actively balancing power dynamics, evaluators can mitigate cultural blind spots and extractive biases. This approach not only foregrounds marginalized voices but also emphasizes critical self-interrogation, advancing the evaluation's potential to enact social change. However, without relentless anti-oppressive reflexivity, there is a risk of merely appropriating ethnographic methods for cosmetic purposes, thereby undermining the humanistic and authenticity aims of CREE. For program evaluators committed to adhering to the guiding principles of cultural competence, continuous professional development in ethnographic and CREE methodologies is essential. This chapter describes the meaningful integration of these methods, fostering more respectful, authentic, and equitable engagements with communities. Future directions for evaluation practice should focus on developing ethnographic, participatory, and community-based methods training, integrating critical theories to address power dynamics and promote reflexivity, and ensuring that evaluations not only meet technical standards but also achieve profound societal impact through a committed, collaborative, and authentic approach.

The idea is to develop a condition-based maintenance (CBM) model for continuously monitored degrading systems under imperfect maintenance. The system is subjected to random shocks, inspection, corrective maintenance (CM) and preventive maintenance (PM); respective thresholds are set to make decisions.

The generalized renewal process is considered for degradation modeling, and the maximum likelihood estimation method is used for parameter estimation. Optimum replacement time is derived by minimizing downtime per unit time (DT).

Optimum replacement time is derived by minimizing DT. The paper provides insight into the virtual age model’s applicability and efficacy in CBM policy-based decision-making.

This paper assesses the CBM policy for continuously degrading systems under random shocks and imperfect maintenance. An operating system faces five events, i.e. CM, PM, inspection, random shock and sudden failure, during its lifetime. The combination and timing of these mutually exclusive events decide the degradation path in addition to the system's natural degradation (wear-out) dynamics when it is not tampered with in any way. Sequential modeling of such events for a degradation dataset will provide maintenance estimation and prediction parameters.

In general, CBM models do not consider CM to be part of the maintenance policy. It is debatable whether to include CM as part of a CBM policy. In our case, we consider CM in CBM policy formulation, assuming: (1) fail-repair: the system is restored to its operating state after failure with repair; (2) salvage: disposal of non-repairable part or material from the system, i.e. CM actions are a result of minor component-level failures. System failure is referred to as a case involving rebuild/complete system replacement. We assume CM for minor failures and acknowledge that failure can be delayed using CBM but cannot be avoided entirely. Therefore, the consideration of CM in the CBM model will make the model more generic and comprehensive.

Agriculture is one of the oldest socio-economic activities. It involves growing valuable plants and animals for human existence. Sustainable agriculture should be understood in light of the global sustainable development movement, which emphasizes balancing environment, society and economics. With the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent war between Russia and Ukraine, sustainable agriculture can help eliminate food insecurity caused by food shortages and agricultural sector disruptions. Recently, investors, practitioners, academicians, researchers, regulators and financiers are increasingly interested in using Islamic financing products and qualified Shari'ah-compliance contracts to promote sustainable agriculture. Many Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) states still rely on agriculture for socioeconomic growth. These countries are major contributors to Islamic financial growth. This study assesses Islamic finance’s role in promoting sustainable agriculture in selected OIC countries. The researchers use qualitative methods and meta-analysis data to determine the constraints and benefits of implementing Islamic financial products for sustainable agriculture. This study suggests that OIC state governments should promote sustainable agriculture. OIC member states have different achievements relating to their sustainable agriculture. Based on socio-economic factors, agriculture policies or plans, leadership and political will, Islamic finance products and Shari'ah-compliance contracts are found underutilized in meeting sustainable agriculture and sector stakeholders’ needs. A solid Islamic financial framework for sustainable agriculture, good governance and improved agriculture policy are needed.

The rapidly growing medical tourism sector impacts sending and receiving countries’ health systems. It is growing rapidly, and medical procedures, technology and high-quality healthcare are expensive and unequal. Low-to-middle-income countries’ citizens travel abroad for better healthcare for cost or other reasons. Medical tourism in developing countries is poorly understood, despite empirical studies from developed countries and various disciplines. This paper aims to analyze the motivational factors that influence Nepalese patients’ decisions to seek outbound medical tourism in Nepal.

The study adopted a quantitative approach. The study purposefully included individual patients who had undergone medical treatment abroad to form the sample for research purposes. Among the 400 respondents, 382 responses were deemed the final sample size. A questionnaire was developed on a seven-point Likert scale. The study proceeded with a sequential analysis approach, commencing with the evaluation of the measurement model before conducting path analysis to test the hypotheses and present the model estimates.

The study found that the individuals supported outbound medical tourism and were open to medical treatment abroad. Outbound medical tourism is highly related to service quality and word-of-mouth communication along with the insurance policy, language and culture, treatment cost and procedural safety. However, service quality and word-of-mouth communication significantly affect outbound medical tourism, with service quality having a large effect. These findings of the study shed a different dynamics of the factors influencing Nepalese individuals’ decision regarding outbound medical tourism.

This study focuses to a developing country in which the country’s healthcare system lacks proper infrastructure and services, is overcrowded, lacks expertise and technology and private hospitals are scarce. As a result, more people are seeking treatment across borders. Though researchers from developed countries and different disciplines have carried out empirical studies on medical tourism, little is known about this phenomenon in developing countries. Therefore, this study explores the motivational factors for outbound medical tourism in Nepal. This study addresses these key research issues to highlight Nepal’s underexplored outbound medical tourism and its drivers.

