MSc (Med), Epidemiology and Biostatistics,University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences / Introduction In developing countries, diarrhoea is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among children under five years of age. This study aimed to determine the effect of age and HIV infection status on incidence of acute gastroenteritis and to identify risk factors associated with death and prolonged hospitalisation. Methods A secondary data analysis was performed using an existing cohort of children enrolled on a pneumococcal vaccine efficacy study performed in 1998-2005 in Soweto. Results The incidence rate of acute gastroenteritis requiring hospitalisation was 10.13 (CI95% 9.68, 10.58) per 1000 person years. Incidence was highest in those under six months of age, decreased with increasing age, and was 5.42 times (CI95% 4.89, 6.01) higher in those infected with HIV compared to that in HIV-uninfected children. HIV-infected children were more likely to be malnourished, have severe dehydration and have a concomitant diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). HIV-infected children were four times more likely to die in hospital (OR 3.99 CI95% 2.04, 7.81) and almost twice as likely to be hospitalized > 2 days (OR 1.81 CI95% 1.38, 2.38) compared to HIV-uninfected children. Presence of malnutrition, severe dehydration and a concomitant diagnosis of LRTI were also significant risk factors for death and prolonged hospitalisation. Conclusions Acute gastroenteritis is an important cause of hospitalisation in children under 2 years, especially among HIV-infected children. Prevention and management of severe dehydration, malnutrition, HIV infection and concomitant LRTI need to be targeted to decrease mortality and shorten the duration of hospitalisation in children admitted with acute gastroenteritis.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Halle, 1879. / Vita.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Erlangen, 1893.

Thesis--Bonn. / Cover title. Vita. Bibliography: p. 120-121.

No description available.

The transition from training to practice and the early years of their career have been considered to be a major influence on teachers' professional behaviour. This transition may be particularly difficult in Malta because of the lack of professional support provided to teachers in their beginning years of teaching. The first section of the thesis traces the historical context of teacher education in Malta. A description of the Maltese system in the context of models of teacher education is followed by a review of the major issues in initial teacher education. The first years of teaching and the problems encountered by beginning teachers are discussed in the section dealing with the transition from training to practice. A case is made for the role played by perceptions of preparation and competence in teacher efficacy. The second section of the thesis investigates the relationship between the training experience and teaching competence as viewed by intending and beginning teachers. The relationship between perceived levels of preparation and competence is determined through a survey conducted amongst the whole population of final year students and recent graduates of the B.Ed. (Hons) degree course run by the Faculty of Education of the University of Malta. Teaching skills included in the survey are those which deal with the teaching of specific subject areas of the school curriculum, general teaching skills specific to the classroom situation and those which involve wider pastoral and interpersonal skills. The interplay between perceptions of preparation and competence for both student and beginning teachers is examined. The beginning teachers' competence in the teaching skills specific to the classroom situation and the teaching of the subject areas of the school curriculum is closely related to their preparation. Those skills which involve wider pastoral and interpersonal skills seem to stem more from their classroom experience than from the preparation they have received. Perceptions of preparation change with increasing experience, as does teachers' sense of competence in different aspects of the task. There was, however, little evidence for a 'Curve of Disenchantment'. A typology of the perceived competence of beginning teachers is identified. In the third section of the thesis a small observational study of the recent graduates of the teacher education course who were teaching in Primary schools, is presented. It demonstrates that the typology of perceived competence of the larger survey work is useful in distinguishing between teachers with different patterns of teaching behaviour. This study showed that a high level of perceived competence was related to certain patterns of classroom behaviour known to foster achievement gains in pupils. In the light of the findings on preparation and competence, suggestions for further research and for ways of supporting beginning teachers are put forward.

