Shattered dreams, reclaimed futures: social stratification affecting at-risk and out-of-school children and addressing strategies for reintegration into formal schooling

There are many current initiatives concerned with achieving institutional changes to curricula. These include, inter alia, various versions of online learning, distance learning and work-based learning. This paper considers blending academic curricula and qualifications with professional body curricula and qualifications as a possible way of achieving cost-effective curricula change. The author’s home institution currently delivers Academic Qualifications in Facilities Management (FM); a BSc (Hons) and an MSc. The institution also delivers the Professional Qualifications for the relevant professional body, the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM), at levels 4, 5 and 6.All qualifications and awards are delivered by web-based distance learning. This paper analyses the content and assessment of the Professional Qualification and compares the Professional Qualification with the equivalent Academic Qualification. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis the paper finds that the Professional Qualification is more challenging and more rigorous than the Academic Qualification. The expectations of the learners from the professional body are higher than the expectations of the students from the university. The implications of this finding are then considered. Given that the Professional Qualification is more challenging and rigorous, could the institutional curricula be changed so that the Professional Qualification could be integrated into an Academic Qualification, thus opening a vocational route for a degree? The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the financial costs and other implications of such an institutional curricula change.

The research explored the impact of frequent relocation on professional development and skill acquisition, focusing on the nomadic lifestyle's influence on career growth of employees. The research enhances the understanding of how mobility affects the employee’s long-term skill-building, career progression, and career satisfaction in food and beverages and in the textile Industry of Pakistan. The research expands on the difficulties faced by employees in integrating into new organizational cultures and teams, as well as the impact of mobility on their professional identity and skills development. The research is primary and conducted with pure qualitative methodology and an exploratory inductive approach. The researcher adopts the Interpretivism research philosophy to explore the phenomena and the dimensions of frequent mobility with its impacts on professional development and skills development. The researcher adapted a Phenomenological research design based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), to explore the context of the nomadic lifestyle's influence on the long-term skills development approach. The researcher conducted 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews with employees of the food beverages and textile industries of Pakistan. The researcher performed data analysis using NVIVO 14.0 to generate the coding from written transcriptions and based on the coding the themes were generated. The researcher explains the key themes that emerged from the interviews, including the impact on career stability and progression, skill development and adaptability, networking, and relationship building of employees. The other themes include professional identity and expertise, work-life balance, and personal well-being are also affected due to frequent mobility and relocation to other cities and regional offices. The research findings reveal that frequent relocation enhances adaptability, cross- functional and cross-cultural competence, and diverse skill acquisition, it also disrupts career stability and progress. The research results explore valuable insights into the complexities of a nomadic career and provide practical recommendations for organizations and professional development. The research also recommends that to overcome the challenges of low frequent relocation having positive impacts on employee professional development and career growth. The research is useful for industry and policymakers to analyze the issues of frequent mobility influences on career trajectories professional development and along with employee morale and satisfaction.

Questionnaire responses from 338 secondary school teachers were analysed to relate teachers' professional characteristics (comprising teaching experience, professional development, and academic and professional qualifications) to teacher professionalism, defined in terms of the two dimensions, teaching competence and commitment to teaching. The Professional Development and Teacher Professionalism Instrument (PDTPI) was devised to measure professional development and teacher professionalism. Inferential statistical techniques employed in the study showed that the variable, teaching experience, was not related to teacher professionalism. Professional development, on the other hand, was found to be an important variable, with the mean teacher professionalism scores between the “high” and “low” professional development groups being significantly different. The study also found that academic qualification was not related to teacher professionalism. However, teachers who had higher professional qualifi...

