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Purpose. To provide a bibliographical-historical perspective and main interest in the field of myopia. Methods. In this bibliographic study, the Web of Science Database was searched from 1999 to 2018. Recorded parameters included journal name, impact factor, year and language, number of authors, type and origin, methodology, number of subjects, funding, and topics. Results. Epidemiological assessments were the leading type of article (28%), and half of the papers were prospective studies. The number of citations for multicenter studies was significantly higher (P = 0.034). The articles were published in 27 journals, with the majority in Investigative Ophthalmology, Vision Sciences (28%), and Ophthalmology (26%). Etiology, signs and symptoms, and treatment equally encompassed the topics. Papers addressing etiology, specifically genetic and environmental factors (P = 0.029), signs and symptoms (P = 0.001), and prevention, specifically public awareness (47%, P = 0.005), received significantly more citations. Treatment to decrease myopia progression was a much more common topic (68%) than refractive surgery (32%). Optical treatment was the most popular modality (39%). Half of the publications came from 3 countries: the United States (US), Australia, and Singapore. The highest ranked and cited papers came from the US (P = 0.028) and Singapore (P = 0.028). Conclusions. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the top-cited articles on myopia. There is a predominance of epidemiological assessments and multicenter studies originating from the US, Australia, and Singapore, assessing etiology, signs and symptoms, and prevention. These are more frequently cited, emphasizing the great interest in mapping the increase in the incidence of myopia in different countries, public health awareness, and myopia control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate short-term power load forecasting is crucial to maintaining a balance between energy supply and demand, thus minimizing operational costs. However, the intrinsic uncertainty and non-linearity of load data substantially impact the accuracy of forecasting results. To mitigate the influence of these uncertainties and non-linearity in electric load data on the forecasting results, we propose a hybrid network that integrates variational mode decomposition with a temporal convolutional network (TCN) and a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU). This integrated approach aims to enhance the accuracy of short-term power load forecasting. The method was validated on load datasets from Singapore and Australia. The MAPE of this paper's model on the two datasets reached 0.42% and 1.79%, far less than other models, and the R2 reached 98.27% and 97.98, higher than other models. The experimental results show that the proposed network exhibits a better performance compared to other methods, and could improve the accuracy of short-term electricity load forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how digital inclusion of disabled people can be promoted in order to facilitate their online arts consumption during COVID-19 when the digital transformation of arts consumption was inevitable. While barriers towards disabled people for arts consumption have been studied widely, their digital inclusion has been overlooked. We explore drivers and prerequisites towards digital inclusion of disabled people based on a case study of an international online theatre-making collaboration involving 17 disabled artists, carers, and staff between two disability arts organizations in Australia and Singapore. Our digital inclusion framework includes three key drivers, i.e., enabling digital access, creating a safe online space, and building digital literacy and highlights the importance of preconditions providing for people of all abilities, technical and communication support. We suggest five digital inclusion strategies for disability arts organizations to align their inclusive practices to enable and sustain online arts consumption of disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of research is to ascertain the existing situation of STEAM education research over three decades based on the Scopus database. The entire documents are 256 findings globally data shorted by year, region, and highest cited to 100 documents. The analysis technique used VOSViewer, Microsoft Excel and word cloud generator. The result of document type article is ranks first in Global and conference paper rank first in South East Asia. The sources that have published the top cited papers are "Journal of Small Business Management" in global and the "Education Sciences" in South East Asia. Meanwhile, the author with the most citations is Jeon M from the U.S.A. Specifically, the country with the most publications is US with 31 articles and 2553 citations. Whereas the majority of Southeast Asian countries have 9 articles and 10 citations. Supported the visualization analysis, VOSViewer's global region is divided into 4 clusters and 62 keywords to assist with the visualization analysis. A pair of clusters containing 14 keywords each for the South Asia region. The terms program, project, environment, model, and implication are frequently used in STEAM throughout the world. The keyword STEAM education appears in analyses conducted in South-East Asia. The outcome of this research can serve as a resource for scholars interested in STEAM and education. Further research into STEAM education trends can be conducted by focusing on a single region or on more specific issues.

