Gregory D. Hanson, Robert L. Parsons and Wesley N. Musser
The 1997 merger of two USDA agencies, the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service and the Farmers Home Administration, into the Farm Service Agency created a need for…
Abstract
The 1997 merger of two USDA agencies, the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service and the Farmers Home Administration, into the Farm Service Agency created a need for consistent finance training. A highly successful Penn State Cooperative Extension borrower training program was selected to provide national financial training to more than 850 new staff and former loan technicians, and former ASCS staff and district directors. Analysis of workshop evaluations, based on pre‐workshop knowledge levels, identified five distinct clusters of trainees differing substantially in terms of experience, age, knowledge of finance principles, and job classification within FSA. However, evaluations confirmed testing results that the financial training was equally effective across all clusters. A critical result was that the training was successfully adapted to accommodate the distinct needs of each trainee cluster.
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This chapter sheds light on long-term trends in the level and structural dynamics of investments in Russian human capital formation from government, corporations, and households…
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This chapter sheds light on long-term trends in the level and structural dynamics of investments in Russian human capital formation from government, corporations, and households. It contributes to the literature discussing theoretical issues and empirical patterns of modernization, human development, as well as the transition from a centralized to a market economy. The empirical evidence is based on extensive utilization of the dataset introduced in Didenko, Földvári, and Van Leeuwen (2013). Our findings provide support for the view expressed in Gerschenkron (1962) that in late industrializers the government tended to substitute for the lack of capital and infrastructure by direct interventions. At least from the late nineteenth century the central government's and local authorities' budgets played the primary role. However, the role of nongovernment sources increased significantly since the mid-1950s, i.e., after the crucial breakthrough to an industrial society had been made. During the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and 2000s the level of government contributions decreased somewhat in education, and more significantly in research and development, but its share in overall financing expanded. In education corporate funds were largely replaced by those from households. In health care, Russia is characterized by an increasing share of out-of-pocket payments of households and slow development of organized forms of nonstate financing. These trends reinforce obstacles to Russia's future transition, as regards institutional change toward a more significant and sound role of the corporate sector in such branches as R&D, health care, and, to a lesser extent, education.
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Malnutrition is widespread and affects about one-third of humanity. Increasing production and consumption of vegetables is an obvious pathway to improve dietary diversity…
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Malnutrition is widespread and affects about one-third of humanity. Increasing production and consumption of vegetables is an obvious pathway to improve dietary diversity, nutrition and health. This chapter analyses how climate change is affecting vegetable production, with a special focus on the spread of insect pests and diseases. A thorough literature review was undertaken to assess current global vegetable production, the factors that affect the spread of diseases and insect pests, the implications caused by climate change, and how some of these constraints can be overcome. This study found that climate change combined with globalization, increased human mobility, and pathogen and vector evolution has increased the spread of invasive plant pathogens and other species with high fertility and dispersal. The ability to transfer genes from wild relatives into cultivated elite varieties accelerates the development of novel vegetable varieties. World Vegetable Center breeders have embarked on breeding for multiple disease resistance against a few important pathogens of global relevance and with large evolutionary potential, such as chili anthracnose and tomato bacterial wilt. The practical implications of this are that agronomic practices that enhance microbial diversity may suppress emerging plant pathogens through biological control. Grafting can effectively control soil-borne diseases and overcome abiotic stress. Biopesticides and natural enemies either alone or in combination can play a significant role in sustainable pathogen and insect pest management in vegetable production system. This chapter highlights the importance of integrated disease and pest management and the use of diverse production systems for enhanced resilience and sustainability of highly vulnerable, uniform cropping systems.
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Paul E. Levy, Steven T. Tseng, Christopher C. Rosen and Sarah B. Lueke
In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this…
Abstract
In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.
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This paper is the first to use the individual level, longitudinal catch-up growth of boys and girls in a historical population to measure their relative deprivation. The data is…
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This paper is the first to use the individual level, longitudinal catch-up growth of boys and girls in a historical population to measure their relative deprivation. The data is drawn from two government schools, the Marcella Street Home (MSH) in Boston, MA (1889–1898), and the Ashford School of the West London School District (1908–1917). The paper provides an extensive discussion of the two schools including the characteristics of the children, their representativeness, selection bias and the conditions in each school. It also provides a methodological introduction to measuring children’s longitudinal catch-up growth. After analysing the catch-up growth of boys and girls in the schools, it finds that there were no substantial differences between the catch-up growth by gender. Thus, these data suggest that there were not major health disparities between boys and girls in late-nineteenth-century America and early-twentieth-century Britain.
