Food Safety Training Needs of Child Care Providers

Millions of children are cared for in child care centers or family day care homes. The care environment can be a significant source of foodborne pathogens if proper food safety practices are not followed by caregivers. To decrease children's risk of foodborne illness, caregivers must know and apply safe food handling practices. To identify what care providers need to know about safe food handling, and how they want to learn, needs assessment research was conducted with a random sample of child care centers and family day care homes in Michigan (n=335). Research Findings. Results indicate that persons who care for young children in licensed centers or homes wanted to know more about the relationship between food and illness. Specifically, they wanted information about what causes food to become unsafe and how to prevent foodborne illness in the child care environment. Providers in both centers and homes preferred print materials (booklets, fact sheets, and newsletters) to videotapes, audiotapes, workshops, teleconferences, or an informational hotline. Implications for Practice. Developing and providing food safety booklets, newsletters, and/or fact sheets which include application-oriented and understand- able food safety information consistent with licensing regulations could reduce the risk of contracting foodborne illness of young children cared for in child care centers or day care homes.     

Student reflections on choosing to study science post-16

The research recounted in this paper was designed primarily to attempt to understand the reasons for the low uptake of the natural sciences beyond compulsory education in England. This has caused widespread concern within governmental quarters, university science departments and the scientific community as a whole. This research explored the problem from the position of the students who recently made their choices. The student voices were heard through a series of interviews which highlighted the complexities of the process of post-16 choice. Social theories of pedagogy and identity, such as those of Basil Bernstein, were used in an analysis of the interview texts. Dominant themes used by the students in rationalising their post-16 subject choice related to their past pedagogical experiences, school discourses of differentiation and the students’ notions of their future educational and occupational pathways. This study provides no simple solutions but highlights the importance of student voice to our understandings of what influences subject choice at this critical post-16 stage.     

‘It’s not the test,it’s how it’s used!’ Critical analysis of public response to NAPLAN and MySchool Senate Inquiry

Public education is commonly perceived as a social good endowed with the capacity to equalise western citizens’ chance of ‘success’. In 2008 Australia introduced standardised testing and reporting procedures to improve educational quality and equity through two policy tools (NAPLAN/MySchool). Ensuing public debate culminated in two Senate Inquiries. Qualitative critical analysis of all (N = 268) submissions to Inquiry One evidenced two major themes: marketisation and data (mis)use; and competition, commodification and practice. Marketisation’s hegemony shaped discourse and recommendations, with institutions and individuals promoting/engaging in self-aggrandising performance-driven activities seeking market advantage, often whilst simultaneously objecting. Submissions largely opposed MySchool and supported NAPLAN despite detailing maladaptive impacts and recommending changes. Drawing upon Latour, we suggest actors’ interactions with these tools (re)produced and re-enacted marketisation principles. Where marketisation, commodification or political rhetoric drives educational change, one ought to be cautious authentic approaches are not truncated by stakeholders lacking legitimate means to compete for resources or social status.     

Framing and Labeling Effects in Preferences for Borrowing for College: An Experimental Analysis

Research in Higher Education - Evidence from behavioral economics suggests that the framing and labeling of choices affect financial decisions. Through a randomized control trial of over six...     

Do Testing Conditions Explain Cyber Charter Schools’ Failing Grades?

Recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) analyses find that cyber charter schools in seventeen states show consistently low reading and mathematics value-added test scores compared to traditional public schools serving comparable students. This generally accords with prior research. We hypothesize that the relatively poor measured academic value-added of cyber charters reflects artificial testing conditions for students in those schools. Accordingly, we have collected testing information from the seventeen CREDO states. State-level analyses find that cyber student persistence, which likely indicates school quality, correlates moderately and significantly with the cyber student academic value-added as measured by CREDO. Further, we find evidence of lower cyber school value-added in states which permit cybers to use narrow testing windows, perhaps reflecting testing fatigue on the part of test-takers. We discuss implications, and suggest next steps for research exploring whether testing conditions affect measured cyber charter performance.     

Barriers to participation and retention: engaging and returning ‘out of school’ children in the Gambia

This study explores the phenomenon of out-of-school children in the Gambia through the perspectives of children and families. Using mixed methods, the study reports the extent of school participation. Interviews with urban and rural out-of-school children reveal their experiences and reasons for non-enrolment or leaving school. The study highlights children's and families' views about the value of and aspiration for education, so often missed through statistical studies on access to education. Findings suggest the main barriers to participation and retention are a mix of family and school-based factors encompassing issues of affordability and accessibility of school, and family and cultural circumstances. In the context of wider policy reforms, initiatives to address unaffordable costs of school and to improve the quality of education such as the School Improvement Grant and Early Childhood Development provision show promise for engaging and returning children to school.     

Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics

Lurking on the fringes of university culture are academic identities that do not fit into the usual disciplinary communities. Aiming to explore the experience of ‘being academic’ when not linked directly to a discipline, this paper examines the stories of a diverse group of SoTL scholars who work in a centralised multi-campus academic skills support centre in an Australian university. Framed as group auto-ethnography, the paper inquires into the everyday experience of these academics through narrative analysis of multiple first-person accounts and makes apparent the monstrousness of de-affiliated academic identities. Despite diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the author-participants found that they now shared a tripartite academic identity formed through the negotiation of three roles: the teacher, the disciplinarian, and the educational researcher. Using the chimaera, a mythical three-headed monster as an organising metaphor, this paper aims to provide agency and visibility for often under-represented and unacknowledged academic identities.