Accurate solar photovoltaic (PV) generation forecast is critical to the reliable and economic operation of a modern power system. In practice, due to various faulty issues in the sensor, communication, or database system, the historical and online measurement data may not be always complete, and the missing data could dramatically degrade the forecasting model's accuracy. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an integrated missing-data tolerant model for probabilistic PV power generation forecasting. Taking historical PV generations as input, this model is based on a recursive long short-term memory network (Rec-LSTM), which can provide multi-step ahead forecasting of the probability distribution of PV generation. The unobserved input data will be imputed recursively based on the model output at the previous time step. During the training process, the imputations and forecasting values are iteratively updated by the negative log-likelihood loss function. As a salient advantage, this method can deal with data missing scenarios at both offline and online stages. Numerical experiments are conducted on two one-year datasets from Australia and Singapore, respectively. Probabilistic forecasting for both large-scale and small-scale building-level PV power generation is tested at the time resolution of 15 mins. Testing results show the proposed method can achieve superior probabilistic prediction accuracy as well as strong robustness under various data missing scenarios, compared to other state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Social workers are expected to challenge the exclusion and oppression of marginalised populations which requires the critical interrogation of prejudicial views, discriminatory attitudes, and oppressive practices. In this regard, social work practitioners need to be vigilant of their own attitudes toward the people they serve. This is relevant to social work practice with sexual minorities. This paper presents the results of a mixed-methods study informed by a critical theoretical frame that explored Vietnamese social work practitioners' attitudes toward sexual minorities. The findings presented in this article were drawn from a survey of 292 social work practitioners based in Hanoi, Vietnam and 12 semi-structured interviews with volunteers recruited from the pool of survey participants. Findings: The findings suggest that practitioners who participated in this study held relatively positive attitudes toward people who identify as lesbian or gay. However, those who had what could be considered moderate to positive attitudes were not necessarily free from prejudicial and discriminatory views, particularly when it came to certain matters such as those relating to their own families and work with young children. Applications: The discussion of the findings illustrate the relevance of the broader social context to Vietnamese social work practitioners' attitudes toward sexual minorities. It highlights the potent influence of dominant ideologies in shaping prejudicial views and attitudes and points to the need for practice at a broader level targeting Vietnamese society and culture as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a qualitative comparative research study of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia. This paper focuses on the implementation of GCE within the two specific school contexts, Singapore and Australia, examining the tensions which existed between neo-liberal market rationales and the critical democratic ideologies at each site. The paper explored in-depth how the neo-liberal market agenda influenced and shaped the societal imaginaries specifically in relation to their GCE commitments. Despite each schools' commitments to critical democratic GCE ideals, they were very mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their respective educational markets. To that extent, the schools were neo-liberal market actors. Empirical data shows the complexity of a more hybridised or a continuum existence between these two ideologies, thus providing a more nuanced insight of the binary within the school sites.

Globally, there is considerable investment in education technologies leading to increased attention from stakeholders (Trucano, 2017). For a deeper understanding about the implementation of various technologies, research is needed to examine how teachers are incorporating them in teaching and learning. This study focused on eight countries to examine how teachers used ICT in mathematics instruction and factors that contributed to ICT use. Results show that teachers' education levels and cooperation amongst educators are associated with ICT use in instruction. The paper includes recommendations and implications for practice and future research.

In this article, we explore Quick Response (QR) codes (machine-readable optical labels that link to information) and how, after a period of having fallen out of favor, they have been reactivated and have come to underpin COVID-19 automation and contact-tracing efforts. During the pandemic, they were used especially for "safe entry" and other kinds of check-in to locations to facilitate contact tracing. In this context, QR codes facilitate automated decision-making in relation to infectious disease surveillance and disease outbreak control. However, the use of QR codes for contact-tracing purposes has enjoyed mixed success and its implementation has encountered several challenges, as we illustrate through a case study that explores QR codes and COVID contact tracing in Singapore and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University is a remarkable institution which is always expected to change the world through its constantly innovative technology and science advancement and civilization promotion. Academic institution relies on its efficacious leader with vision and implementation to fully accomplish its missions. However, limited attention goes to this crucial leader's requirements and characteristics, even faculty members in the higher education institutions studiously conduct research for external organizations. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis addressing innovative academic leader's characteristics based on the current global situation, university mission, and unique culture. Finally, this article concluds the competencies and characteristics of efficacious academic leader demands in this changing era: envisioning the institutional future, integrating social resources with reciprocity, modeling the way with morality and integrity, executing university missions with professions and humanity, empowering team members with full support, and inspiring students with humanity. Those integrated characters could effectively guide faculty members for their future self-development, and contribute to achieving university mission on science development, producing high-quality human resources, and contributing of the human civilization promotion. This conclusion retrospectively raises further suggestions for future study, how faculty members build these characters considering the unique and complex situation of interpersonal and external factors within the university.