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This piece argues that television families’ shift away from the traditional nuclear family form is crucial to understand the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in…
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This piece argues that television families’ shift away from the traditional nuclear family form is crucial to understand the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in mainstream politics. Released in the early 2010s, The Americans focusses on a KGB-created family composed of two Soviet spies, total strangers who ultimately have two children to further their cover as an innocent American family running a DuPont Circle travel agency and living in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. Rather than being idealised or sought after, The Americans reveals that the nuclear family is legally, socially, and politically constructed, and, in the end, doomed to failure. Sex and love and even children are instrumentally manipulated on a regular basis to further political goals, transforming basic assumptions about how marriage and family life really work beyond the façade of suburban America. This opens space for consideration and acceptance of alternative family forms, including same-sex marriage.
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Kamilah B. Legette, Elan C. Hope, Johari Harris and Charity Brown Griffin
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical for students' social and academic success. Students' SEL is often contingent on their teachers' social and emotional competencies…
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Social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical for students' social and academic success. Students' SEL is often contingent on their teachers' social and emotional competencies and capacities (SECC; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Chapter 5) and teacher preparation to facilitate SEL in classrooms (Schonert-Reichl, Kitil, & Hanson-Peterson, 2017). Concerningly, teacher training to facilitate SEL is frequently predicated on a color-evasive perspective that ignores the ways structural racism impacts the schooling experiences of racially minoritized students and associated academic and SEL outcomes (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Borowski, 2018; Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Williams, 2019). In order to support SEL for students from racially minoritized communities, we assert that teachers' social and emotional competencies and capacities must incorporate a culturally responsive pedagogical approach that explicitly acknowledges and addresses issues of race and justice (Jagers et al., 2019; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). In this chapter we (1) provide an overview of culturally relevant pedagogy in relation to teacher social and emotional competencies and capacities; (2) outline existing models that support a culturally relevant approach to teacher social and emotional competencies and capacities; and (3) discuss future directions for education research, practice, and policy.
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Sonia Jain, Alison K. Cohen, Kevin Huang, Thomas L. Hanson and Gregory Austin
– School climate, or the physical and social conditions of the learning environment, has implications for academic achievement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Abstract
Purpose
School climate, or the physical and social conditions of the learning environment, has implications for academic achievement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine how school climate varies by school-level characteristics in California using administrative data and the California School Climate Survey.
Findings
Teachers/staff at secondary schools, schools in large cities, schools that serve low-income populations, Hispanic- and black-majority schools, and/or low-performing schools reported less positive school climates, including staff/student relationships, norms and standards, student facilitative behaviors, and perceived safety, than their counterparts, paralleling other education inequity trends.
Originality/value
The authors encourage educators and school leaders to use data-driven and evidence-based strategies to overcome systematic inequities in positive school climate in order to create social contexts that nurture students’ academic progress and teacher retention particularly in historically under-resourced schools.
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PAUL GOLDMAN and SUNDRA GREGORY
Teacher attitudes towards the implementation of SPECS, a planning‐programming‐budgeting system designed for schools, were measured for a three‐year period in River Park School…
Abstract
Teacher attitudes towards the implementation of SPECS, a planning‐programming‐budgeting system designed for schools, were measured for a three‐year period in River Park School District. Researchers hypothesized that many teachers would resist SPECS since the paperwork required might detract from instructional time and detailed specification of their activities might threaten professional autonomy. Indeed, by the time data were analyzed, many dissatisfied teachers were actively organizing to suspend the use of SPECS. Results showed that supporters of SPECS among the teaching staff were few in number when compared to its critics, but that fully half the teachers surveyed were indifferent to the program. Over the three‐year period attitudes became slightly more negative towards SPECS. The most striking finding was the strong negative feeling in the high school and the strong positive feeling in the junior high. Differences in administrative effort and commitment and the development of structural effects within each school seem to explain part of this difference.