Joanna Bohatko-Naismith, Carole James, Maya Guest, Darren Anthony Rivett and Samantha Ashby
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the injured worker’s perspective of experiences with their workplace return to work coordinator (RTWC), and explore some of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the injured worker’s perspective of experiences with their workplace return to work coordinator (RTWC), and explore some of the barriers they encountered in the return to work process.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten injured workers from New South Wales, Australia. The thematic analysis of transcripts was completed.
Findings
The findings provide an insight into the experiences of injured workers and their relationship with RTWCs. Five key themes emerged from the data: return to work experiences and the RTWC role, high turnover and lack of consistency in the role, RTWC “ideal”, knowledge and skills, communication skills and the RTWC role and GP visits privacy and conflict of interest with peer RTWCs.
Practical implications
The role of the workplace RTWC in the return to work process for injured workers is important and these findings are highly relevant to the return to work sector. Consistency within the role at the workplace and careful consideration of the specific traits and characteristics required by an individual to perform the role need to be observed during the selection process by employers when appointing a workplace RTWC to assist injured workers return to work.
Originality/value
This is the first Australian study to examine the injured workers views and experiences with the workplace RTWC and other factors that shape the return to work process.
Details
Keywords
K. Ann Renninger, Lily Austin, Jessica E. Bachrach, Alpha Chau, Melissa S. Emmerson, Brian R. King, Kathryn R. Riley and Samantha J. Stevens
This paper describes studies of the ICAN Intervention and their implications.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper describes studies of the ICAN Intervention and their implications.
Design/methodology/approach
We adapted the ICAN intervention to support the science interest and learning of at-risk, middle-school-age youth, who were participants in entry-level, out-of-school, inquiry-informed, science workshops. The intervention is a brief ungraded writing assignment that is integrated into science activities on a daily basis in order to encourage workshop participants to reflect on science: what participants understand, the skills they have acquired, and what they still want to figure out.
Findings
Findings indicate that the use of the ICAN Intervention in science inquiry supports the development of science interest and science problem solving that is sustained 5 weeks following the workshop. Moreover, participants who write more responses to the ICAN probes are more likely to evidence changes in science learning, regardless of their initial level of interest in science. Participants with less-developed and with more-developed science interest at the beginning of the workshop all progress. The findings further suggest that when the intervention is coupled with an inquiry-informed integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (iSTEM) curriculum, it provides an additional boost for the development of science interest and learning.
Originality/value
The ICAN Intervention as adapted provides a solution to questions raised about whether inquiry-based instruction can promote learning. Our findings indicate that it can. Our findings also demonstrate that when undertaken in a concept and idea-rich environment, the structure of a motivation-based intervention is open-ended enough that all participants will progress, continuing to develop their interest and their learning of disciplinary content.
Details
Keywords
Sarah Elison, Glyn Davies, Jonathan Ward, Samantha Weston, Stephanie Dugdale and John Weekes
The links between substance use and offending are well evidenced in the literature, and increasingly, substance misuse recovery is being seen as a central component of the process…
Abstract
Purpose
The links between substance use and offending are well evidenced in the literature, and increasingly, substance misuse recovery is being seen as a central component of the process of rehabilitation from offending, with substance use identified as a key criminogenic risk factor. In recent years, research has demonstrated the commonalities between recovery and rehabilitation, and the possible merits of providing interventions to substance-involved offenders that address both problematic sets of behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the links between substance use and offending, and the burgeoning literature around the parallel processes of recovery and rehabilitation.
Design/methodology/approach
This is provided as a rationale for a new treatment approach for substance-involved offenders, Breaking Free Online (BFO), which has recently been provided as part of the “Gateways” throughcare pathfinder in a number of prisons in North-West England. The BFO programme contains specific behaviour change techniques that are generic enough to be applied to change a wide range of behaviours, and so is able to support substance-involved offenders to address their substance use and offending simultaneously.
Findings
This dual and multi-target intervention approach has the potential to address multiple, associated areas of need simultaneously, streamlining services and providing more holistic support for individuals, such as substance-involved offenders, who may have multiple and complex needs.
Practical implications
Given the links between substance use and offending, it may be beneficial to provide multi-focussed interventions that address both these behaviours simultaneously, in addition to other areas of multiple and complex needs. Specifically, digital technologies may provide an opportunity to widen access to such multi-focussed interventions, through computer-assisted therapy delivery modalities. Additionally, using digital technologies to deliver such interventions can provide opportunities for joined-up care by making interventions available across both prison and community settings, following offenders on their journey through the criminal justice system.
Originality/value
Recommendations are provided to other intervention developers who may wish to further contribute to widening access to such dual- and multi-focus programmes for substance-involved offenders, based on the experiences developing and evidencing the BFO programme.
Details
Keywords
THORN EMI will be showing its new easy to use, extended warranty multi‐channel laboratory data recorder, the Multiband Data Recorder series (MDR), to be unveiled to users for the…
Abstract
THORN EMI will be showing its new easy to use, extended warranty multi‐channel laboratory data recorder, the Multiband Data Recorder series (MDR), to be unveiled to users for the first time at Farnborough (Stand 3A7).