Learning management systems (LMSs) have long been adopted by tertiary education providers to be the conduit through which courses are delivered. However, debates about the capacity of the LMS to meet all the required current and future needs of both students and educators have become more pronounced over the past few years, particularly given the rapid shift to online learning during COVID-19. This qualitative study aimed to examine practitioners' current experiences in using the LMS for formal teaching and learning in tertiary environments. To discern the possibilities and issues, a focus group was held with fourteen practitioners from Australasia (Australia and Singapore), Canada, and the UK (England and Scotland) attending virtually. Adopting a novel and recognised approach to thematic analysis, a Delphi process was adopted on the de-identified webinar and chat transcripts. Analysis revealed several key themes ranging across pedagogical, technological, and managerial issues with the LMS. The findings in this paper have become even more pertinent as a result of COVID-19 with institutions urgently reviewing standards for teaching in the LMS whilst also reviewing their overall technology ecosystems to ensure a suite of complementary teaching and learning tools to enable best teaching and learning practices. It appears the LMS still has a key role to play in contemporary learning ecosystems.

Governance and regulation of the use of live animals in research and teaching is examined in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and India. A comparison of the systems in different countries will enable the determination of best practice and fit-forpurpose regulation. The most comprehensive government regulation of animal welfare in institutions covers a broad range of animals and institutions are required to have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, whose membership is specified in guidelines or regulations. The work of the Committees is rigorously overseen by government and facilities that use live animals are audited externally. All countries examined have legislation governing the use of live animals in research, although only Australia and Malaysia have a fully equivalent mandated oversight of teaching. Teaching that uses live animals is partly covered in the Philippines, Japan, Singapore and Thailand This paper thus aims to review the regulation of animal use in different Asian jurisdictions in order to determine best practices that are appropriate to those settings. The most comprehensive oversight is provided in Australia and Malaysia that essentially use the same regulatory framework.

The study of variables related to the use of ICT in the classroom is a topic of interest that has been frequently researched. In this paper, after examining the importance of teacher training in explaining the use of ICT in the classroom, we focused on analysing the weight of variables related to teaching practices and the organisational context of schools, which are variables that are less frequently addressed in the literature. To do so, a secondary analysis was carried out using data provided by the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS 2018). Specifically, we worked with a sample of 3,918 principals and 64,899 teachers from a total of 3921 schools in 21 countries. A multilevel binary regression model with random intercept, fixed coefficients and a two-level structure with teachers at level 1 and schools at level 2 was used. The results indicate that the presence of ICT in the classroom is associated with self-efficacy in teaching and the cognitive activation of students and with the organisational aspects of the school, which are scarcely addressed by the existing literature on this topic of interest, such as school climate, educational innovation and cooperation among teachers. Based on these results, we reflect on possible ways to promote the use of ICT in the classroom.

