Bibliography: pages 96-108. / The period immediately after entering the teaching profession is of the utmost importance to beginner teachers. This is a moment when beginner teachers learn how to become competent in the classroom. More often than not, beginning teachers are generally expected to assume full responsibility of professional teachers from the first day they report to school. In this regard, the transition from being student teachers to qualified teachers is seen as unproblematic. The beginner teacher is seen as totally prepared to face the reality of teaching. However, literature on professional development indicates that beginner teachers experience a kind of "reality shock" in their first professional year. This research study explored the concerns and problems experienced by beginner teachers during their first years of teaching, at three historically different high schools in Cape Town. A literature survey investigating the realities and conditions of beginner teachers in their workplaces - both local and international was conducted. Furthermore, existing research concerning beginner teachers' professional growth was reviewed to shed light on the research area. A qualitative methodology was adopted in order to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the beginners' experience. Given the qualitative nature of my research topic, which dwells in-depth with people experiences, I found it convenient to use unstructured interviews as a means of collecting data. Unstructured later discussed.

No description available.

No / This important text will provide a critical analysis of contemporary developments in child care policy under New Labour and the resulting policy and practice implications. The authors will draw on sociological debates, the growing children's rights literature and wider developments within social policy in order to provide a thorough and balanced guide to contemporary developments in this rapidly changing field. Ideologies behind recent initiatives in a wide range of practice areas are explored, and the implementation of key developments are appraised. This will be primary reading for all students specializing in work with children and their families.

No / In the field of ethnic relations the complex, often tortuous, interactions among academic researchers, research funders and those who use the research often result in social policy interventions that are poorly conceived and flawed in their implementation. In this unique book, the contributors seek to develop a dialogue about the multiple constraints that skew research and its findings, and to kick-start a wider debate about the political context of current research and policy. In doing so, they aim to produce a renewed awareness of the current links between research and social policy in ethnic relations and to provide a critically reflexive basis for shaping interventions. It will be of interest to academics working in higher and further education as well as to students at higher undergraduate and postgraduate level, and to a wide range of people working in ethnic relations policy fora. - See more at: https://policypress.co.uk/research-and-policy-in-ethnic-relations#sthash.HlA8LbMW.dpuf

This thesis focuses on the role of the Church of Scotland's Board of Social Responsibility in the development and implementation of social work policy in Scotland. The thesis deploys a case study methodology and interpretive research methods to generate understanding of the Board of Social Responsibility and its intended purpose as a service-providing voluntary organisation. Links between the Board of Social Responsibility and significant social work policy developments are identified to determine the changing influence of both local authorities and central government upon the scope of voluntary social work service provision. The thesis identifies a process of incremental social work policy development in Scotland that has operated to encourage the contribution of service-providing voluntary organisations. The Board of Social Responsibility is identified as having operated as Scotland's largest voluntary provider of social work services throughout the period under review and to have implemented a changing pattern of social work service provision: first shifting from an innovative to a traditional model of participation, returning to an innovative model, and then, finally, shifting towards a developmental model of participation. The source of this changing pattern of participation is identified as individual agency allied. to interpretations of the organisation's faith-based ethos. The significant role of the Board of Social Responsibility in the development and implementation of social work policy in Scotland is established as that of provider of a range of replicative, alternative social work services. This role is related to Scotland's wider voluntary sector to establish that views of social work policy development existing within the Board of Social Responsibility are not indicative of views existing within other voluntary organisations. The Board of Social Responsibility's particular pattern of participation is also recognised to be distinctive. Ultimately the thesis finds that the approving model of governance adopted by the Board of Social Responsibility's higher-order collectives means the Church of Scotland has not exerted a significant influence upon the policy environment that has grown to control and regulate the social work undertaken by service-providing voluntary organisations operating in Scotland between 1948 and 2000.

