Nurturing Needs: Literacy Achievement for Refugee students

Yeronga State School, located 7 km from the city in Brisbane, Queensland, opened in 1871. YSS caters for a middle class inner-suburban community, however, from the mid 1990s enrolments brought new forms of socio-economic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Initially, ESL students were enrolled due to their immigrant parents enrolling in the neighbouring TAFE. Then refugee families from Bosnia and the Middle East became part of the YSS community. In recent years, refugee numbers have accounted for up to 23% of the school population. Many of these new arrivals left behind families in war-torn circumstances, were orphaned or came to live with unknown relatives. Some family members were victims of torture which may have been witnessed by the children. Trauma for some or all family members was a very real concern. Others were born in refugee camps, where food was scarce, belongings needed to be guarded and safety was never guaranteed.

Nurturing Change: Lilly Martin Spencer's Images of Children

This dissertation is the first full-length study to concentrate on American genre painter Lilly Martin Spencer's images of children, which constituted nearly one half of her saleable production during the height of her artistic career from 1848 to 1869. At this time, many young parents received advice regarding child rearing through books and other publications, having moved away from their families of origin in search of employment. These literatures, which gained in popularity from the 1830s onward, focused on spiritual, emotional, and disciplinary matters. My study considers four major themes from the period's writing on child nurture that changed over time, including depravity and innocence, parent/child bonding, standards of behavior and moral rectitude, and children's influence on adults. It demonstrates how Spencer's paintings, prints, and drawings featuring children supported and challenged these evolving ideologies, helping to shed light not only on the artist's reception of child-rearing advice, but also on its possible impact on her middle-class audience, to whom she closely catered. In four chapters, I investigate Spencer's images of sleeping children as visual equivalents of contemporary consolation literature during a time of high infant and child mortality rates; her paintings of parent/child interaction as promoting separation from mothers and emotional bonding with fathers; her prints of mischievous children as both considering changing ideals about children's behavior and comforting Anglo-American citizens afraid of what they saw as threatening minority groups; and her pictures with Civil War and Reconstruction subject matter as contending with the popular concept of the moral utility of children. By framing my interpretations of Spencer's output around key issues in the period's dynamic child-nurture literature, I advance new comprehensive readings of many of her most well-known paintings, including Domestic Happiness, Fi, Fo, Fum!, and The Pic Nic or the Fourth of July. I also consider work often overlooked by other art historians, but which received acclaim in Spencer's own time, including the lithographs of children made after her designs, and the allegorical painting Truth Unveiling Falsehood. Significantly, I provide the first in-depth analysis of a newly rediscovered Reconstruction-era painting, The Home of the Red, White, and Blue.

Nurturing attachments in looked after children: a feasibility study of a group-based programme for carers

Introduction: The attachment related difficulties of Looked after Children are well recognised in literature with difficulties linked to early experiences hypothesised to be perpetuated by experiences of the care system itself. Recent policy guidelines have emphasised the importance of relationships for children in care, one of the most important being with their primary carer. Golding (2014) published a group format training resource entitled ‘Nurturing Attachments’ which aims to promote ‘therapeutic parenting’; however there is limited knowledge on the feasibility of this intensive approach.
Aims: To assess the feasibility of Nurturing Attachments through exploring (i.) recruitment, retention and attrition, (ii.) initial outcomes, (iii.) acceptability and (iv.) ability of the programme to be delivered in line with the manual content and structure.
Method Two Health and Social Care Trusts in NI participated in the study by facilitating a Nurturing Attachments group in each site with adoptive parents, foster carers and kinship carers (N = 26). Carers completed pre and post measures to explore initial outcome, completing an evaluation questionnaire to explore acceptability. Acceptability was also explored with Trust stakeholders and group facilitators through focus group and interview. To explore if the manual can be delivered as intended, each group completed debrief tools.
Results: The overall response rate for uptake was 13.9%, which impacted on engagement for a ‘treatment as usual’ group. Once engaged in the programme, attrition was low and attendance was high. Initial outcomes have shown positive effects for both young person and carers. Feedback suggests a positive response regarding acceptability with limited expressed concern. The manual can be delivered in a standardised way; however can be flexible enough to allow for group processes.
Conclusions: Further research is needed to continue to explore efficacy, however the current study has provided supporting evidence that Nurturing Attachments as an intervention has positively impacted on many levels of the LAAC system.

