Capturing Parents’ Individual and Institutional Interest Toward Involvement in Science Education

Parents are generally less involved in their children’s science education (as compared to reading and mathematics) due to low self-efficacy and a lack of home-school communication. This study examined parental interest and attitudes in science as well as the nature of parent-to-child questioning during an interactive home, school, and community collaboration in the southeastern United States. Study results, compiled from observations, exit surveys, and interviews revealed largely positive family interactions and attitudes about science learning and increased parental interest toward involvement in elementary science. Parents frequently used productive questioning techniques during activities. These results imply that successful home, school, and community partnerships may elevate levels of parental participation in their children’s science education and the parents’ perception of themselves as being competent in assisting in science.     

Accession of Gibraltar to UEFA: How did Spain lose influence?

In 2013, Gibraltar was accepted as a full member of UEFA after long years of struggle. The accession period was marked by a strong Spanish veto that successfully led to the rejection of the application in 2007. This article tries to answer how Spain lost its influence on UEFA decision-making. Referring to the lobbying literature on influence mechanisms, I argue that Spain’s main strategy of withdrawal threat was not credible anymore after 2007. It was a period when La Liga was losing its competitiveness, UEFA was increasing the amount of monetary distributions to football clubs, and Spain was suffering from an economic crisis. As a result, a threat of withdrawal became less influential than Gibraltar’s repeated litigation strategy and Gibraltar became UEFA’s 54th member.     

Facilitating enterprise application integration adoption: An empirical analysis of UK local government authorities

local government authorities (LGAs) are organised around operational structures with business processes spanning within departments and across other government organisations. In such an organisational setting, the harmonisation of Information Technology (IT) operations, integration of cross-departmental processes and the underlying Information Systems (IS) signifies a challenge in delivering integrated services. This paper attempts to explore enterprise application integration (EAI) adoption in the UK local government authorities (LGAs). Despite the hype of EAI adoption in private domain, its application in LGAs is inadequate as there is a lack of adoption models/frameworks that can be used by the public sector. The context of the study is to consider the transformation of IT infrastructure management and operations with EAI technologies. The empirical findings, generated through a detailed case analysis, manifestly exemplify that EAI predominantly acts as a ‘back-office’ technology that facilitates operations by developing a flexible and maintainable integrated IT infrastructure. Our proposed framework is believed to be imperative and unique as it provides a more systematic way to examine the adoption of integration technologies, extends the established norms for EAI adoption by utilising a prioritisation technique to classify the importance of factors. The contribution of the research extends the literature on EAI and identifies theoretical and practical opportunities that facilitate LGAs in their decision-making process to produce more robust proposals for EAI adoption.     

The deterioration and mobilization effects of trauma on social support: childhood maltreatment and adulthood military violence in a Palestinian community sample

OBJECTIVES: To show that exposure to childhood maltreatment deteriorates, whereas exposure to adulthood military violence mobilizes social support; second, to show that associations between traumatic events and mental health problems are mediated through social support and, subsequently, adulthood military violence is associated with low level and childhood maltreatment with high level of mental health symptoms; third, to explore whether the moderating (protecting) effect of sufficient and satisfactory social support would differ among victims of childhood maltreatment and adulthood military violence. METHOD: The participants were a random-sample of Palestinian men and women (n=585) of 16-60 years of age. Exposure to military violence in adulthood was assessed by the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ_I), and to childhood maltreatment by a 13-item questionnaire developed for the study. A Social Network Schedule was applied to assess the function, source, and satisfaction with social support, and the Revised SCL90-R Symptoms Checklist to assess mental health symptoms. RESULTS: Findings supported our hypothesis that exposure to childhood maltreatment was associated with low levels of social support, whereas exposure to adulthood military violence was associated with high levels of social support. Contrary to our second hypothesis, both childhood maltreatment and adulthood military violence were associated with high levels of mental health symptoms. Finally, high level and satisfactory social support moderated the association between exposure to military violence in adulthood and mental health symptoms, but not between childhood maltreatment and mental health symptoms. CONCLUSION: The findings emphasize that the nature of trauma, that is, whether familial or political, determines the availability of protective resources versus vulnerability, which should be considered when tailoring interventions to trauma victims.     