This paper aims to evaluate the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of importing electrical power into Singapore, generated from a large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Australia, through a long-distance subsea high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable. A cost optimization model was developed to estimate the capacities of the system components. A comprehensive life cycle assessment model was built to estimate emissions of manufacturing and use of these components. Our evaluation shows that, for covering one fifth of Singapore's electrical energy needs, a system with an installed capacity of 13 G W P V , 17 GWh battery storage and 3.2 G W subsea cable is required. The life cycle GHG emissions of such a system are estimated to be 110 g CO 2 eq/ kWh , with the majority coming from the manufacturing of solar PV panels. Cable manufacturing does not contribute largely toward GHG emissions. By varying full-load hours and cable lengths, it was assessed that sites closer to Singapore might provide the same energy at same/lower carbon footprint and reduced cost, despite the lower insolation as compared to Australia. However, these sites could cause greater emissions from land use changes than the deserts of Australia, offsetting the advantages of a shorter HVDC cable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexithymia refers to difficulties identifying feelings (DIF), describing feelings (DDF), and externally orientated thinking (EOT). Originally conceptualized by American psychiatrists, some researchers have since questioned the validity and application of this construct in Asian cultures. However, to date, there is little empirical work formally assessing the invariance of alexithymia across Asian and Western cultures. The present study aimed to help address this gap, by examining the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of two alexithymia measures, the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), across samples from Singapore (n = 434) or Australia (n = 489). The same theoretically congruent factor structure was supported across both samples; this structure was fully invariant across samples for the PAQ, and partially invariant for the TAS-20. Both measures had good internal consistency and concurrent validity across samples, except the TAS-20 EOT subscale which had low internal consistency and factor loadings in both samples. The Singaporean sample reported higher DIF and DDF for positive emotions than the Australian sample. Overall, our results support the cross-cultural validity and application of the alexithymia construct. The PAQ and TAS-20 both appear to have good utility in this respect, though the PAQ may provide a more detailed facet-level profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the construct validity, predictive validity and responsiveness of standing centre of pressure variables in subacute stroke. Seventy-nine ambulatory individuals were assessed before inpatient rehabilitation discharge and three months later. Measures were: gait speed (6-metre walk), dynamic balance (step test), and quiet standing (Wii Balance Board). Centre of pressure speed, amplitude, standard deviation, root mean square, wavelet decomposition, and detrended fluctuation analysis were examined. Falls data were collected over a 12-month period post-discharge. Moderate strength correlations (r = −0.505 to −0.548) with gait speed and step test scores were shown for 3/26 centre of pressure variables (mediolateral speed, low and moderate frequency wavelet). Twenty-two participants fell and the prediction was significant for gait speed and step test (IQR-odds ratio (OR) = 4.00 & 3.21) and 3/26 centre of pressure variables (mediolateral low-frequency wavelet: IQR-OR = 2.71; mediolateral detrended fluctuation analysis: IQR-OR = 3.06; anteroposterior detrended fluctuation analysis: IQR-OR = 2.71). Significant changes over time occurred for gait speed and step test scores and 20/26 centre of pressure variables. Standing centre of pressure variables have limited validity to reflect dynamic balance and falls risk after stroke. Frequency and complexity measures warrant further exploration. Our findings indicate that quiet standing centre of pressure variables have limited validity to reflect dynamic balance tasks and predict falls after stroke. The mediolateral and higher frequency variables may be more strongly recommended than the commonly used total centre of pressure speed measure. Measures of signal frequency and complexity may provide insight into postural control mechanisms and how these change over time following stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offshore teaching is a common practice in Australian higher education. While challenges in offshore teaching have been well studied, the opportunities that it may provide have been seldom discussed. Considering this, the aim of this study is to address this gap by investigating the opportunities that offshore teaching provided faculty members in the development of their professional values. This study employs the memory-work method self-study based on the reflective notes of Author1 about his teaching experiences in the offshore programme between December 2019 and August 2021, with reference to Korthagen's core reflection model. The reflections revealed that he not only identified but strengthened his confidence in his core qualities through offshore teaching. This strengthened confidence in his core qualities also helped him to negotiate with the new problematic situations created by the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released the latest results of its triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing. What followed was a flurry of media reports in the participant countries about the 2018 PISA results that were interpretive rather than descriptive. Whilst there is a considerable body of literature describing PISA's impact on education policies, there are fewer studies that examine how PISA data is presented to the public by the media and how this contributes to the construction of policy truths. As part of a broader study of policy landscapes in the Asia Pacific region, this paper provides a critical analysis of the mediatisation of the 2018 PISA results in Australia and Singapore. It will be demonstrated that in Australia, much of the reporting was characterised by panic, whereas in Singapore the reporting was much more measured, exhibiting a stoicism. Drawing on a corpus of articles published in Australian and Singaporean newspapers in December 2019, and informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the analysis will make visible how dominant discourses used by the media operated as regimes of truth to advance neoliberal imperatives.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social workers in Australia, posttraumatic growth (PTG), and the preparedness of social workers in Israeli hospitals for the next pandemic.

