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This study aims to identify the literacy skills of individuals whose highest level of education was in the field 'teacher training and educational sciences'. The study sample comprised 10,618 individuals in the field of teacher training and educational sciences, selected from 31 countries (participating in the International Adult Skills Assessment Programme during the 2014-2015 survey) using a multi-stage sampling method. The study employed multi-level latent class analysis and three-step analysis in order to determine both the number of multi-level latent classes of educators' literacy scores as well as the selected independent variables' success in predicting those latent classes. The analysis revealed that educators in Germany constituted the group with the highest literacy skills while educators from Singapore comprised the group with the lowest literacy skills. [This study was presented at the 9th International Congress of Educational Research. Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey.]

The paper provides an overview of the global research on graduate education. The study applied a combination of a bibliometric and social network analysis methods to bibliographic data from Thompson Reuters' Web of Science. More specifically, a keyword search approach was used to retrieve 2,454 articles on graduate education from 1996 until 2020. The set was processed with the VantagePoint software. The paper reports the findings in the form of lists of top scholars, research centres, and countries contributing to research on graduate education. The findings include similar lists of the key funding agencies, contributing disciplines and publication venues, as well as maps representing collaborative activity in the field between institutions, and countries. Finally, the frequency of utilisation of groups of author-supplied keywords is analysed to determine the basic thematic structure of the research on the topic. The originality of the paper consists in the fact that it represents the first attempt to map the landscape of research on graduate education using bibliographic data. It can be used to supplement the results of literature reviews on the topic, which apply a more in-depth content analysis-based approaches to a limited number of papers to determine the thematic structure of the field.

For over two decades now, the application of Citizen Science to Education has been evolving, and fundamental topics, such as the drivers of motivation to participate in Citizen Science projects, are still under discussion. Some recent developments, though, like the use of Artificial Intelligence to support data collection and validation, seem to point to a clear-cut divergence from the mainstream research path. The objective of this paper is to summarise the development trajectory of research on Citizen Science in Education so far, and then shed light on its future development, to help researchers direct their efforts towards the most promising open questions in this field. We achieved these objectives by using the lens of the Affordance-Actualisation theory and the Main Path Analysis method.

