Culturally Responsive Teaching and Training for Pre-Service Special Educators in Higher Education

In the field of public education, special education teacher preparation is one of the most critical areas of teacher preparation in higher education, given the mandate of FAPE under the IDEA. Additionally, teacher preparation programming that provides pre-service teachers with the knowledge, skills, and clinical experiences that can meet the learning-diverse needs of students is of paramount importance. However, teacher preparation programs often focus on meeting accreditation standards, job placement and service opportunities while leaving the teaching of diversity in special education as an add-on to be fulfilled by service departments, humanities courses, and/or social science electives. In order for universities and institutions of higher education to fulfill its mandate of teacher-training in special education, with a focus beyond the disability, they must adopt a curricula revision that includes culturally responsive teaching and diversity.

Dementia Care Involvement and Training Needs of Social Services Directors in U.S. Nursing Homes

This study describes social services directors’ involvement in dementia care in U.S. nursing homes, focusing on interest in and needs for dementia care training. Respondents were 841 social service directors from U.S. nursing homes. We found that 87% of social service departments engaged in cognitive assessment; 59% of social services directors were strongly interested in dementia care training, and 23% would need up to 10 hours of preparation time or would not be able to train staff on dementia-related care. Racial minority background, fewer years of experience in nursing homes, and barriers to staffing predicted strong interest in dementia care training. These findings demonstrate social services directors’ active involvement in dementia care and need for training.

How does leader conscientiousness influence frontline staff under conditions of serious anxiety? An empirical study from integrated resorts (IRs)

PurposeThe objective of this study was to improve understanding of frontline staff's subjective happiness and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating the roles of employees' busy mindset and leader conscientiousness.Design/methodology/approachThe link between employee anxiety and subjective happiness was also explored, and the cross-level mediating effect of employee anxiety was tested using a multilevel design. A survey of 373 frontline staffers and 74 team leaders in the integrated resorts (IRs) was conducted in three waves: April (Time 1), May (Time 2) and June (Time 3) in 2020. The data were analysed with SPSS and Mplus using a hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) method.FindingsThe results indicated that during the COVID-19 pandemic, a busy mindset increased frontline staff's anxiety and thus decreased their subjective happiness, and leader conscientiousness remedied the effect of anxiety on subjective happiness.Practical implicationsThe findings are relevant to frontline staffers, team leaders in the hospitality industry and corporate service departments. Against the background of COVID-19, conscientious leaders can significantly help employees to overcome their anxiety and insecurity and improve their subjective happiness, answering the urgent call to deal with the challenges of the new work–life environment.Originality/valueThe study differs from previous other studies in two dimensions: First, the authors explored the interactions of the affective events from the cross-level perspectives, i.e. both team level and individual level. Second, the authors conducted this research on the mental issues of the hospitality frontline staffers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains a black box to be explored.

The management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service post-2009 to the 2018 era

Background: Poor management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service departments is on the rise. The management of disciplinary cases, amongst other things, has drawn considerable criticism from within the public sector, various media outlets, interest groups and even opposition movements. The government has adopted progressive discipline prescripts to inculcate and promote a culture of professional ethics and accountability. In the workplace, objectivity, consistency and fairness are an important part of healthy employer–employee ties.Aim: The study sought to obtain an in-depth understanding of disciplinary cases and describe the challenges senior managers face when managing disciplinary cases in the public service departments.Setting: Both the national and provincial public service departments of South Africa.Methods: The study adopted qualitative modernistic research approach. Semi-structured electronic questionnaire was used to collect views from 751 senior managers.Results: Public service employees are deprived of organisational justice because of weaknesses associated with the discipline management. This is because management of disciplinary cases and sanctions in most national and provincial departments in the public service is perilous and incongruent with the discipline management prescripts.Conclusion: Based on the findings, the current practices do not deter future violations of discipline management prescripts; inconsistent, unfairness and injustice application of sanctions and management of cases and future misconduct in the workplace. Therefore, the authors recommend the use of team-based and progressive discipline to ensure that staff contribute effectively, efficiently and ethically to the goals of the government. The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on human resource management and organisational behaviour and provides a platform that broadens an understanding of the amplifying toxic management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service context.

Stevenson, Olive

Olive Stevenson (1930–2013) was an internationally recognized social work practitioner, educator, scholar, public servant, and consultant. She is particularly remembered for her contribution to the Maria Colwell Enquiry Report in 1974, which investigated a child’s death at the hands of her stepfather. The report was the first of what later became known as Serious Case Reviews. Stevenson authored a minority report, expressing dissent from some of the main report’s conclusions and strongly supporting social workers. This was much appreciated by practitioner social workers and leaders of Social Service departments at the time. She is also regarded by many in the United Kingdom as the leading social work academic of her generation over a 50-year career during a period of considerable change and challenge for the social work profession.