Medical regulators protect the public from unsafe, unwell, or unscrupulous medical practitioners. To facilitate a swift response to serious allegations, many regulators are equipped with far-reaching emergency powers to immediately suspend, or impose conditions on, medical practitioners' registration before facts are proven. Failing to take urgent action may expose the public to ongoing avoidable harm and may erode public trust in the profession. Equally, imposing immediate action in response to allegations that are not subsequently proven can precipitously and irreparably injure a practitioner's career and emotional wellbeing. This is the second of two articles published in the Journal of Law and Medicine that explores the emerging jurisprudence in relation to these emergency regulatory powers. This article compares the approaches to immediate action in seven countries, providing insights for policy-makers and decision-makers into how modern regulatory frameworks attempt to balance the inherent tensions between the profession, the public and the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dearth of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) is a global problem. Integrating CAMHS in primary care has been offered as a solution. We sampled integrated care perspectives from colleagues around the world. Our findings include various models of integrated care namely: the stepped care model in Australia; shared care in the United Kingdom (UK) and Spain; school-based collaborative care in Qatar, Singapore and the state of Texas in the US; collaborative care in Canada, Brazil, US, and Uruguay; coordinated care in the US; and, developing collaborative care models in low-resource settings, like Kenya and Micronesia. These findings provide insights into training initiatives necessary to build CAMHS workforce capacity using integrated care models, each with the ultimate goal of improving access to care. Despite variations and progress in implementing integrated care models internationally, common challenges exist: funding within complex healthcare systems, limited training mechanisms, and geopolitical/policy issues. Supportive healthcare policy, robust training initiatives, ongoing quality improvement and measurement of outcomes across programs would provide data-driven support for the expansion of integrated care and ensure its sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productive approaches to studying (deep and strategic learning) are associated with a variety of favourable academic outcomes, and may be of particular importance for students in multifaceted and complex disciplines such as occupational therapy. To explore associations between student characteristics and their dominant approaches to studying in two samples of occupational therapy students: a national sample of Norwegian first-year students, and an international sample of students in different year cohorts (Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Norway). A total of 180 (national sample) and 665 (international sample) students were included in the study. Approaches to studying were measured with the Approaches to Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). Data were analyzed with adjusted multinomial regression analyses. Age, gender and prior higher education were not associated with the dominant study approach. More time spent on independent study (international sample: OR = 1.07/1.08, p < 0.01/<0.001) and having current study program as the top priority line of education at enrolment (national sample: OR = 2.89, p < 0.05) predicted productive study approaches. Factors such as age, gender and prior higher education seem to be of limited importance for understanding students' dominant approaches to studying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article unpacks the ideology of "cosmopolitan leadership," a leadership theory that has surfaced from a qualitative study that examines the comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools: one international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia. This article unpacks the idea of "cosmopolitan leadership" and the features of this distinctive form of leadership in institutionalizing GCE in the respective contexts and schools. School leaders in both contexts, took an active role in driving GCE in the school, through the introduction of the international curricular model and by keeping themselves abreast with global curriculum initiatives and through curriculum innovation. These curricula initiatives assisted in the take-up of GCE that enabled the schools to attain their vision of developing global citizens. These were aligned to the schools' as well as national policies and evidenced innovative approaches to address the complexity of contemporary diversity, as well as the demands of the global world. This response was situated in multiple influential contexts, which included the national contexts of the two schools, encompassing the nature and geopolitical positioning of each society, the provision of schooling, the nature of schools and the specific policies governing the two schools, and their market contexts, which have influenced their approaches towards GCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While co-creation has long been promoted as a theoretical paradigm of strategic communication to understand the shared meaning-making between practitioners and public, it is rarely studied as a fitting pedagogical component when examining the interaction between strategic communication educators and students. In the wake of migration from face-to-face teaching to distance learning following COVID-19, we call for co-creation to be used within the teaching of strategic communication and understand how it is enacted in tertiary education practice. We reflected on two case studies, one from Singapore and one from Australia, to determine how meaningful learning is (re)constructed by taking a co-creational approach to teaching. We argue that a significant potential is available