Factors influencing mathematics and science teachers' self-assessment as teaching 'out-of-field' in rural and regional schools

Teaching 'out-of-field' occurs when teachers teach a subject for which they have no disciplinary or methods qualification. The incidence of out-of-field mathematics, science and technology teaching are particularly high in rural and regional areas. Given that mathematics and science are key areas of policy concern, there is an urgent need to understand teachers‟ position in this increasingly common practice in order to provide appropriate system responses. This paper asks the question, how are mathematics and science teachers‟ professional identities influenced by having to teach out-of-field? Twenty teachers who had taught science or mathematics at some time in their career, two school leaders, and two support staff, took part in semi-structured interviews, which I then transcribed. This paper reports on a thematic analysis of a subset of the data that isolated factors influencing teachers‟ self-assessment of themselves as out-of-field or in-field. Excerpts from the interviews are used to introduce and contextualise these factors within rural and regional settings. These factors are used to generate a theoretical model, the Boundary Between Fields (BBF) Model, that enables analysis of the impact of these factors on identity construction during a boundary crossing event. The Model highlights the influence of support mechanisms, contextual factors and personal resources on the nature of teachers‟ negotiation of subject boundaries and its impact on professional identity. This innovative model provides a platform for re-conceptualising these experiences as opportunities for professional learning occurring within schools as communities of practice, where teachers are supported and enabled to expand their professional identity. These findings provide insight for policy-makers, school leaders and teacher educators, into the complexity of the issue for teachers, as well as the conditions required for such teaching to be considered learning opportunities.

Rural living and health-related quality of life in Australians with Parkinson's disease

Introduction: The motor and non-motor symptoms associated with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) may compromise the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of some individuals living with this debilitating condition. Although growing evidence suggests that PD may be more prevalent in rural communities, there is little information about the life quality of these individuals. This study examines whether HRQOL ratings vary in relation to rural and metropolitan life settings.
Methods: An analytic cross-sectional study was conducted to compare the HRQOL of two separate samples of people with PD living in metropolitan Melbourne and rural Victoria. The metropolitan sample consisted of 210 individuals who had participated in the baseline assessment for an existing clinical trial. The rural sample comprised 24 participants who attended community-based rehabilitation programs and support groups in rural Victoria. Health-related quality of life was quantified using the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire-39 (PDQ-39).
Results: The HRQOL of participants in rural Australia differed from individuals living in a large metropolitan city (p=0.025). Participants in rural Australia reported worse overall HRQOL, after controlling for differences in disease duration. Their overall HRQOL was lower than for city dwellers. Rural living was also found to be a significant negative predictor of HRQOL (β=0.14; 95% CI -1.27 to -0.08; _p=0.027).
Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that some people with PD living in rural Victoria perceive their HRQOL to be relatively poor. In order to minimise the debilitating consequences of this disease, further studies examining the factors that may contribute to the HRQOL of individuals living in rural and remote areas are required.

A comparison of Australian rural and metropolitan cardiovascular risk and mortality: the Greater Green Triangle and North West Adelaide population surveys

Objectives:
Cardiovascular (CVD) mortality disparities between rural/regional and urban-dwelling residents of Australia are persistent. Unavailability of biomedical CVD risk factor data has, until now, limited efforts to understand the causes of the disparity. This study aimed to further investigate such disparities.

Barriers and enablers to clinical fieldwork education in rural public and private allied health practice

There is a need to maximise rural clinical fieldwork placement to build health workforce capacity. This study investigated allied health professionals' (AHPs) experience of supervising students as part of work-integrated learning in public and private rural health settings. An anonymous postal questionnaire with 30 questions was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data about the barriers and enablers that AHPs encounter when supervising students in their clinical setting. A total of 113 public and private AHPs from Southwest Victoria, Australia, returned the questionnaire. The AHPs were trained in the disciplines of occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech pathology, dietetics, podiatry or psychology. The majority of respondents (75%) had previously supervised students. Most respondents had only provided fieldwork education in the public sector. Allied health professionals working in public and private sectors had positive experiences with clinical fieldwork education and often had increased job satisfaction while supervising students. They experienced similar enablers to involvement in clinical fieldwork education programs, however the barriers they encountered were different. The findings highlight the differing issues between rural public and private settings that need to be addressed for successful clinical fieldwork education and work-integrated learning. Strategies to address the identified barriers need to be specific to the work conditions of each setting.

