<p> Substance use disorders (SUD) can lead to many adverse health effects including nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition. Research shows that proper nutrition can have a positive effect on recovery outcomes; however, nutrition services and education are often undervalued and not adequately utilized in substance abuse treatment centers. Previous research indicates that barriers to healthy eating are often due to ones lack of self-confidence in preparing and purchasing healthy foods. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a "hands-on" nutrition and culinary intervention in a SUD treatment center. Specifically, this study measured the participants' positive and negative attitudes towards cooking, as well as their perceived self-efficacy in relation to purchasing and preparing healthy foods. </p><p> There was a significant difference in the participants' overall self-efficacy related to food preparations skills, specifically in their ability to prepare whole grains. Participants also became more confident in purchasing whole grain products by the end of intervention. Further review of the study revealed that the participants' enjoyment of cooking increased significantly after completion of the cooking classes.</p>

The preparation of newly qualified nurses has raised many professional debates and yet the ‘end product’ of nurse education, the qualified nurse continues to demonstrate knowledge and skill deficits in areas considered essential to patient care. Technological advances in an ever-changing and complex clinical environment mean that certain acute clinical skills have become routine for the qualified nurse and yet few educational institutions and NHS Trusts in the UK have seen the need to address this within the pre-registration nursing curricula. This study, questions whether the pre-registration nursing curricula is failing newly qualified nurses by not adequately preparing them to cope with the complexities of practical skills within the clinical environment. This skill deficit is rectified on qualifying when nurses rapidly equip themselves with skills that are considered essential for practice. Using a constructivist paradigm and a mixed methods research approach, the opinion of key stakeholders in pre-registration nurse education was sought. Focus groups and surveys were conducted with skills teachers to ascertain essential skills. Constructive alignment theory (Biggs 1999) was tested with two student cohorts from a pre-registration nursing programme (n=58). Comparisons were made between an experimental group who acquired certain skills during their pre-registration programme and a control group who had not acquired those additional skills. The programme was evaluated using Stake’s (1967) countenance model of evaluation. Data were analysed using SPSS, constant comparative analysis and triangulation. The findings confirmed that nurses should acquire the skills investigated in this study, but differences of opinion were found as to when this was acceptable. Favourable results for the experimental group were demonstrated indicating the need to provide nurses with the additional skills prior to qualifying. The study also identified other like-minded UK nurse educators who had been innovative with their skills’ curricula. Nursing curricula can be successfully underpinned by an educational theory such as constructive alignment providing added value to the learner and enablingnurses to enter the profession fit for practice and purpose. To further enhance the quality and standard of provision, the following are recommended: strengthening the collaborative relationships between the key stakeholders for nurse education, as well as promoting interprofessional learning and skills development. This will help improve the international credibility for the UK skills curricula.

<p> The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was threefold. First, this study compared the effects of two different simulation-based instructional strategies on athletic trainers&rsquo; clinical competence in performing cardiovascular screening with cardiac auscultations. Second, this study identified the athletic trainers&rsquo; perceptions of learning through simulation-based instructional strategies. Third, this study attempted to identify and offer instructional recommendations based on the outcomes. </p><p> The quantitative phase analyzed cognitive and diagnostic reasoning knowledge and history-taking and clinical skills specific to cardiovascular screenings with cardiac auscultations as it was taught to athletic trainers (ATs) at a continuing professional education (CPE) course. The quantitative results found that high-fidelity and low-fidelity simulation-based instructional strategies significantly increased cognitive and diagnostic reasoning knowledge and history-taking and clinical skill from pre-test to post-test assessment on all dependent variables. When comparing the two fidelity types to each other, the analysis found that the participants in the high-fidelity simulation group gained significantly more skill when compared to the low-fidelity group. </p><p> In the qualitative analysis of this study, three themes emerged specific to the perceptions of the athletic trainers&rsquo; experiences as they learn through simulation-based instructional strategies. The first theme that emerged was a clear indication that participants&rsquo; exhibited positive perceptions of learning through simulation-based instructional strategies. The second theme that emerged was that the high-fidelity simulation experience during the pre-assessment and post-assessment raised an awareness of the deficit of knowledge and skills in performing a comprehensive cardiovascular screening with cardiac auscultations. Lastly, the third theme that emerged was specific to the perceived limitations in the effectiveness of low-fidelity simulation and the perceived strengths in the effectiveness of high-fidelity simulation. </p><p> A few instructional recommendations emerged from this dissertation study. Simulation-based instructional strategies are an ideal teaching method to utilize during continuing professional education courses with athletic trainers. Specifically, this study identified that both, high-fidelity and low-fidelity simulation, are effective in teaching cardiovascular screening with cardiac auscultations. Additionally, the participants perceived influences of a pre-test on the identification of their knowledge and skills deficit suggests that there are benefits of utilizing an authentic simulation pre-test as part of CPE courses.</p>