to mobilise students' agency, creativity, and ownership of learning through the digitally mediated, co-creational practices of students generating content, teams collaborating, and practitioners broadly engaging in various ways. However, we also acknowledge the barriers to normalising co-creational value because of the power imbalance between learning participants, student expertise levels, and institutional resources support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Filial piety is a Confucian concept derived from Chinese culture, which advocates a set of moral norms, values, and practices of respect and caring for one's parents. According to the dual-factor model of filial piety, reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety are two dimensions of filial piety. Reciprocal filial piety is concerned with sincere affection toward one's parent and a longstanding positive parent-child relationship, while authoritarian filial piety is about obedience to social obligations to one's parent, often by suppressing one's own wishes to conform the demands of the parent. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the moderating effect of culture on the relationships between filial piety and palliative care knowledge. The secondary aim is to investigate whether filial piety is a universal construct across Singaporean and Australian cultures. A total of 508 participants living in Singapore and Australia were surveyed between May and October 2020. The final sample comprised of 406 participants, with 224 Singaporeans and 182 Australians. There were 289 females (71.1%), 115 males (28.3%), and two unspecified gender (0.6%) in the sample, with an average age of 27.27 years (SD = 9.79, range = 18–73). Results indicated a significant effect of culture on authoritarian filial piety and palliative care knowledge. Singaporeans showed higher authoritarian filial piety and higher palliative care knowledge than Australians. However, no effect of culture was found on reciprocal filial piety. Overall, no significant correlation existed between palliative care knowledge and reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety. For Singaporeans, a weak negative correlation was found between palliative care knowledge and authoritarian filial piety. In contrast, Australians and Singaporeans indicated a positive, moderate correlation between reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety. Further, culture moderated the relationship between authoritarian filial piety and palliative care knowledge. High authoritarian filial piety was associated with increased palliative care knowledge among Australians, while high authoritarian filial piety was associated with decreased palliative care knowledge among Singaporeans. The results support the conceptualization of filial piety as a possible psychological universal construct. In addition, the results point out an important implication that public health programs should target the appropriate filial piety types to enhance palliative care knowledge among Singaporeans and Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between workforce competence, migration, and quality improvement in the Asia-Pacific through analysis of Early Childhood Education (ECE) policy texts from three East Asia Summit countries. Content (word level) analysis of salient policy texts was undertaken to address two questions: How are culture and diversity "conceptualized" in these texts? How are diverse educators "positioned" in these texts? We show that, despite differing historical trajectories of ECE, policy frameworks in all three countries fail to sufficiently acknowledge the potential contribution of migrant educators to quality improvement initiatives. We conclude by calling for greater attention to workforce mobility and diversity in ECE policies, and for further research into the untapped competence of migrant educators.

In this paper, we discuss core ideas arising from research undertaken in a Leverhulme Trust (IN2016-002) funded international network project. The project examined youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces within and across six countries (Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Lebanon and Singapore). Arising from interactions with activists and educators and by reviewing literature, we argue that four areas are important for assisting a critical analysis of the fundamental complexities that researchers, teachers, youth workers and youth themselves, are grappling with within and through their activism. These areas that address ways of characterising and developing the relationship between education and activism focus on: engagement with context; engagement with meaning; engagement with diversity; and engagement in reflexivity. We do not present these areas as a simplistic typology; each involves complexities that cannot be easily or readily resolved.

Suellen Shay's work on higher education curricula foregrounds the importance of professional curricula which face inwards to disciplines and outwards to practice. This paper builds on her framing of professional curricula, distinctive in the differentiated knowledge base and the social relations which legitimate them. I extend Shay's work deeper into the internal governance structures underpinning curriculum decisions in engineering. Two dimensions of governance are explored: central control from the Faculty of Engineering over its departments; and the authority of individuals in department-level curriculum and accreditation roles over their colleagues. The empirical focus is on curricula reform towards 'graduate attributes' in engineering education, through a comparative study of eight universities in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia. The findings show that research-intensive universities are shielded from the full implications of accreditation requirements, while teaching-intensive universities are more likely to invest in developing the governance processes and systems demanded by professional bodies.