Improving transfer of mental health care for rural and remote consumers in South Australia

In Australia, it is commonplace for tertiary mental health care to be provided in large regional centres or metropolitan cities. Rural and remote consumers must be transferred long distances, and this inevitably results in difficulties with the integration of their care between primary and tertiary settings. Because of the need to address these issues, and improve the transfer process, a research project was commissioned by a national government department to be conducted in South Australia. The aim of the project was to document the experiences of mental health consumers travelling from the country to the city for acute care and to make policy recommendations to improve transitions of care. Six purposively sampled case studies were conducted collecting data through semistructured interviews with consumers, country professional and occupational groups and tertiary providers. Data were analysed to produce themes for consumers, and country and tertiary mental healthcare providers. The study found that consumers saw transfer to the city for mental health care as beneficial in spite of the challenges of being transferred over long distances, while being very unwell, and of being separated from family and friends. Country care providers noted that the disjointed nature of the mental health system caused problems with key aspects of transfer of care including transport and information flow, and achieving integration between the primary and tertiary settings. Improving transfer of care involves overcoming the systemic barriers to integration and moving to a primary care-led model of care. The distance consultation and liaison model provided by the Rural and Remote Mental Health Services, the major tertiary provider of services for country consumers, uses a primary care-led approach and was highly regarded by research participants. Extending the use of this model to other primary mental healthcare providers and tertiary facilities will improve transfer of care.

Conflict of interest in Victorian rural and regional legal practice

This research report was based on 163 survey responses and 29 interviews with Victorian rural and regional legal practitioners, as well as 8 human service organisation representatives. Peak law profession organisations including the Legal Services Board, Law Institute of Victoria, the Federation of Community Legal Centres and Victoria Legal Aid were also interviewed for the research. The principal objective of the research was to examine how conflict of interested is manifested in rural and regional settings and how effectively the current conflict of interest rules are applied within those settings. The report includes a number of recommendations for better responding to issues of conflict of interest within a rural and regional context.

Effectiveness and implementation of an obesity prevention intervention: the HeLP-her Rural cluster randomised controlled trial

To impact on the obesity epidemic, interventions that prevent weight gain across populations are urgently needed. However, even the most efficacious interventions will have little impact on obesity prevention unless they are successfully implemented in diverse populations and settings. Implementation research takes isolated efficacy studies into practice and policy and is particularly important in obesity prevention where there is an urgent need to accelerate the evidence to practice cycle. Despite the recognised need, few obesity prevention interventions have been implemented in real life settings and to our knowledge rarely target rural communities.

Are there news gaps in rural/regional Australia? Researching media plurality beyond Finkelstein

Rural/regional news is emerging as a vital area of media policy and research throughout the world as industry bodies, governments and academics grapple with debates concerning the future of news in a complex digital world. However, there has been little examination of media plurality at the rural/regional level, or research into the sustainability of the sector in Australia. Such concerns go to questions of what roles industry and government might play in ensuring its future. The Finkelstein report in 2012 noted that many rural/regional newspapers in Australia had limited resources and consequently low capacity for in-depth coverage of local issues. In the meantime, the funding model of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (which services rural/regional areas as part of its charter) has come under intense scrutiny by the federal Liberal-National Party coalition government. Signs from abroad – especially from the United Kingdom – are troubling. Several independent inquiries have called for policy initiatives to address what British scholars describe as the growing “democratic deficit” created by the closure of hundreds of local UK newspapers since 2004. This paper canvasses current and emerging media policy settings in the UK, the United States and Australia before posing some broader questions on the future of rural/regional news in Australia.

Options for rural poverty reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Avaliação energética econômica da culturado milho em assentamento rural, Iperó-SP

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Energia na Agricultura) - FCA

Avaliação energética econômica da cultura do milho em assentamento rural, Iperó-SP

This paper, having as a hypothesis that greater energetic inputs don't keep ratio with economical outputs, has tried to study the economical and energetic flows in the maize cultivation to several production systems used in Ipanema Settling Area I, having as analysis instrument the indexes of Cultural, Energetic, Economical efficiency, which were added to the methodological proposal of Cultural Economical and Energetic Economical Efficiency indexes, built for probability settings. Four different systems have been identified: "A", "B", "C" and "D". The energetic expenditure were, respectively, 4,836.19 MJ x ha-1, 4,4647.17 MJ x ha-1, 4,639.49 MJ x ha-1 and 4,450.47 MJ x ha-1. In "A", where the use of machines is more intensive, the participation of biological source energy was 23.26%, whereas the ones of fossil origin are 76.74%. The "D" system has the greatest Cultural Efficiency, with average index of 16.26, whereas "A" showed the lowest Cultural Efficiency indexes, with average values of 14.83. For the analysis of the Energetic Efficiency, that indicates the dependence of energy from non renewable sources, the highest index was the "D" system with an average index of 53.84. The Economical Efficiency Indexes, which ranged from 1.84 to 1.96, show that all systems are efficient. The "D" system, with index equal to 8.84, showed the highest index of Economical Cultural efficiency. The Economical Energetic analysis for "A", "B", "C" and "D" systems, has resulted, respectively, in the following indexes: 21.14 ; 23.86 ; 22.87 and 29.26. Through the outcome analysis, it was concluded that the more intensive use of energy from nonrenewable sources ("A" system) didn't necessarily mean a higher efficiency when compared to "D" (labor intensive), what comes to prove the paper's initial hypothesis.