Samantha Shields and Megan Murray
The purpose of this paper is to explore beginning teachers’ perceptions of the role of the mentor in the early stages of developing a professional identity. The beginning teachers…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore beginning teachers’ perceptions of the role of the mentor in the early stages of developing a professional identity. The beginning teachers in the authors’ study are defined as having been awarded qualified teacher status at the end of an initial teacher education programme or having completed their first term as a new teacher with responsibility for a class of pupils.
Design/methodology/approach
The research design was a qualitative, inductive study. The concepts of communities of practice, legitimate peripheral participation and power dynamics within a community underpinned this study. The data set was collected over a period of 18 months, through six focus groups and 40 questionnaires with beginning teachers across 34 schools altogether. The data set was analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA).
Findings
The findings indicated that the ways in which mentors use their power to recognise (or not) the legitimacy of beginning teachers as being part of the school community influences the development of beginning teachers’ professional identities. The thematic analysis of the data indicated the different types of support that mentors may provide: “belonging”, “emotional”, “pedagogical” and “space”.
Research limitations/implications
Further research into how mentors perceive their role in supporting new entrants into the profession is needed.
Originality/value
These findings are pertinent in England, as the increase in school-based initial teacher training provision will intensify the role of school mentors. These findings will be of value to other countries that are moving towards an increase in school-based teacher training.
Details
Keywords
Frederic Lemieux, Samantha Bricknell and Tim Prenzler
– The purpose of this paper is to compare the incidence and main characteristics of mass shooting events in Australia and the USA in the period 1981-2013.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare the incidence and main characteristics of mass shooting events in Australia and the USA in the period 1981-2013.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a conservative definition of mass shootings derived from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, covering four or more fatalities not including the offender. Australian cases were accessed from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Homicide Monitoring Programme (NHMP) database and several secondary sources. The US data were collected from the Mother Jones database, a report prepared for Mayors Against Illegal Guns and a New York Police Department report. The time series data were related to changes in firearms regulations in the two jurisdictions.
Findings
For Australia, the study identified 13 mass shooting events and 104 fatalities from gunshot wounds. For the USA, there were 73 events and 576 victims. Of note is the fact that all cases in Australia pre-dated the implementation of the restrictive 1996 National Firearms Agreement. In the USA, a small decline was evident during the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapon Ban. Incidents and fatalities increased after 2004.
Research limitations/implications
Of necessity, the paper adopts a conservative FBI-based definition of mass shootings that limits the number of cases captured. The absence of an official government US database also most likely limits the number of cases identified.
Practical implications
The findings lend support to policy considerations regarding regulating access to firearms.
Originality/value
The paper is unique in comparing mass shootings in these two jurisdictions over three decades in association with changes in firearms regulation.
Details
Keywords
Sabre Cherkowski and Keith Walker
Building on findings from research designed to bring to description teachers’ own understandings of what it means to flourish in their work, the purpose of this paper is to show…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on findings from research designed to bring to description teachers’ own understandings of what it means to flourish in their work, the purpose of this paper is to show how principals and teacher–leaders in schools are agents capable of building developmental relationships and mentoring cultures that can orient and support teachers toward well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper is anchored with findings from a multi-year qualitative research project that was designed using perspectives from positive organizational studies and positive psychology scholarship. The research methods encompassed collaborative and generative use of appreciative inquiry and strength-based research activities in school districts in both British Columbia and Saskatchewan, Canada. Data used to build this conceptual paper are from appreciative focus group conversations with teachers and principals over the course of two years. Conversations were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were thematically analyzed using the research literature framing the study.
Findings
This paper offers four domains of inquiry and a model for flourishing schools that encourages principals and teacher–leaders to develop habits of mind and heart to build developmental relationships in ways that help both mentors and mentees to embody and enact positive, appreciative and generative ways of noticing, nurturing and sustaining the work of teaching and learning; all with aspiration to sustain and enhance the well-being of every member of the school community.
Practical implications
This paper offers conceptual models and storied descriptions that can aid mentors in noticing and nurturing more developmental relationship approaches to mentoring for well-being as opportunities to build mentoring relationships from appreciative and growth-based habits and approaches. As these relationships are built across the school, positive mentoring cultures may foster and grow in ways that promotes a flourishing-for-all approach to teaching and learning.
Originality/value
This paper contributes a different and complimentary perspective to research and practice on mentoring, offering a positive organizational perspective that highlights and promotes the perceived and evidenced benefits of deliberately focusing on what goes well and what provokes vitality in schools. The conceptual models in this paper offer tools for mentors and mentees to develop and foster in others appreciative and positive capacities for positive mentoring.
Details
Keywords
Two paradoxes constitute the discourse of human rights. One concerns the relationship between “the human” and “the political”; the other invokes the opposition between the…
Abstract
Two paradoxes constitute the discourse of human rights. One concerns the relationship between “the human” and “the political”; the other invokes the opposition between the universalist moral character of human rights and the practical, particular context in which they become manifest. This chapter argues how and why these paradoxes will not go away – a good thing, too – over and against classical and contemporary writers who have argued for the priority of one or the other. After elucidating the powerful and enduring character of these paradoxes in history and political theory, I argue that human rights discourse only makes sense in terms of the arguably more primary discourses of democracy, political virtue, and justice if it is to avoid being a deceptive, rhetorical cover for dubious political practices.