This paper examines the affordances of physical objects (e.g. apparatus, models, manipulatives) as they were used by teachers and students to make meaning in coordination with their speech and gestures. Despite the pervasive use of physical objects as material and tactile resources in hands-on investigations or demonstrations, there have been few attempts to analyze their role and function in meaning-making, in the same way, that researchers have previously done for other modes of representation such as speech, written text, diagram and gesture. Using social semiotics as a theoretical framework, we conceptualise physical objects as a semiotic mode with a particular affordance for making meaning that involves embodied actions and manipulation of tools. Based on a multimodal discourse analysis of numerous classroom situations, we illustrate how physical objects as a mode have four unique affordances for meaning-making in science classrooms. These affordances are: (a) enacting material interaction, (b) providing evidential meaning, (c) orientating three-dimensional spatial meaning and (d) sensitising experiential meaning. The implication of why we should use physical objects to support or value-add science meaning-making is then discussed.

Purpose: Through description and consideration of 12 models developed as part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), a new model of successful school leadership is developed. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is necessarily descriptive in nature. For the first time, 12 ISSPP models are described together, and these descriptions are then used inductively to create a new successful school leadership model. Findings: The open systems approach adopted depicts schools as a continuous cycle of input-transformation-output with feedback loops that inform each stage of the cycle. The inputs are the variables that lead to transformation. The transformation stage is the actions or processes that individuals, groups and organisations engage in because of the inputs, and these lead to a range of student and school outcomes. Feedback loops connect the stages, and the whole model is open to the influence of five contextual forces: economic, political, socio-cultural, technological and system, institutional and educational. Originality/value: Models are an important way to make sense of complex phenomena. A new model of successful school leadership, with an open systems approach, provides a different frame to consider the findings of the ISSPP and potentially allows the ISSPP research to inform practice and connect with other school leadership views in new ways.

Background: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. This study specifically aims to identify solutions to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the global ageing workforce. Methods: We present 15 case studies from different countries and report on what those countries are doing or not doing to address the impact of COVID-19 on ageing workers. Results: We provide examples of how COVID-19 influences older people's ability to work and stay healthy, and offer case studies of what governments, organizations or individuals can do to help ensure older people can obtain, maintain and, potentially, expand their current work. Case studies come from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Across the countries, the impact of COVID-19 on older workers is shown as widening inequalities. A particular challenge has arisen because of a large proportion of older people, often with limited education and working in the informal sector within rural areas, e.g. in Nigeria, Thailand and China. Remedies to the particular disadvantage experienced by older workers in the context of COVID are presented. These range from funding support to encouraging business continuity, innovative product and service developments, community action, new business models and localized, national and international actions. The case studies can be seen as frequently fitting within strategies that have been proven to work in reducing ageism within the workplace. They include policy and laws that have increased benefits to workers during lockdowns (most countries); educational activities such as coaching seniorpreneurship (e,g, Australia); intergenerational contact interventions such as younger Thai people who moved back to rural areas and sharing their digital knowledge with older people and where older people reciprocate by teaching the younger people farming knowledge. Conclusion: Global sharing of this knowledge among international, national and local governments and organizations, businesses, policy makers and health and human resources experts will further understanding of the issues that are faced by older workers. This will facilitate the replication or scalability of solutions as called for in the WHO call to combat ageism in 2021. We suggest that policy makers, business owners, researchers and international organisations build on the case studies by investing in evidence-based strategies to create inclusive workplaces. Such action will thus help to challenge ageism, reduce inequity, improve business continuity and add to the quality of life of older workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notions of citizenship and citizenship education that were traditionally related to mainly nation-centric agendas are increasingly inadequate in preparing young citizens for the dynamism of societies and complexities of social issues stimulated by globalization. Depending on the political and social ideologies within and across societies, different citizenship education curricula are designed differently to achieve these goals. This article uses the cases of Australia and Singapore to discuss how different forms of citizenship education can contribute to an ongoing construction of a more just and peaceful world. Through the analysis of the social science curricula in the two countries, three key factors that can influence