School Psychology International, Ahead of Print.
School psychologists can support schools in implementing inclusive practices. In Portugal, the Decree-Law 54/2018 has set the country on the path to inclusive education based on whole-school approaches. This policy shift demands a change in school psychologists’ practices to be agents for systems change versus traditional roles (such as assessing and counseling students). An e-learning training course was developed and implemented by nine psychologists through a partnership between the Ministry of Education and the Portuguese Psychology Association, focused on the Multi-tiered Systems of Support framework for constructing inclusive schools. The main aim was to empower school psychologists to support adequate, inclusive, and multi-tiered intervention responses in their schools, resourcing a collaborative and supervised approach. From all Portuguese regions, 327 psychologists participated in the training from October 2020 to April 2021. This article focuses on the trainers’ experiences of training, collected through a focus group, reflecting on the challenges, opportunities, and necessary improvements for future training in school psychologists in Portugal on this topic. Trainers have identified organizational and pedagogical aspects as critical to the training delivery and quality that should be addressed in future training courses for school psychologists.
School psychologists’ training to support inclusive education in Portugal: Trainers’ perspectives of opportunities, challenges, and improvements
Changing discourse of public administration: Where PAD stands?
Abstract
Public administration in the recent years has become a very dynamic and vast domain owing to evolving challenges. Our study aims to comparatively evaluate the changing discourse in public administration research in general and ‘Public Administration and Development’ (PAD) in particular. For this purpose, we have taken research articles from nine journals of public administration domain for the period of 2010–2022. We have used the text-mining based approach of Dynamic Topic Modelling to understand the evolution of topics in public administration research. This is followed by the Named Entity Recognition (NER) to discover the geographic importance given in public administration research vis-à-vis PAD. We have used the measure of ‘Jaccard similarity’ to compare the changing discourse of PAD with respect to other journals. We have found that topics on approaches to governance, organization performance and health were always on the priority in literature. We have also found that topic coverage in PAD is more diverse and niche compared to the overall trends in public administration research. NER findings suggest that public administration research is more Euro-North American centric while PAD has pan-continental presence with focus on developing countries.
‘Social worker board vets applications individually’
The chairman of the Social Workers Registration Board has stressed that the statutory body reviews every application on a case-by-case basis, after the government suggested the board might have erred in renewing and approving licences from people who had committed serious crimes.
Reforming Inspection of Childcare Provision: Lessons from Israel
Abstract
This study explores the impact of transitioning from structural quality to process quality in the regulation of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for children aged birth to 3 years on the professional identity of inspectors. The research centers on a pilot program led by the Day Care Division at the Ministry of Welfare in Israel, which aimed to reform the inspection of day care facilities in the country. The methodology involves conducting 24 interviews with day care inspectors who participated in the pilot program, tracing their evolving understanding of their professional identity and their adaptation to the new regulatory model. The study’s findings reveal that inspectors’ professional identity comprises five key aspects: source of authority, inspection methods, superintendent’s skill set, role perception, and their perception of the regulated entities. Inspectors are compelled to redefine their professional identity in response to changes in the regulatory model. In conclusion, this research underscores the intricate nature of inspectors’ roles during periods of regulatory transformation. Shifting toward a process-oriented ECEC regulation necessitates the development of a new professional identity for inspectors. This shift presents them with heightened ethical dilemmas and exposes them to the risk of regulatory capture.
Bioethics Without Theory?
The question that this paper tries to answer is Q: “Can good academic bioethics be done without commitment to moral theory?” It is argued that the answer to Q is an unequivocal “Yes” for most of what we could call “critical bioethics,” that is, the kind of bioethics work that primarily criticizes positions or arguments already in the literature or put forward by policymakers. The answer is also “Yes” for much of empirical bioethics. The second part of the paper then provides an analysis of Q in relation to “constructive bioethics,” that is, bioethics work aimed at providing an argument for a particular position. In this part, it is argued that a number of the approaches or methods used that initially look like they involve no commitment to moral theory, nevertheless, involve such a commitment. This is shown to be the case for reflective equilibrium, mid-level theory, the use of theory fragments, and argument by analogy.
At a Glance – Blueprint for a future joint European degree
The European Commission plans to adopt a communication on a European degree in the first quarter of 2024. A future joint European degree could provide a framework to facilitate the development of joint programmes and the delivery of joint degrees offered by multiple higher education institutions across Europe. As a first step, a joint European degree label based on co-created European criteria is being piloted through Erasmus+ projects. Any further steps towards the development of a possible joint degree based on co-created European criteria will be explored with the Member States and stakeholders.
Source : © European Union, 2024 – EP