The Role of Education in Agricultural Projects for Food Security and Poverty Reduction in Kenya

Agricultural development projects have been promoted in many places as a feature of poverty-reduction strategies. Such projects have often been implemented without a strong in-built education component, and hence have had little success. Agricultural projects seek to improve food security by diversifying a household’s resource base and facilitating the social and economic empowerment of women. The present study presents a survey designed to assess the relationship between education level and ability to benefit from dairy-development projects in Kenya. Results reveal higher occupation and employment levels among beneficiary than non-beneficiary households. On the other hand, beneficiaries of poverty-reduction schemes require specialized training. Apart from project-specific training, the level of general education alone cannot predict the attainment of project objectives.     

Making sense of learner and learning Big Data: reviewing five years of Data Wrangling at the Open University UK

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this ‘Big Data’ can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated in 2012 a Data Wrangling initiative. This provided every Faculty with a dedicated academic with expertise data analysis and whose task is to provide strategic, pedagogical and sense-making advice to staff and senior management. Given substantial changes within the OU (e.g. new Faculty structure, real-time dashboards, two large-scale adoptions of predictive analytics approaches, increased reliance on analytics), this embedded case study provides an in-depth review of lessons learned of five years of data wrangling. We will elaborate on the design of the new structure, its strengths and potential weaknesses, and affordances to be adopted by other institutions.     

Mitigating the Effects of Poverty and Crime: the Long-Term Effects of an Early Intervention Programme for Children who were Developmentally Delayed and Prenatally Exposed to Cocaine

This study explores the long-term impact on participation in the Linda Ray Intervention Program (LRIP) for children (n = 54) who were developmentally delayed and prenatally exposed to cocaine. By identifying a group of programme graduates from a high crime/high poverty neighbourhood in Miami-Dade County using ArcGIS 10.2 software, a quasi-experimental design was used to compare children living in this area who participated in the centre-based modality (5 h a day; 5 days a week) to children living in this area who participated in the home-based modality (3 h per week) on their Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) reading and math scale scores in public school. The children who participated in the centre-based modality reported stronger outcomes in both math and reading FCAT scale scores at the p < .05 level and also out-performed their school-age peers on both math and reading FCAT scores at the p < .05 level.     

Fear-motivated vicious-circle behavior maintained through secondary punishment

Two experiments attempted to establish vicious-circle behavior through fear motivation combined with secondary punishment. In Experiment 1, rats were trained with two CSs, a tone and a buzzer, paired with shock in different contexts. Secondary punishment based on delay and trace conditioning procedures facilitated running in fear-motivated rats, relative to four control groups. In Experiment 2, rats were given pairings of a tone CS with shock, and a buzzer CS with a drop into a water tank. Fear-motivated rats which received secondary punishment during either 33% or 100% of test trials exhibited self-punitive running relative to a nonpunished (0%) group and a backward-conditioning control group. Results indicate that “all secondary” vicious-circle behavior can be established through Pavlovian conditioning, thus supporting a conditioned fear interpretation.     

The use of career information delivery systems in the states

Conclusion The ever increasing demands on guidance and counseling programs has added new responsibilities to the tasks of the counselor specifically in the area of career development. Along with this increase in responsibility, the issue of accountability has been added. Career information delivery systems assist the counselor in meeting the need for accurate, relevant occupational and educational information that can be disseminated in a timely efficient manner. Therefore, CIDS should be a vital part of all comprehensive career guidance and counseling programs.Mary Elizabeth McCormac is an Occupational Information System Specialist, National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee, Washington, D.C.