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been criticised by employers, government and graduates themselves, for not adequately developing required work skills. An example of practice that does develop student skills is a short industrial placement (SIP) where students are expected to solve a real problem in a company, in two weeks, working with one other student. This practice occurs in a one year Masters programme at Cambridge University Engineering Department. This work studies the SIP practice to understand why it is effective and determine lessons that could contribute to solving the wider skills problem. A five year research timeframe, coupled with an annually run programme, enabled a multi-stage study using an Engaged Scholarship methodology. The first-stage was an exploratory study that investigated the initial development of SIP skills, using simulated experiences, in a taught HE based module. Skills development was found to be a complex multi-component process. A theoretical skills development framework was constructed from literature and compared with practice. It was determined that five simulated SIP experiences provided the student with sufficient skills to undertake a SIP in practice and, the most significant problem was that SIP skills were not well defined. The second-stage focussed on defining skills. Skills were found to be context specific and defining skills required both the associated task and its context to be known. With tasks found to be both essential to defining skills and effective in describing what graduates do in practice, a SIP task framework was constructed which was tested on 80 different SIPs in one academic year. The resulting framework comprised twelve problem-solving process-stages, that in total contained 64 different tasks, and five generic task domains. These generic domains were investigated in the third-stage of this research. These were found to be more extensive and complex than anticipated resulting in a reconfiguration of the SIP framework, the generation of SIP specific domain descriptions and partial completion of task frameworks to describe each domain. This research has generated a plausible skills development theory for HEIs, and task frameworks to describe a SIP. Further work has been identified to refine the task frameworks and to continue work on the proposed skills development theory.

<p> This study investigates the influence of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program on participants who have taken it as an elective course for at least one year in high school and who have gone on to complete at least two years of higher education. Participants describe their experiences in terms of the way they saw/see themselves as learners, as students and as members of communities. Using a narrative inquiry approach to analysis and a poststructuralist theoretical framework influenced by Judith Butler&rsquo;s work in the field of gender identity, participants&rsquo; experiences are examined with an eye toward the ways in which their AVID participation had a role in the way they perform their identity and how they see themselves as acting and reacting in the performative aspects of their home selves, high school selves and college selves. In examining the narratives of participant experiences, particular attention is paid to the ways in which they mold their views of themselves and others&rsquo; views of them into a set of values that, in their telling, sets them apart from who they had been and from others similarly situated who did not have the AVID experience (the high school self). It also sets them apart from their families (the home self), whose lack of knowledge and understanding of the process of becoming first-generation college students inhibited their ability to understand and effectively advocate for their children. It did, however, connect them to the kinds of cultural capital that would improve their ability to perform as higher education expects of undergraduates (the college self). </p><p> The findings of this research center on the interplay between internal agency and external influence as they combine to create participants&rsquo; views of their own identities and can be seen through their attitudes and actions as they pursued undergraduate degrees. An implication of this work is the idea that AVID serves as a bridge of sorts which connects the agent desiring to be with the society which expects it to be. This is brought forth as participants describe their progression through AVID and college and the changes they underwent in their perceptions of themselves first as novitiates in the academic world, then as junior partners and finally as capable doers of deeds who had not yet come to appreciate the incompleteness of their agency. </p><p>

Education is a significant element for inclusive growth and sustainable development. In scholarship, understanding education has been fragmented due to conflicts between disciplines and methodologies. This thesis, consisting of three empirical essays, explores the impact of education for women’s employment and empowerment. As a context, this thesis has chosen South Korea as a newly industrialized but a non-Western originating economy during the mid-late twentieth century. All three essays adopt different theoretical frameworks and methodologies. The first essay adopts Capability Approach in order to understand the gendered translation of education into the labour market outcomes. In this essay, confidence is a societal conversion factor that individuals transform their resources into capabilities of labour market participation. Empirically, this essay shows that female public administration students in South Korea are less confident about entering labour market than their male counterparts, resulting in fewer capabilities of labour market participation. The second essay, comparing Korea with Singapore, which is another newly industrialized economy from the same period creates a historical and institutional basis to answer Korea’s much wider gender pay gap than the one of Singapore. This essay tests the hypothesis, previously built in the context of advanced economies, which states the negative association between gender pay gap and centrality of wage negotiation system in this comparative setting. The analysis of government documents and various sources demonstrates that Singapore with a narrow gender pay gap has a very centralized wage negotiation institution whereas Korea with a big gender pay gap has a fragmented negotiation. The third essay on Saemaul Women’s Club, a government-initiated nongovernmental organization, analyses the archival materials of memoirs of female Saemaul leaders in the rural areas for a bottom-up approach to women’s empowerment. Unlike the conventional scholarship dominated by the Western perspectives or a few international organizations, this case study shows the important role of the state in initiating a space for women to empower themselves on themselves. Ultimately, this emphasizes the contextual dependency of empowerment. The purpose of these three essays is to raise context as a way to understand the impact of education, stressing the diversity and dependency of contexts.