Background: The value of a life is regularly monetised by government departments for informing resource allocation. Guidance documents indicate how economic evaluation should be conducted, often specifying precise values for different impacts. However, we find different values of life and health are used in analyses by departments within the same government despite commonality in desired outcomes. This creates potential inconsistencies in considering trade-offs within a broader public sector spending budget. We provide evidence to better inform the political process and to raise important issues in assessing the value of public expenditure across different sectors. Methods: Our document analysis identifies thresholds, explicitly or implicitly, as observed in government-related publications in the following public sectors: health, social care, transport, and environment. We include both demand-side and supply-side thresholds, understood as societies' and governments' willingness to pay for health gains. We look at key countries that introduced formal economic evaluation processes early on and have impacted other countries' policy development: Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We also present a framework to consider how governments allocate resources across different public services. Results: Our analysis supports that identifying and describing the Value of a Life from disparate public sector activities in a manner that facilitates comparison is theoretically meaningful. The optimal allocation of resources across sectors depends on the relative position of benefits across different attributes, weighted by the social value that society puts on them. The value of a Quality-Adjusted Life Year is generally used as a demand-side threshold by Departments of transport and environment. It exceeds those used in health, often by a large enough proportion to be a multiple thereof. Decisions made across departments are generally based on an unspecified rationing rule. Conclusions: Comparing government expenditure across different public sector departments, in terms of the value of each department outcome, is not only possible but also desirable. It is essential for an optimal resource allocation to identify the relevant social attributes and to quantify the value of these attributes for each department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological evidence suggests that regular physical activity (PA) positively impacts individuals' mental health (MH). The PA-MH relationship may be critical among immigrants owing to psycho-social-cultural influences. This scoping review of 61 studies employed a holistic bio-psycho-socio-cultural framework to thoroughly investigate the complex relationship between PA (across life domains) and immigrants' MH in Western countries. A systematic search of five electronic databases (Medline, PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO and Anthropology Plus) was conducted to locate relevant articles. No limitations were applied to study design, age, gender, home country, MH condition or PA type. A bio-psycho-socio-cultural-informed conceptual model guided the analysis of the multi-domain PA-MH relationship. Immigrant PA-MH studies were conducted and reported most commonly in the USA (38%), Australia (18%), and Canada (11%). Overall, PA was positively related to MH. Each domain-specific PA appeared to be associated with unique MH-promoting pathways/mechanisms. Leisure-related PA may support MH by enhancing self-agency and minimizing risky behaviors, whilst travel- and domestic-related PA may promote self-accomplishment and physical engagement. Ethnic sports appeared to enhance resilience. Occupational-related PA was associated with either positive or negative MH, depending on the type of occupation. A bio-psycho-socio-cultural-informed model is required to gain an encompassing and integrated understanding of immigrants' health. The first iteration of such a model is presented here, along with an illustration of how the model may be used to deepen analysis and understanding of the multi-domain PA-MH relationship among immigrants and inform public health planners and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This paper examines how negative experiences with the health-care system create a lack of confidence in receiving medical care in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Methods The empirical analysis is based on data from the Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey 2007, with nationally representative samples of adults aged 18 and over. For the analysis of the experience of cost barriers and confidence in receiving medical care, we conducted pairwise comparisons of group percentages as well as country-wise multivariate logistic regression models. Results Individuals who have experienced cost barriers show a significantly lower level of confidence in receiving safe and quality medical care than those who have not. This effect is most pronounced in the United States, where people who have foregone necessary treatment because of costs are four times as likely to lack confidence as individuals without the experience of cost barriers (adjusted odds ratio 4.00). In New Zealand, Germany, and Canada, individuals with the experience of cost barriers are twice as likely to report low confidence compared with those without this experience (adjusted odds ratios of 1.95, 2.19 and 2.24, respectively). In the Netherlands and UK, cost barriers are only a marginal phenomenon. Conclusions The fact that the experience of financial barriers considerably lowers confidence indicates that financial incentives, such as private co-payments, have a negative effect on overall public support and therefore on the legitimacy of health-care systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Given the raised profile that parenting support and education is currently receiving on government family policy agendas in many nations, this paper reviews the ways in which parenting support and education policies are embedded within eight OECD countries. Drawing out the similarities and differences of policy and practice, and comparing the financial support each country affords to parenting support, it assesses the effectiveness of parenting support programmes in relation to national expenditure and links parenting policy to child outcomes. The paper concludes with some recommendations for policy makers and programme developers. The countries reviewed are: The UK, Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, the US, Finland, Australia and New Zealand. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Student learning outcomes assessment examines whether programs cover the material stated in their learning goals, whether students are learning the material, and the impact on student retention, graduation, post-graduation outcomes, and institutional accreditation, with the aim of providing faculty with data that can be used to help programs evolve or improve. While there is a plethora of research regarding effective methods of assessment used in the United States, little has been written regarding cross-national comparisons of assessment methodologies. This paper examines the current state of assessment in several nations and regions, and draws parallels in practices across countries. A literature search using the term "outcomes assessment" yielded 228 articles, of which, only 35 described practices outside the United States. Generally, searches on the terms "outcomes assessment" and "global" tend to return studies of outcomes assessment of teaching about global issues as it is practiced in the United States, rather than results about outcomes assessment practices used in other countries.

This paper focuses "interest in science" as one of the attitudinal aspects of scientific literacy. Large-scale data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 are analysed in order to describe student interest more precisely. So far the analyses have provided a general indicator of interest, aggregated over all contexts and contents in the science test. With its innovative approach PISA embeds interest items within the cognitive test unit and its contents and contexts. The main difference from conventional interest measures is that in most questionnaires, a relatively small number of interest items cover broad fields of contents and contexts. The science units represent a number of systematically differentiated scientific contexts and contents. The units' stimulus texts allow for concrete descriptions of relevant content aspects, applications, and contexts. In the analyses, multidimensional item response models are applied in order to disentangle student interest. The results indicate that multidimensional models fit the data. A two-dimensional model separating interest into two different "knowledge of science dimensions" described in the PISA science framework is further analysed with respect to gender, performance differences, and country. The findings give a comprehensive description of students' interest in science. The paper deals with methodological problems and describes requirements of the test construction for further assessments. The results are discussed with regard to their significance for science education. (Contains 5 tables and 6 figures.)