Exploring Relations Among Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Ideas About Evolution, Understanding of Relevant Science Concepts, and College Science Coursework

This study investigated the relations among preservice elementary teachers’ ideas about evolution, their understanding of basic science concepts and college science coursework. Forty-two percent of 240 participants did not accept the theory of human evolution, but held inconsistent ideas about related topics, such as co-existence of humans and dinosaurs and plate tectonics. Accepting the theory of evolution was positively correlated with correctly answering the three other questions related to the age of Earth. Furthermore, participants who rejected evolution scored significantly lower on a test of basic science concepts than did participants who held accurate views on human evolution. Study results revealed no apparent association between completion of advanced college science courses and acceptance of evolutionary theory or understanding of science concepts. Implications for elementary science teacher education were discussed.     

Public Education and Muslim Voluntary Organisations in Britain

Since the beginning of their settlement in Britain, Muslims have had to face the challenges of adapting to a new social, cultural and economic environment, and also that of responding to the opportunities provided by the new environment. A particularly sticking challenge facing the Muslim community in Britain is in the field of education. Over the last four decades, a group of Muslim voluntary organizations has emerged which is characterised by its keen interest in the public education system of this country. Muslim voluntary organizations have been playing a key role in the educational debate pertaining to the nature of religious education, and the scope of moral and spiritual development in the school curriculum. In addition, these organizations have been active, through a process of consultation and collaboration, in providing educational services to state schools, local education authorities and government departments. This paper examines the development of such voluntary organizations and attempts to discern their role and impact on the public education system in Britain.     

Perceptions of college of education students in Turkey towards organizational justice, trust in administrators, and instructors

In this research, the perceptions of college of education students in Turkey regarding organizational justice, trust in administrators, and trust in instructors were determined. In the present study, the answers to three research questions were sought. The research was done using the survey method. After choosing six universities of various sizes and from different geographical regions, 1,872 students were selected randomly as participants. As data collection instruments, “The Organizational Justice Scale”, developed by Hoy and Tarter (Int J Educ Manag 18(4):250–259, 2004), and the “Student Trust in Principals” and “Student Trust in Faculty” scales, developed by Forsyth et al. (Collective trust, Columbia University, New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), were used after being translated into Turkish. The results show that while statistically significant mean differences are found between at least two groups (p < 0.05), there is a high positive relationship between organizational justice and trust in both administrators and instructors.     

Educating and Training the Workforce to Work with People with Dementia: Two Projects from the United Kingdom

Educating and training the dementia workforce is a global challenge, given the expected increasing number of people living with dementia across the world as the population ages. Two projects from the UK (one regionally and one locality based) investigated courses available to the workforce and mapped the content of identified courses against a locally developed dementia care pathway. The locality project included a survey of what percentage of staff time was spent with people living with dementia, and what percentage of staff caseloads were devoted to people living with dementia. There was a great variation in the extent of education and training available, with some stages of the dementia care pathway poorly addressed. An educational strategy for the dementia workforce in the UK might include four categories of education and training: basic dementia awareness, intermediate level, advanced level, and dementia awareness for managers. Staff requiring education and training might be divided into three groups: those employed to work specifically with people living with dementia and their families; those working with people who have other conditions but some of whom will have a coincidental dementia; those working with other conditions but in settings where a high proportion of their patients have a comorbid dementia. To improve workforce skills in dementia care will require actions across the whole of education and training for professionals and untrained workers who provide services to this group.     

The case of EAI in facilitating e-Government services in a Welsh authority

This case focuses on enterprise application integration (EAI) in facilitating integrated electronic Government (e-Government) service delivery in a Welsh local authority. Whilst the development of a heterogeneous information technology (IT) infrastructure in the case organisation caused several integration problems, following a non-EAI approach was regarded as satisfactory by the management. The empirical findings illustrate that although the argument for EAI adoption was initially not seen as cost effective, strategically the decision not to implement EAI caused difficulties in the long term for realising integrated e-Government services.     

Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships among Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning, and to determine which types of epistemological beliefs elementary student teachers exhibit. The findings of the present study demonstrated that epistemological beliefs did not make a unique contribution to moral reasoning and student teachers’ epistemological beliefs developed as more or less independent beliefs. The factor analyses results suggest that multidimensional theory is more appropriate than unidimensional theory in explaining student teachers’ epistemological beliefs.