This paper analyses an ongoing economization trend in the sphere of higher education (HE) and discusses its implications on higher education for sustainable development (HESD). The sources of this trend are connected with neoliberalism understood as a political project that seeks to extend competitive market forces, consolidate a market-friendly constitution, and promote individual freedom. In global HE neoliberalism, decision-makers, be it educational, scientific, or other, are pressured to assess how their activities impact financially on the individual, organizational, and institutional levels and/or the imperatives of an internationally competitive economy. The paper provides a contemporary analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in HE, understood as the specific trend of an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime explained by Jessop's six analytic distinct and potentially overlapping stages of economization. This analysis is based on a review of European policies from 2006 until 2017 and explains characteristics of current economization strategies. Their core principles relating to higher education are about improving economic performance based on knowledge and innovation. Smart growth is defined politically as the main purpose of HE and positioning students as future workers, with the right higher skills, as the means. The relevance of students' skills higher education institutions (HEI) are urged to develop highly depend on business demands. European policies are driven by a comprehensive entrepreneurial agenda restructuring the organizational mechanisms in HE. Accountability towards the labour market and skills performance of students set this agenda. Funding strategies rest on strong industry ties and diversification of revenue streams depend on HEI capability to establish tech-driven knowledge alliances between research, education and business. These new intermediary and powerful alliances drive economization strategies, influence curriculum development and decide on relevant higher level skills. Respective learning practices are oriented strongly towards developing entrepreneurial and digital skills based on personalized learning environments. Currently HESD adapts towards a neoliberal education agenda rather than preventing further shifts from a capitalist towards a competitive financialized economy. A profound critique would have to question the dominant economization trends in higher education i.e. the very purpose of education and the current raison d¿etre of HEI. The core of the critique might build on new institutionalized learning environments allowing deep, social learning and, hence, the potential of HEI to act as social catalysts empowering collective and disruptive agency. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Thesis (DTh)--Universiteit van Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Through case study research, two pioneering schools in Canada that developed whole-school approaches to education for sustainability were investigated to illuminate how conceptual root metaphors resonate with ecological philosophy and educational practices. The study considers philosophy, policy formation, organization/ management structures, buildings/ grounds and resources, curriculum development, and teaching and learning practices at each of these schools. The findings are highlighted and further informed by what the administrators, teachers, community volunteers, parents, and students perceive to be the successes, obstacles and needs they faced in trying to establish their pioneering approaches. These insights provided methodological triangulation as they reinforced the literature review and analysis of findings. The case study includes an Independent school founded and designed specifically around bioregionalism so as to promote sustainability, and a government-run elementary school that decided to teach and model sustainability. The analysis reveals differences in the underlying conceptual metaphors and the significant extent to which these metaphors resonated with practice. This research suggests that root conceptual metaphors are significant and can be associated with various intentions and enactments of the whole curriculum. Ecological and mechanistic metaphorical perspectives have been found to be associated with policy formation, organization and management structures, decision-making and communication; curriculum development; community involvement; changes to the buildings and grounds; and teaching/ learning practices. Although this research suggests that where ecological metaphors were in play school practices were more strongly associated with an ecological model in education for sustainability, it has also shown that this may not be sufficient. Being aware of the underlying conceptual root metaphors in all aspects of the educational approach is also a critical step. The context within which a school operates may preclude or act as a strong obstacle to change. Simply grafting a sustainability program imbued with ecological metaphors onto the accepted educational system, one founded on contradictory ‘mechanistic’ metaphors, may not be as effective as intended as metaphors seem to seep into the school’s culture and systems. This, however, implies that there needs to be freedom and room to challenge significant systemic obstacles. There would need to be noteworthy changes in the socio-political structure that is in play. Accordingly, for schools to lead the change towards an ecological worldview or paradigm shift, schools would need to be free to adopt an alternative vision of education, ethos and particular organizational structures.

This inquiry sought to answer the question: How can the University of Winnipeg (UW) design a learning and development strategy for its nonacademic leaders that will benefit both the leaders and the university? As higher education institutions experience increased competition and rising demands, senior leaders need to find new ways of developing one of their most important assets, their employees. Using an action research approach, this inquiry sought participants' perspectives through an online survey and a world café. This inquiry puts forward the following three recommendations: develop and communicate a formalized learning and development strategy that is supported by senior leadership, aligned with organizational goals, customized to the unique university environment, and values learner needs; provide diverse professional development opportunities for leaders; and create an environment that improves communication, fosters collaboration, develops competence, and values community. This inquiry adhered to all ethical requirements set by Royal Roads University and UW.