Current political, economic and societal developments have led to high uncertainty in organisations, which may negatively impact employee well-being. Leaders play a crucial role in this context. This study explores how interventions support leaders and their followers in times of uncertainty.

We conducted 22 interviews to evaluate the experiences of two interventions, coaching and mental health awareness training, both implemented in two corporate organisations in Czechia during a merger and acquisition and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our findings show that both interventions equipped participants with resources to manage change, such as increased self-awareness and self-efficacy, and improved coping strategies for stressful situations. Participants gained better leadership skills and knowledge to support employees and themselves when facing mental health issues. Our findings reveal that the contextual factors in the two organisations led to different mechanisms and content for coaching but similar mechanisms in mental health awareness training.

This research contributes to the understanding of targeted interventions to support leaders during times of uncertainty. Implications for practitioners and Human Resources when developing context-specific support strategies are discussed.

Food security is the major issue of the world as well as in developing countries like India in recent times. The study examines the status of food security for 15 selected states in India during 1995–1996 to 2018–2019 where the statuses of food security for the states are estimated by applying the multidimensional food security index. The secondary data on different food security indicators are collected from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agricultural Organization, National Family Health Survey (NFHS) report, RBI bulletin, Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation (EPWRF), and different issues of Statistical Abstract of India. The value of the food security index has significantly increased over the study period. The food security conditions for all the states have improved at higher rates in the second subperiod compared to the first subperiod in the country. It has also used panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method for the estimation of log-term and short-term relationship between food security and socioeconomic indicators of various states in the country. The food security of most of the states could be improved with the improvement in the conditions on the per capita power consumption, workforce participation rate, and cropping intensity in the country. Furthermore, the regional imbalance has decreased establishing that food security of the poorer states improved at a higher rate compared to richer states.

Sustainability is a major challenge for India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining industry. The government has prioritized sustainable growth in the coal mining industry. It is putting forth multifaceted economic, environmental and social efforts to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research aims to identify the factors for sustainable improvements in coal mining operations. Secondly, this study examines the intensity of causal relations among the factors. Thirdly, this study examines whether causal relations exist among the factors to be considered for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations. Lastly, the study aims to understand how the factors ensure sustainable improvement in coal mining operations.

An integrated three-phase methodology was applied to identify the critical factors related to coal mining and explore the contextual relationships among the identified factors. Fifteen critical factors were selected based on the Delphi technique. Subsequently, the fifteen factors were analyzed to determine the contextual and causal relationships using the total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) and DEMATEL methods.

The study identified “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” as the leading factor for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations, because it directly or indirectly influences the overall mining operation, environmental impact and resource utilization. Hence, strict control measures are necessary in “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” to ensure sustainable coal mining. Conversely, “Health Impact” is the lagging factor as it has very low or no impact on the system. Therefore, it requires fewer control mechanisms. Nevertheless, control measures for the remaining factors must be decided on a priority basis.

The proposed structural model can serve as a framework for enhancing sustainability in India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining operations. This framework can also be applied to other developing nations with similar sustainability concerns, providing valuable guidance for sustainable operations.

The current study highlights the significance of logical links and dependencies between several parameters essential to coal mining sustainability. Furthermore, it leads to the development of a well-defined control sequence that identifies the causal linkages between numerous components needed to achieve real progress towards sustainability.

This article explores key features of effective professional learning as identified in research, exploring in-depth the potential of co-mentoring as a transformative model for teacher development.

This article focuses on the Foundation for Learning and Literacy’s (FFLL) Touchstone 11, which underscores the importance of continuous teacher professional development in equitably supporting student learning. Teachers play a pivotal role in fostering learning and literacy, yet they face significant challenges in accessing ongoing, embedded professional learning tailored to their practice. A brief review of the literature regarding key features of effective professional learning is followed by an in-depth exploration of co-mentoring in the context of a real-world education program.

Co-mentoring fosters reciprocal, non-hierarchical learning relationships, exemplified by the School Drama program – a collaboration between Sydney Theatre Company and The University of Sydney. This program paired teaching artists with classroom teachers to integrate drama into literacy education, leading to improved teacher confidence, student engagement and professional growth.

The article situates key features of effective professional learning as identified in the literature in the context of a real-world education program in Australia.

Although several studies evidence the positive outcomes of facilitation coaching style in various professional settings, it has received less attention in the health-care context. Thus, drawing on previous research and the tenets of Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), Job Demands-Resources Theory (Demerouti et al., 2001) and Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989), this study aims to investigate the relationship between facilitation coaching style and adaptive performance in health-care professionals, considering a serial mediation mechanism in which job-related anxiety and informal field-based learning are antecedents of positive psychological capital (PsyCap).

Self-reported data were collected from 253 Romanian health-care professionals using a cross-sectional research design.

The authors found that facilitation coaching style reduces job-related anxiety and promotes informal field-based learning, thereby improving PsyCap and, ultimately, contributing to higher adaptive performance.

These results emphasize the critical role of facilitation coaching style in the health-care sector and provide actionable insights for health-care organizations seeking to enhance their staff’s adaptive performance and, consequently, patient care.