The digital media play an increasingly pervasive and influential role in children’s lives (Rideout & VJR Consulting, 2011). However, whilst there has been extensive investigation into the media use of this age--‐group in the USA and western Europe, there has been little research on the media use of children under the age of 6 in Taiwan. Therefore, Phase 1 of the study began by conducting an online survey (n=535) in order to situate the work undertaken in Phase 2. The results showed that TV dominates the media use of young Taiwanese children. Opinions differ regarding the effects of TV viewing on young children. Some child development specialists warn of the dangers of too much viewing, especially for infants (Christakis, 2008). However, more programmes are designed specifically for young children and many aim to support their learning. Evidence has shown that TV can have a positive impact on learning (Wright, Huston, Scantlin, & Kotler, 2001). The key issue is the extent to which children engage with the programme. The literature into children’s learning from media content indicates that the child’s engagement with the programme is strongly related to their understanding of the programme content (Calvert, Strong, Jacobs, & Conger, 2007). However, little is known about how parents can support their child’s engagement by co--‐viewing children’s TV programmes with them. Therefore, Phase 2 of the study aimed to explore in--‐depth this particular link between parental scaffolding and child engagement. Adopting a social constructive paradigm and using case study methodology, the researcher gathered video recordings of thirteen parent/child dyads of 3--‐ to 5--‐year--‐olds co--‐viewing the same episodes of two animated educational television programmes in natural conditions. In the analyses, measures of children’s engagement and thematic coding of the scaffolding behaviour of the parent were used to deductively and inductively analyse video recordings of the home observations. The findings indicated that there is a positive association between the child’s engagement and the level of parental scaffolding. It is suggested that dissemination of the findings from this study could help parents to understand and appreciate the value of parent--‐child co--‐viewing of educational children’s television programmes and promote children’s learning from the programmes.

Young children’s imaginative play about death and violence is contentious and under-theorised, often approached in normative terms where the play represents the source of or solution for wider ‘social problems’. In contrast, this study offers insights into the complex and shifting social ecology of death/violence play in one London-based nursery and clarifies the processes through which inequitable sociospatial relations are renewed, reworked, and even transformed in such activity. Utilising a critical ethnographic approach informed by critical realism and the social studies of childhood, the study engaged with children’s and adult educators’ perspectives and practices over a period of 1½ years through semi-participant observation, interviews, and multivocal video revisiting. The initial data chapters offer an analytic description of the setting, arguing that contradictory discursive, institutional, and material relations serve to render children’s death/violence play as ‘matter out of place’, paradoxically considered partially recuperable in relation to (boys’) development. The subsequent data chapters, informed by materialist feminist perspectives, point to the way imaginary characters became mobile resources for some children whilst inequalities serve to inscribe characters, including the monstrous, on others. The chapters point to the identifications players made with characters and narratives through a process of intense dialogic embodiment, in the process renewing sociospatial relations linked to normative heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity, propertied relations, and flexible selves. This thesis, however, contends that ludic activity offers possibilities for overturning the status quo and enacting new social imaginaries. In the study setting, the death trope served as a generative metaphor to provoke caring touch, opening up social relations beyond economic calculation and gendered and generationed aspects of care. Play, it is argued, is a site of struggle, one that can offer a space of ethical-political engagement and radical potential, with implications for pedagogical projects concerned with equality and social transformation.

Children from families which do not share the language, culture or social class of the teacher are often viewed as 'disadvantaged' when they enter school. It comes as no surprise to teachers when these children experience problems in beginning reading in the classroom. The teachers' expectations are backed up by statistics showing that children from 'non-school-oriented' backgrounds are less likely to succeed at all stages in their school careers. Explanations for lack of progress are sought in the children's linguistic, cultural or cognitive deficiency or, most recently, in their inexperience of narrative and literature from home. Within this framework, children from 'non-schooloriented' backgrounds who step quickly and easily into reading in school can be explained only as 'exceptions' whose progress is beyond the teachers' control. In this study, I examine the origins of the teachers' beliefs. Using the example of two children from 'nonschool- oriented' families who make very different progress in early reading lessons as a starting-point, I question the validity of explanations grounded in the deficit of the child and the home. I then propose a new focus of attention; the interaction between teacher and child and their negotiation of the reading task during group and individual lessons. Through ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches to studying the interaction between a group of children, their families and the teacher during the first eighteen months in school, I argue that a child's early reading progress does not depend upon entering the classroom from a 'school-oriented' home but an ability to engage in a specific pattern of dialogue and turn-taking with the teacher during early reading lessons. Ultimately, it depends upon the child being able to negotiate a joint interpretation of the reading task with the teacher.