Innovating for a cause: the work and learning required to create a new approach to healthcare for homeless people

Innovation occupies a pivotal place in our understanding of knowledge-based economies, and this is raising questions about sources of innovation, how it originates, and the role played by employees, work practices and learning. This paper explores these issues through case study research into a new approach to providing healthcare for homeless people in England, and by bringing together conceptual insights from the employee-driven innovation literature, and more broadly from social and practice-based learning theory and organisational theory. Applying these perspectives to our case enables illumination of the innovation as a process – not an event – and as an ongoing set of organisational practices that transcend their origins. Through our analysis we argue that the notion of ‘a cause’ is helpful in elucidating the impetus and the commitment to making the innovation happen (and go on happening). Our findings are presented under three themes: ‘establishing a cause’, ‘organising for innovation’, and ‘innovative capability in practice’. Building on these, we have identified five key inter-related dimensions which help conceptualise the work and learning that it took to create and (re-)enact the innovation and that we suggest may have relevance for understanding and characterising other employee-led innovations in and perhaps beyond healthcare.     

Child Language Difficulties and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms: A Meta-Analysis

This study conducted two meta-analyses to synthesize the association between children’s language skills and two broad-band dimensions of psychopathology: internalizing and externalizing. Pooled estimates across 139 samples (externalizing k = 105; internalizing k = 90) and 147,305 participants (age range: 2–17 years old; mean % males: 53.75; mean % White participants: 55.59; mean % minority participants: 43.12) indicated small but significant associations between child language skills and externalizing problems (Hedges’ g = .22) and between language skills and internalizing problems (Hedges’ g = .23). The association between language difficulties and externalizing problems was stronger amongst males and in children with low versus high sociodemographic risk. Implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.     

Ages of diagnosis,amplification, and early intervention of infants and young children with hearing loss: findings from parent interviews

A survey was conducted to determine the status of early identification of children with hearing loss in Illinois. Over a 3-year period, parents of 77 children with severe to profound hearing loss were interviewed while attending an educational program at a state residential school for the Deaf. Results indicated that these children had lower ages of identification than those reported in national studies (Arehart, Yoshinaga-Itano, Thomson, Gabbard, and Stredler Brown, 1998; Harrison & Roush, 1996) and in an earlier study in Illinois (Kittrell & Arjmand, 1997). Delays between suspicion and the initiation of diagnosis and amplification were reported, and were most often attributed to physicians' failure to investigate the possibility of hearing loss. Delays in the onset of early intervention services were noted for half of the children. Although the study reports progress across all areas, the ages of identification, amplification, and early intervention remain higher than recent research (Harrison & Roush, 1996; Kittrell & Arjmand, 1997; Marschark, 1998) indicates is justifiable.     

Learning Neuroscience: An Interactive Case-Based Online Network (ICON)

We have developed an interactive case-based online network (ICON) that provides a new learning environment and integrates the student's thinking across the different concentration tracks of one of Harvard's interfaculty science initiatives. ICON takes advantage of this cross-disciplinary, undergraduate curriculum as a model system to bring a compelling, integrative focus to bear on reshaping how Harvard students learn neuroscience. ICON contains 9 learning modules specific to each case: Case, Working Papers, Blackboard, Neuroimaging, Research Programs and Trials, Decision Tree, Learning Objectives, Virtual Contact, and Brainstorm. Modules allow the student to get away from interpreting vast amounts of available information, move toward selecting useful information, recognize discriminating findings, and build a conceptual understanding of real and meaningful problems in neuroscience. The result is that ICON introduces a new landscape within the academic curriculum where the active participation of faculty and students effectively intersects and captures an immediate, integrative learning experience for the student. The benchmark of ICON is the time spent by students and faculty to create a user-defined learning network that engages faculty to participate in the students' learning and transforms the way the student thinks.     

The Jig Experiment: Development and Evaluation of a Cultural Dance Active Video Game for Promoting Youth Fitness

School physical education teachers promote fitness by offering children a variety of aerobic activities. Our interdisciplinary team developed a cultural dance active video game (AVG) and tested whether the AVG was equivalent to traditional face-to-face instructor lessons or hybrid instruction at dance mastery, increasing heart rates, and student satisfaction. The study participants (N = 404) were elementary children, Grades 1 to 5, at a Midwestern suburban school. We employed a quasi-experimental design to compare outcomes across groups of children exposed to different teaching approaches. Group 1 received AVG instruction. Group 2 received face-to-face lessons by a certified Irish dance teacher. Group 3 received AVG and face-to-face lessons. Group assignment was stratified by age, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. During daily physical education class, students received five days of intervention exposure. AVG students achieved comparable levels of mastery, significantly elevated heart rates, and high levels of satisfaction.     

Piketty,capital and education: a solution to,or problem in,rising social inequalities?

Abstract

When Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century was released in 2014, it became an overnight success. Piketty focused on the concentration of wealth in a tiny social elite, and showed that their wealth had increased following the financial crisis in 2008. Yet the value of Piketty’s book offers something more than this for social scientists concerned with social inequalities. His work on a large data-set of long-run income and wealth statistics illustrates that the assumptions and models which have guided the work of neoclassical economists are flawed, but that societal arrangements matter. Yet despite this insight, Piketty’s solution to the problem of inequality is to argue that ‘… the best way to reduce inequalities with respect to labor … is to invest in education’. In this article I argue that there are major problems with this proposed solution and outline three lacunae that need to be addressed.     

Higher education students registered with disability services and practice educators: issues and concerns for professional placements

Introduction: The number of students with disabilities accessing Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), including professional courses, has increased substantially within the Republic of Ireland over the past 10 years [AHEAD (Association of Higher Education, Access, and Disability) 2012. “Survey on the Participation Rates of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education for the Academic Year 2011/2012.” http://www.ahead.ie/userfiles/file/PR_2012.pdf]. In one HEI in the Republic of Ireland, it was noticed that there was a large increase in students with disabilities, from 67 in 2006 to 259 in 2013 on professional courses. The aim of this study was to identify the issues and concerns of practice educators (PEs) in both supporting students with disabilities and exploring the concerns for students with disabilities on professional courses. Methods: A survey design was employed to meet the aims of this study and ethical permission was granted from the Faculty of Health Science Ethics Committee. Results: Respondents included 68 PEs and 63 students with disabilities. PEs were found to be concerned with students reaching the required standard of proficiency on placement, and how to support students in this. Students on the other hand identified stigma and disclosure of a disability as a concern. Conclusion: This study highlighted a difference in perceptive between PEs and students with disabilities in relation to disclosure and support needs for their disabilities.     

Fun in the Snow

I want togo out.
It will be fun in the snow.     

Sound symbolic word learning in written context

Sound symbolism is the notion that the relation between word sounds and word meaning is not arbitrary for all words, but rather there is a subset of words in the world’s languages for which sounds and their symbols have some degree of correspondence. This research investigates sound symbolism as a possible means of gaining semantic knowledge of unknown words within written context. Two studies assessed adults’ expressive knowledge of word meanings for sound symbolic and non-sound symbolic obsolete words. These words were presented in varying types of contextual surroundings: no context, varied context, unhelpful context, and helpful context. In each study, participants were able to generate more correct definitions for sound symbolic words compared to non-sound symbolic words. It is concluded that sound symbolism is a word property which influences the learning of unknown words.