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs imposed on stakeholders, and c) all of them are making efforts to respond to legal risks in various ways (e.g. legislation, contracting and opt-out policies) although there are trade-off relations in terms of costs for negotiation, scope of access and size and scope of the web archive. The paper discusses whether a basic logic for justification of their web archiving is valid from the perspective of balancing cost-benefit. Further, it highlights the potential, underlying premises of the logic that motivates the intervention of national libraries as public sector organizations. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

The paper looks at part-time higher educational services for students in the educational systems of Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A comparative examination of the nature and importance of part-time higher education is then presented. (DB)

By investigating how educational practitioners participate in activities around open educational practices (OEP), this paper aims at contributing to an understanding of open practices and how these practitioners learn to use OEP. Our research is guided by the following hypothesis: Different social configurations support a variety of social learning activities. The social configuration of OEPs is investigated by an operationalization into the dimensions (1) practice, (2) domain, (3) collective identity, and (4) organization. The results show how practitioners of six different OEPs learn, while acting and collaborating through a combination of offline and online networks. The findings of our study lead to practical implications on how to support participation in OEP, and thereby stimulate learning in (online) networks of OEP.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles published in the Web of Science category "Education and Educational Research" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2091 journal articles published in this category and cited more than 100 times up to the end of the year 2016 were retrieved as highly cited articles. Distributions of highly cited articles per publication year, journals, institutions and countries were analysed, as well as the citation life cycle of the top-cited articles. The USA, its institutions and researchers are the absolute leaders in the category of Education and Educational Research according to the results of the conducted analysis.

The purpose of this article is to explore the development of the knowledge base on middle leadership in schools. Since the seminal reviews conducted by Bennett a contemporary scan only of the scholarly literature on middle leaders/leadership in schools has not been undertaken. Consequently, this article looks at outputs relating to this topic by examining research papers indexed in the Web of Science and in SCOPUS between 2003 and 2017. The prime purpose of this review is to offer some reflections on the development of the empirical base on middle leadership in schools since 2003 and to highlight some of the implications for future research. The article concludes that middle leadership in schools remains an ongoing focus of research inquiry in a growing number of countries but suggests that the knowledge base would benefit from more sophisticated empirical studies and greater theoretical analysis.

In a period of student loan scandals and U.S. financial market instability impacting on the cost and availability of student loans, this paper looks at alternative models of higher education funding. In this context, it also considers the level of financial support that the government should provide to higher education.

Aim To explore the concept of sustainability in nursing using social media as a vehicle for discussion on the topic. Background There is a need for an increased awareness among nurses of the issues that are crucial for the healthcare sector to prepare for climate change and contribute to sustainable development. However, topics about sustainability and climate change are not a requirement of nursing curricula in Europe; social media provides an opportunity to raise issues and promote discussion. Design A thematic analysis of a Twitter discussion. Methods A Twitter discussion session hosted by @WeNurses took place on 24 March 2015 over 1 hour. Data were gathered via this online discussion hosted on Twitter, a social media platform. Following the discussion a thematic analysis of the posted Tweets was conducted. Findings One hundred and nineteen people posted nine hundred and ninety six Tweets, a reach of 3,306,368. Tweets broadly followed the questions posted by the team. Several threads related to the sustainable use of healthcare resources and the need to reduce waste was evident. A Word Cloud of the Tweets highlighted prominent words in the discussion: sustainability, nursing/nurses, curriculum, important, waste, practice, resources, student, plastic, health, gloves. Conclusion Social media is an effective way of engaging nurses and students in a discussion on challenging issues. Sustainability appears to be important for nurses, with a particular emphasis on resource use and the importance of sustainability topics in nurse education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from 700 companies in 20 countries, this paper records the research that investigates the contribution of organisational and technological practices to speed up New Product Development (NPD). The organisational practice is found positively correlated with the speed of NPD. However, no significant direct relationship was found between technology practice and the speed of NPD. The organisational and technological practices are found to be in balance, which may be a new input to explain how technology helps NPD. The implication is that organisational practices such as team, continuous improvement and Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy are needed in order to implement technologies successfully. This result supports the simultaneous theory on innovation, which is especially important in developing countries. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