the value of democratic citizenship education in developing 'active' and 'informed' citizens were identified. First, the extent to which democratic values are referenced as the basis for citizenship, hence supporting an understanding of 'politics' in contexts of diversity. Second, the balance to be sought between development of competencies to achieve nationalistic goals and responding effectively to the dynamism of contemporary societies. Third, the extent to which curriculum arrangements support democratic citizenship development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted countries across the globe. The pandemic has created a completely new teaching-learning environment of interaction for early childhood educators. In many countries, face-to-face teaching has been replaced by remote teaching, while in others, there have been intermittent lockdowns and limited interruptions to regular teaching norms. Given the play-based nature of preschool teaching-learning activities in most countries, educators are required to reimagine the sociocultural relationships to their pedagogical practices in their everyday teaching-learning contexts. This paper sheds light on educators' experiences and the dramatic shift in their indoor-outdoor teaching-learning environment due to the evolving health measures. The study draws on notions of teachers' identities and Vygotsky's cultural-historical concept of social situation of development (Vygotsky, 1994) to capture the new forms of relationships that early childhood educators experienced with their pedagogical environments across different countries during the pandemic. Data were collected from preschool teachers across five countries--Australia, Bangladesh, Norway, Singapore and India using online surveys which included open- and close-ended questions. Findings reveal the on-ground realities and teachers' adaptations to new pedagogies emerging across the five countries. The new digital environments provided an equally new dimension for change. These changes were seen in interactions, relationships within the everyday pedagogical contexts, as well as the shifting physical and social environment of early years educators.

The consumption of sugar and non-nutritive sweeteners has been associated with poor health outcomes. The aim of this paper was to provide a comparison of the range of sweetened or flavoured beverages between two high-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region: Australia and Singapore. Following the FoodTrackTM methodology, nutrition, labelling, and price data were collected from major Australian and Singaporean supermarket chains and convenience stores. The nutrient profiles of products were tested for differences using Kruskal−Wallis and Mann−Whitney U tests. The greatest number of products collected in Australia were from the ‘carbonated beverages’ category (n = 215, 40%), and in Singapore the greatest number of products were from the ‘tea and coffee ready-to-drink’ category (n = 182, 35%). There were more calorically sweetened beverages in Singapore compared with Australia (n = 462/517 vs. n = 374/531, p < 0.001). For calorically sweetened products, the median energy of Singaporean products was significantly higher than Australian products (134 kJ vs. 120 kJ per 100 mL, p = 0.009). In Australia, 52% of sweetened or flavoured beverages displayed a front-of-pack nutrient signposting logo, compared with 34% of sweetened or flavoured beverages in Singapore. These findings also indicate that the consumption of just one serving of calorically sweetened carbonated beverages or energy drinks would exceed the WHO maximum daily free sugar recommendations.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant morbidity and mortality globally. As vaccines have been developed under expedited conditions, their safety and efficacy are being questioned by some populations leading to vaccine hesitancy, resulting in delayed vaccine uptake and herd immunity. This study aims to adopt a combination of Health Belief Model and other independent risk factors associated with high vaccine acceptance., Methods: An anonymized cross-sectional survey was distributed between 15 January and 3 February 2021 across Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia among adult respondents through a certified online panel. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were carried out to assess perception constructs followed by multivariate regression modelling to assess factors associated with high vaccine acceptance against SARS&#95;CoV-2., Results: A total of 3,133 anonymised participants from Singapore (n = 1,009), Australia (n = 1,118) and Hong Kong (n = 1,006) completed the survey. While age and gender were not significantly associated, Asian ethnicity, current smokers and self-efficacy were significant associated factors of increased vaccine acceptance. While specific practices like taking micronutrients more frequently, cleaning and disinfecting their house more often were positively associated with increased vaccine acceptance, seeking medical help for COVID-19 symptoms like loss of smell/taste and overall COVID-19 knowledge score were negatively associated. Increased likelihood of vaccine acceptance was seen among those that obtained COVID-19 information less frequently and used digital media or non-health-related sources like influencers as a source of information. Among the eight perception constructs, perceived susceptibility and perceived response efficacy were positively associated, while perceived barriers were negatively associated with high vaccine acceptance., Conclusion: While demographic parameters have weak association with vaccine acceptance, perceptions and practices parameters can help to better understand and influence vaccine acceptance. Study findings should provide guidance on the risk communication strategy to enhance vaccine acceptance for vaccination and boosters against new SARS-CoV-2 variants., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)