Developing and nurturing professional learning communities: principles used by elementary administrators /

This study examined the strategies used by elementary school principals to facilitate and nurture the development of professional learning communities (PLC) within their school settings. Using a reputational sample of administrators whose schools were demonstrating observable characteristics of PLCs, this study documented and described the strategies and actions taken by the principals to move their schools forward. Data collection included the use of open-ended interviews as well as observations capturing the means by which the principals addressed the areas of culture, processes, and structures within their school setting. A grounded theory approach to data analysis uncovered 4 guiding principles used by the principals to facilitate the development of the PLCs within their school: (a) protecting the purpose; (b) attending to relationships; (c) sharing the responsibility; and (d) valuing the journey. The guiding principles were used by each administrator to anchor the decisions they made and develop responsive, contextspecific strategies to support the PLC at their school. The results highlighted the complex role of the principal and the supports required to tackle the difficult work of facilitating PLCs.

Nurturing Talent HE STEM Project Report

This is the final report outlining the findings of our evaluation of a Widening Participation initiative involving young members of the Somali community in Brent, London.

Colamus humanitatem : Nurturing human nature

In an essay on anger, the ancient philosopher Seneca warns of the futility of harboring negative emotions given the imminence of death—the ultimate human equalizer. Ancient philosophers like Seneca believed that emotions are based on cognitions (beliefs) and are therefore modifiable through spiritual exercises. Modern research shows that the emotional and cognitive aspects of human psychology are malleable (nurture), but also require gene expression (nature). A parallel between individual behavior and socio-political forces suggests a framework for the current environmental crisis— another human equalizer. Two critical questions are suggested: Is the amassed experience of the last few centuries sufficient to lead to corrective measures that would avoid environmental degradation? Or would a catastrophic event with significant longterm environmental degradation have to occur before corrective measures reach consensus at the socio-political level? 

Philosophy with teenagers : nurturing a moral imagination for the 21st century.

Facilita la exploración de los jóvenes de las principales cuestiones éticas de nuestro tiempo, tales como, la justicia, la comprensión intercultural y la educación para el desarrollo sostenible. Ofrece a los educadores la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre cómo el pensamiento filosófico en los adolescentes puede apoyar su desarrollo en individuos seguros de sí mismos y ciudadanos responsables, y se analiza la conveniencia de este proceso filosófico en las necesidades educativas del siglo veintiuno.

Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

Singapore’s bilingual policy legitimises English not only as the language of governmental administration and interethnic communication, but also as the medium of instruction in all schools on all levels and across all subjects except mother tongues (MTs). As a result of these politics of language recognition, a visible shift has occurred in all ethnic groups away from MTs towards English. To rectify the language shift situation, the government has emphasised that developing bilingualism and raising bilingual children should begin in preschools. In this paper, we examine two top-down official documents: Review of Mother Tongue Languages Report, issued in 2011, and Nurturing Early Learners Framework for Mother Tongue Languages, developed in 2013. Attempting to identify some of the complex factors that influence language shift, we present an intertextual analysis of the Report and the curriculum Framework. In doing so, we compare the consistencies and locate the implicit inconsistencies in the policy position on bilingual education in preschools. We conclude the article by outlining the implications for changing the current bilingual educational models and providing teacher training programmes that maximise the learning opportunities of young bilingual learners.

Caring for the wounded healer - nurturing the self

Health professionals have to deal with a “wounded society”, for example, violence, natural disasters and displaced people. Shortage of health professional groups and the high use of complementary therapies may reflect professional wounds, such as stress and burnout. Self-care is an important aspect of health professionals’ lives, given modern-day work stressors that can affect an individual's physical, mental and spiritual health. Often people become healers through personal suffering. Each person wounded or not, needs to understand his or her own need to be nurtured, and develop and implement a self-care health programme. Personal and professional reflection are important to understanding the nature of events that lead to “wounds” and how they can be transcended and the experiences used in holistic care. Aromatherapy can be a useful addition to self-care especially in managing stress and minor self-limiting conditions.

The attraction, retention/transition and nurturing process of sport development : some Australian evidence

The purpose of this study was to explore and map the sport development processes in Australia. A grounded theory approach identified sport development processes by examining 74 annual reports from 35 national sporting organizations (NSOs) over a period of 4 years, before and after the Sydney Olympic Games. The 3 frameworks presented in this article representing the attraction, retention/ transition, and nurturing process illustrate the generic processes and strategies described by NSOs. The results show that each sport development process requires human and financial input from various stakeholders. These stakeholders initiate or implement sport development strategies for each process and each process has different sport development outputs. These results contribute to the extant literature of sport development by demonstrating that sport development is more complex and encompassing than previously described. It is proposed that the generic frameworks derived from this study be subject to more specific testing using other sport systems, as context and case studies could lead to tailoring the frameworks to represent specific sport development processes and systems.