Structured Reporting in Musculoskeletal Radiology

Musculoskeletal (MSK) radiologists are predominantly consultants in the service departments of health care. Unlike the manufacturing industry, quality controls are difficult to institute in a service industry and more variability is expected. Structured reporting is a unique way to institute quality standards, and by using the checklist approach with uniform terminology, it can lead to more homogeneity and consistency of reporting, concise lexicon use within and across practices, minimization of errors, enhancement of divisional and departmental branding, improvement of interdisciplinary communications, and future data mining. We share our experience from more than a decade of structured reporting in the domain of MSK radiology, our practice standards, and how reporting has evolved in our MSK practice. Further discussions include future directions aided by machine learning approaches with augmented reality and the possibility of virtual fellowship and training using consistent lexicons and structured reporting.

Library Strategy and Collaboration Across the College Ecosystem: Results from a National Survey of Community College Library Directors

How can the library be best positioned to continue enabling student and institutional success? The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem research initiative seeks to examine how student-facing service departments—including academic libraries—are organized, funded, and staffed at community and technical colleges across the country. In February 2021, we surveyed 321 community college library directors to provide the community with a snapshot of current service provision, leadership perspectives on the impact of COVID-19, and challenges faced in making decisions and navigating change.

AUTOMATION OF WORK ORGANIZATION SUPPORT SERVICES FOR USERS OF AUTOMATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS OF TRANSPORTATION COMPANIES

The article discusses a way to automate the organization of the work of the support service for users of automated control systems (ACS) of transport enterprises. In the context of digitalization, constant improvement, expanding the functionality of such automated control systems, and an increase in the number of their users, the urgency of the problem is beyond doubt. The work of the support service for users of the automated control system of transport enterprises is presented as a queuing system. The possibility of using various methods to solve the problem is analyzed. A description of the work of the support service, methods of forming its departments are given. The incidents she deals with are classified. An algorithm for the formation of support service departments has been developed. It is proposed to solve this problem using a genetic algorithm. The algorithm and the concepts that characterize it are adapted to achieve the goal stated in the article. Crossover variants are presented that can be used by the genetic algorithm to solve various classes of problems. With the help of the developed software, modeling of the organization of the work of the support service was carried out using the algorithm for the distribution of employees. A comparative analysis of the results of modeling the work of departments with various methods of their formation, including those obtained using a genetic algorithm, has been carried out. The analysis showed the effectiveness of the use of the genetic algorithm when planning the work of the relevant departments. The possibility of adapting the developed algorithm for planning the work of personnel involved in the technical maintenance of the infrastructure of urban rail transport systems has been demonstrated. This task is similar to that considered in this article, since in many cases it becomes necessary or possible to use employees with different competencies to perform only one type of work.

Municipal infrastructure management and its impact on service delivery in the City of Ekurhuleni

Background: Property, plant and equipment (PPE) represent a significant portion of the asset base of any municipality and thus a municipality has a moral and legislative duty to safeguard these assets against damage and/or wilful neglect.Aim: This article explored how infrastructure management within the City of Ekurhuleni (COE), Gauteng province in the Republic of South Africa, can assist in the provision of sustainable services and how the city’s infrastructure can contribute to social and economic development of its communities. This article endeavours to indicate how the COE manages its infrastructure in terms of three service delivery departments as a sample of the entire municipality. This article focuses on the improvement of infrastructure management in general and at the COE, in particular. It further aims to indicate how service departments can go about in employing asset-management guidelines whilst improving governance strategies.Methods: This study followed a mixed-method approach and the system’s theory served as the research methodology. The study covered a 5-year period from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019 financial years and employed benchmarking ratios and calculations to indicate how best the city can improve its management of infrastructure, and measure its performance against those of equally sized metropolitan municipalities.Results: The findings of the study reveal that even though the city is doing well in terms of certain aspects of service delivery, there still remain many issues regarding the management of infrastructure that impede its ability to provide sustainable services that can ultimately lead to economic growth and development.Conclusion: Recommendations to the city include the upskilling of especially the senior management in terms of the critical role they play in maintaining the city’s infrastructure assets. Another recommendation is that politicians do not only think in terms of adding to the city’s current infrastructure whilst not attending to the maintenance of existing assets and most critically, the city does not follow an integrated approach in terms of the comprehensive infrastructure programme.