Literacy Practices in and out of School in Karagwe : the Case of Primary School Literacy in Rural Tanzania

This study has investigated the question of relation between literacy practices in and out of school in rural Tanzania. By using the perspective of linguistic anthropology, literacy practices in five villages in Karagwe district in the northwest of Tanzania have been analysed. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational planning and literacy programs. The analysis has revealed an intimate relation between language, literacy and power. In Karagwe, traditional élites have drawn on literacy to construct and reconstruct their authority, while new élites, such as individual women and some young people have been able to use literacy as one tool to get access to power. The study has also revealed a high level of bilingualism and a high emphasis on education in the area, which prove a potential for future education in the area. At the same time discontinuity in language use, mainly caused by stigmatisation of what is perceived as local and traditional, such as the mother-tongue of the majority of the children, and the high status accrued to all that is perceived as Western, has turned out to constitute a great obstacle for pupils’ learning. The use of ethnographic perspectives has enabled comparisons between interactional patterns in schools and outside school. This has revealed communicative patterns in school that hinder pupils’ learning, while the same patterns in other discourses reinforce learning. By using ethnography, relations between explicit and implicit language ideologies and their impact in educational contexts may be revealed. This knowledge may then be used to make educational plans and literacy programmes more relevant and efficient, not only in poor post-colonial settings such as Tanzania, but also elsewhere, such as in Western settings.

Community health workers: The critical link to sustainable, healthy societies in low-resource settings---A model for the Baylor Shoulder to Shoulder Foundation

Community health workers (CHWs) can serve as a bridge between healthcare providers and communities to positively impact social determinants of health and, thus, the overall health of the population. The potential to effect lasting change is particularly significant within resource-poor settings with limited access to formally trained health care providers such as the small, rural village of Santa Ana Intibucá, Honduras and surrounding areas—located on the geographically and politically isolated border of Honduras and El Salvador. The Baylor Shoulder to Shoulder Foundation (BSTS) works in conjunction with Santa Ana's volunteer health committee to bring a health brigade that has provided health care and public health projects to the area at least twice a year since 2001. They have also hired a full-time Honduran physician, a Honduran in-country administrative director, and built a clinic; yet, no community health worker program exists. This CHW program model is the response to a clear need for a CHW program within the area served by BSTS and presents a CHW program model specific to Santa Ana Intibucá and surrounding areas to be implemented by BSTS. Methods used to develop this model include reviewing the literature for recommendations from leading authorities as well as successfully implemented CHW programs in comparable regions. This information was incorporated into existing knowledge and materials currently being used in the area. Using the CHW model proposed here, each brigade, in conjunction with the communities served, can help develop new modules to respond to the specific health priorities of the region at that time, incorporating consistent modes of contact with the local physician and the CHWs to provide refresher courses, training in new topics of interest, and to be reminded of the importance of community health workers' role as the critical link to healthy societies. With cooperation, effort, and support, the brigade can continue to help integrate a sustainable CHW system in which communities may be able to maximize the care they receive while also learning to care for their own health and the future of their communities.^

Acampamento e assentamento rural como contexto de cuidado e educação compartilhados de crianças

Esta pesquisa se insere no campo da Psicologia Cultural do Desenvolvimento Humano e tem como objetivo investigar o compartilhamento da educação e do cuidado de crianças pequenas (1 a 5 anos) em um assentamento e um acampamento rural. Consideramos como compartilhamento da educação a participação de um grupo de pessoas, adultos ou crianças, nos momentos cotidianos da criança. A hipótese inicial da investigação estava relacionada a uma aparente coletivização da educação no acampamento e uma individualização no assentamento, determinados, sobretudo, pelas práticas culturais de cada contexto. Participaram da investigação 10 crianças (5 moradoras de um acampamento rural e 5 de um assentamento rural). A metodologia consistiu em observação participante com a imersão da pesquisadora por uma média de 6 dias no cotidiano familiar e comunitário de cada criança, com anotação em diário de campo das atividades, parceiros e cenários de compartilhamento do cuidado e da educação da criança. Os resultados apontam para: um intenso compartilhamento no grupo de vizinhança no acampamento e no grupo de família extensa no assentamento; a importância do cuidado e educação exercido entre as crianças, especialmente em situações de brincadeira; o histórico de migração como condição relacionada à maior busca pelo compartilhamento; a mulher como principal cuidadora, aspecto intimamente relacionado ao trabalho doméstico e na agricultura.O trabalho propicia reflexões acerca da diversidade dos modos de vida das crianças nestes contextos, sendo que há potencialidades educacionais ali construídas, fruto de uma riqueza cultural latente. Aponta ainda para considerações acerca das políticas públicas e garantia de direitos às crianças.