This paper presents a model of the approaches open to government to ensure that early childhood services are affordable to families. We derived the model from a comparative literature review of affordability approaches taken by government, both in Australia and internationally. The model adds significantly to the literature by proposing a means to understand and assess the numerous options for affordability funding. The model suggests that the options fall into only three basic approaches: operational funding, fee subsidies and tax relief. Application of this simple model helps clarify the costs and benefits of particular choices within these approaches. We predict that the choices affect cost to government, affordability to families, and participation by children in early childhood services. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper examines the extent that material, social, and cultural resources and schools account for the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement among 15-year-olds in 30 countries. Generally, cultural factors play a more important role in most countries although in a small minority of countries, material resources have a substantial impact. Most often, social resources have little impact. In many countries, educational differentiation--that is, school tracks and school types, and curriculum tracking within schools--mediates the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement. Countries with highly tracked systems tend to show stronger relationships. On average, over 60% of the effect of socioeconomic background on achievement is accounted for by these factors. These findings are independent of whether achievement in reading, mathematics, or science is examined. The implications of this study for reducing socioeconomic inequalities in education are discussed.

Background: Despite significant investments to support primary care internationally, income-based inequities in access to quality health care are present in many high-income countries. This study aims to determine whether low- and middle-income groups are more likely to report poor quality of primary care (PC) than high-income groups cross-nationally. Methods: The 2011 Commonwealth Fund Telephone Survey of Sicker Adults is a cross-sectional study across eleven countries. Respondents were recruited from randomly selected households. We used data from surveys conducted in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We identified all questions relating to primary care performance, and categorized these into five dimensions: 1) access to care, 2) coordination 3) patient-centered care, and 4) technical quality of care. We used logistic regression with low and middle-income as the comparison groups and high-income as the referent. Results: Fourteen thousand two hundred sixty-two respondents provided income data. Countries varied considerably in their extent of income disparity. Overall, 24.7% were categorized as low- and 13.9% as high-income. The odds of reporting poor access to care were higher for low- and middle-income than high-income respondents in Canada, New Zealand and the US. Similar results were found for Sweden and Norway on coordination; the opposite trend favoring the low- and middle-income groups was found in New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. The odds of reporting poor patient-centered care were higher for low-income than high-income respondents in the Netherlands, Norway, and the US; in Australia, this was true for low- and middle-income respondents. On technical quality of care, the odds of reporting poor care were higher for the low- and middle-income comparisons in Canada and Norway; in Germany, the odds were higher for low-income respondents only. The odds of reporting poor technical quality of care were higher for high-income than low-income respondents in the Netherlands. Conclusion: Inequities in quality PC for low and middle income groups exist on at least one dimension in all countries, including some that in theory provide universal access. More research is needed to fully understand equity in the PC sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Disparities in access to primary care (PC) have been demonstrated within and between health systems. However, few studies have assessed the factors associated with multiple barriers to access occurring along the care-seeking process in different healthcare systems. Methods: In this secondary analysis of the 2016 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Adults, access was represented through participant responses to questions relating to access barriers either before or after reaching the PC practice in 11 countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and United States). The number of respondents in each country ranged from 1000 to 7000 and the response rates ranged from 11% to 47%. We used multivariable logistic regression models within each of eleven countries to identify disparities in response to the access barriers by age, sex, immigrant status, income and the presence of chronic conditions. Results: Overall, one in five adults (21%) experienced multiple barriers before reaching PC practices. After reaching care, an average of 16% of adults had two or more barriers. There was a sixfold difference between nations in the experience of these barriers to access. Vulnerable groups experiencing multiple barriers were relatively consistent across countries. People with lower income were more likely to experience multiple barriers, particularly before reaching primary care practices. Respondents with mental health problems and those born outside the country displayed substantial vulnerability in terms of barriers after reaching care. Conclusion: A greater understanding of the multiple barriers to access to PC across the stages of the care-seeking process may help to inform planning and performance monitoring of disparities in access. Variation across countries may reveal organisational and system drivers of access, and inform efforts to improve access to PC for vulnerable groups. The cumulative nature of these barriers remains to be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]