OVER THE PAST 15 YEARS, cash transfer programs have become a core component of antipoverty policy strategies in the developing world. In Latin America in particular, cash transfer programs have adopted a multidimensional approach to poverty, whereby income support is provided together with simultaneous interventions in health, education, and nutrition. This "human development" approach to poverty reduction places a strong emphasis on tackling the intergenerational transmission of poverty through human capital investment (Levy and Schady 2013; Nio-Zaraza 2011; Levy 2006). Mexico's Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera, Brazil's Bolsa Familia, Colombia's Familias en Accin, and Chile Solidario are prominent examples of this antipoverty policy framework.

The study investigates how social entrepreneurship through social responsibility actions can contribute to the development of the professional qualification and building social capital, as well as analyze the impacts of reducing social exclusion and creating job opportunities for those benefited from the professional training courses. The research and analyzed field of this study is the Professional Training Center—(CFP) of the University of Fortaleza, a non-profit institution, located in the northeast of Brazil and maintained by the Edson Queiroz Foundation that promotes free professional qualification courses to the low-income communities. The hypothesis that guided this research is the possibility that the social qualification projects derived from social entrepreneurship actions, can be an instrument of social inclusion, through the qualification and creation of new opportunities for insertion in the labor market. The methodology applied in this research has an exploratory nature, which aims to bring new knowledge about social entrepreneurship and social responsibility of the universities. The descriptive character aims to understand and list the contributions of social entrepreneurship in the formation of social capital and to analyze the impacts of the social transformation in the communities inserted in a company context. In this sense, the University of Fortaleza offers professional training that contributes effectively to the progress of the local economic growth. International and national references are used as theoretical resources to develop and delimit the theories of Social Entrepreneurship, Social Responsibility, Human Capital and development in order to understand the possibility of the universities to be social entrepreneurs and transforming agent to economic development. It identified that social entrepreneurship has great potential to be reproduced with the poor communities and social exclusion, with the possibility to promote professional qualification and insertion in the labor market and to promote income generation for the community. The results obtained show that the objectives proposed for a professional qualification, namely, qualification and insertion in the labor market of the low-income population were accomplished, competitive equality derived from the professional training, with the insertion of the actors that received training and increased income. It is noticed that the free professional qualification offered by the University of Fortaleza, promotes the inclusion and emancipation of the people in the situation of social risk.

Objective-This study examined the individual-level factors impacting pregnant women's access to mental health treatment for depression.Methods-A total of 1,416 pregnant women receiving prenatal care completed measures of depressive symptomatology, willingness to seek treatment for depression or anxiety, and perceived barriers to seeking such care.Results-Women with Beck Depression Inventory scores {greater than or equal to; ≥}16 (indicating possible depression) (N=183) were more likely than women with lower scores (N=1,233) to identify the following barriers: cost, lack of insurance, lack of transportation, long waits for treatment, previous bad experience with mental health care, and not knowing where to go for treatment.Lower income was correlated with increased endorsement of cost and transportation as barriers. Conclusions-Resultssuggest that addressing financial and logistical barriers through changes in mental health services and policy will improve access to care for antenatal depression.However, attending to these issues alone will not address additional important barriers to care such as lack of trust.Antenatal depression affects approximately 10% of women during pregnancy (1), and rates among low-income pregnant women may be as high as 27.6% (2).It is associated with psychological and physical morbidity, including poor birth outcomes (3), and increased rates of suicide (4).Study of perinatal mental health services is critical both because of these negative sequelae and because the perinatal period presents a unique window of opportunity for more frequent contact with the health system.Preventive and care coordination resources are often available during pregnancy, although they may not be available at other times.This is especially true for low-income women, the majority of whom receive their health care exclusively in the obstetric setting (5).Despite the increased contact of pregnant women with the health system, low rates of antenatal depression detection have been well documented (6).Moreover, although there is evidence that treatment is effective (7,8), many pregnant women with depression go untreated (9), and poor women are particularly unlikely to access mental health treatment