Who supports social policy in the developing world? Most of what we know about micro-level preferences for social policy comes from well-developed, wealthy countries of the OECD, where governments can credibly commit to policy enforcement and implementation. This dissertation explores preferences for social policy in post-communist countries, where weak constraints on the state challenge the welfare state. In doing so, it provides novel insights both into social policy debates in these countries and the coalitions which support (or oppose) social policy. I argue that support for social policy depends on how institutions shape the expectations of actors about the costs they pay into social policy programs versus future benefits. I draw on existing theories of political economy to propose four mechanisms -- misappropriation, contract enforcement, free-riding, and macro-economic risk -- that alter the distribution of winners and losers from social policy. Misappropriation stems from officials' ability to divert funding away from intended uses. While for most this imposes dead-weight costs on social policy, where institutions are poor. the politically well-connected can benefit from diverted funds to decrease social policy costs. The contract enforcement mechanism emerges due to the inability of weakly constrained states to enforce contracts. Predictions are similar to misappropriation, but actors also cannot trust other private actors with control of social policy. Free-riding emerges when bureaucrats are unwilling to expend effort to ensure tax compliance. Again, this imposes dead-weight costs on most, but garners support from tax evaders, who can free-ride. Finally, the macro-economic risk mechanism suggests that macro-economic volatility is heightened in settings with weak institutions, which increases both individual risk and support for social policy. The empirical portion of the dissertation tests the observable implications of each of these mechanisms. Chapter 2 provides a first-cut, cross-national test of part of the argument using micro-level data from a cross-national survey of 28 post-communist countries. I draw on work on informality in the post-communist world to identify individual characteristics associated with tax evasion to test the free-rider mechanism. Consistent with it, I show that those associated with evasion support social policy more where institutions are weaker. Chapter 3 posits that if the mechanisms I propose matter, actors will appeal to the logic of my theory during concrete reform debates. I test this using evidence from the 2001 pension reforms in Russia. I combine analysis of the legislative debates surrounding reform with in-depth content analysis of the Russian media, which draws on an original dataset of all mentions of reform in 352 Russian newspapers, journals, and trade magazines. I show that all four mechanisms were indeed major concerns. Chapter 4 tests the theory at the firm level, using a survey of 666 Russian firms to look at preferences where institutional quality is weak. I test whether firms that I predict support the welfare state in such settings -- those with political connections and a comparative advantage in hiding from the authorities -- actually do so. In addition to providing some support for the misappropriation and free-riding mechanisms, this chapter is a contribution in its own right: it is among the first to use surveys to study firms' preferences for social policy. Finally, chapter 5 uses a survey experiment conducted on 1600 respondents to attempt to understand the ceteris paribus effect of institutions on the average individual. Using a simple framing experiment, I provide three different treatment groups with information about bribery, tax evasion, and the extent to which private pension funds commit fraud to test the misappropriation, free-riding, and contract enforcement mechanisms, respectively. The chapter offers mixed evidence. The dissertation makes contributions to both the study of the welfare state and the political economy of institutions and investment. First, the dissertation explores preferences for social policy in the developing world and introduces institutional quality concerns to this literature. My work particularly focuses attention on the ways certain groups can abuse social policy to pass costs onto others, adding nuance to existing understandings of who benefits from social policy. Second, it advances our understanding of how institutional quality shapes economic decision making and provides evidence as to how different pathologies of poor institutions shape economic decisions.

No description available.

The social work response to homelessness emerges from particular historical, sociopolitical and economic contexts. It is influenced by public perceptions of service provision as represented in the print media and by political and policy processes. This research study examines dominant representations of homelessness and social work in the print media, social policy and social work practice. The focus of the thesis is how discourses from the Australian print media, social policy and social work practice co-exist in constructing homelessness as a particular social problem and influence social workers and social work responses to homelessness. Two research studies provide the empirical basis for this thesis. A mixed method approach is used. Firstly, a quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles in three Australian capital cities examines public discourses relevant to the constructions of homelessness, 'homeless people' and service provision. Secondly, a qualitative discourse analysis of interviews with social workers employed in the field of homelessness in inner city Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney explores how social workers make meaning of their identity and responses to homelessness in contemporary practice settings. The social work study highlights the varied and complex contributions of social workers to Australian policy and practice responses to homelessness, which is a new and important contribution to the existing body of research. The theoretical influences on this thesis are social constructionist, feminist, critical and post-modern social work perspectives. These varied approaches enable an analysis of power that incorporates contradictions, complexities and social work resistances (Pease and Fook, 1999). / PhD Doctorate

The aim of this research project is to critically investigate the intersection between british asylum policy and social care practice. The study evaluates normative frameworks present in the policy documents related to social care provision to asylum seekers and refugees, explores how front line social care workers' practice aligns with those policies, and looks into the consequences of their assessments and interventions on the lives of asylum seekers and refugees in England.

No description available.