This paper ascertained the influence of the area of specialisation, teaching experience, professional qualification, and academic qualification on CRS teachers’ content knowledge. Cross-sectional survey was the design employed to conduct the study. The population comprised 3,523 individuals including both CRS teachers and students from form 1 and 2. The study utilised a sample size 423 made up of 23 teachers and 400 students. The students were sampled using the proportionate random sampling procedure from a population of 3,500 whereas all the teachers were selected with the census method from eight senior high schools. Data from CRS teachers and students were collected using questionnaires. The results showed that teachers of CRS have a high level of content knowledge even though more than half of them did not specialise in religion. It was found that there was no statistically significant effect of CRS teachers’ area of specialisation, teaching experience, professional qualification, and academic qualification on their Content knowledge, F (16, 6) = 1.097, p = .489, partial ƞ2 = .245. There was a significant interaction effect of teachers’ area of specialisation and professional qualification on their content knowledge F (1, 6) = 0.00, p = .001, partial ƞ2 = .000. This indicates that the effect of area of specialisation on a teachers’ content knowledge depends on their level of professional qualification. There was also a significant interaction effect of teachers’ professional qualification and academic qualification on their content knowledge F (1, 6) = 0.00, p = .000, partial ƞ2 = .000, implying that, the effect of professional qualification on content knowledge depends on the teacher’s level of academic qualification. It is recommended that the Ghana Education Service in the Eastern region ensure regular workshops and upgrading are provided for teachers of CRS despite their high level of content knowledge. This is because more than half of the teachers did not specialise in religion and may encounter some bottlenecks in their lesson delivery.

Quality education comprises of so many factors, such as teachers' professional and academic qualifications. This study deals with the quantitative part of a larger study that looks at factors that influence the quality of education in private schools as well as in public schools in the Malakand Division. The study's sample consisted of four hundred and eighty teachers from forty-eight randomly selected schools (fifty percent public and fifty percent private sector) in Malakand. A survey questionnaire technique was used for the collection of data, which was then analyzed using inferential statistics and descriptive statistics. Results indicate that teachers at public secondary schools had higher academic qualifications, more teaching experience and were on average older in comparison to private school teachers. In light of the recruitment guidelines of the National Education Policy (2017), the paper recommended that teachers in both public and private schools improve their professional qualifications as well as academic qualifications.

Despite considerable investments in transforming the physical education (PE) curriculum and improving PE quality in primary schools, reports indicate that quality implementation is mostly impeded by systemic barriers, especially at the administrative level. It is suggested that the vision of propelling quality PE is in the hands of administrators, especially principals. However, this role has been previously overlooked. This study explores the principals’ attitude towards PE implementation, specifically by examining four implementation domains: a) supervision and monitoring (S&M); b) professional development (PD); c) support & allocation (S&A); and d) resource and curriculum (R&C). Seven personal variables (e.g., gender, years of teaching experience, working experience as a principal, type of school, academic qualification, professional qualification, physical activity level) were used to compare attitudes among groups across implementation domains. The ratio of 3:1:1 stratified random sampling was carried out to determine the sample size of 250 schools out of a total of 372 schools from five randomly selected districts in Selangor. Descriptive statistics showed that administrators generally had a low positive attitude towards the implementation of PE (mean= 3.88, SD= .604) but still being in a favourable range. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the attitude in carrying out PE implementation was significantly different (p < .05) among personal variable groups: a) type of schools; b) academic qualification; c) professional qualification; and d) physical level activity. The school leaders’ attitude towards PE implementation may be dependent on the investigated variables which influence the development and sustainability of quality PE programme.

The object of this study is to contribute to the debate within the sociology of education surrounding contemporary challenges regarding the guarantee of the right of education to children and adolescents in Brazil. It is based on the premise that when the relationship with formal schooling is threatened by their social, geographical, family, or even educational contexts, it often leads them to temporarily or permanently leave school, which reveals a sociological agenda of investigation. Keeping in mind the significant advancements in formal education in Brazil, it is especially important to better investigate the reasons behind the fact that approximately 1.5 million children and adolescents between 4 and 17 years old are not attending school. The analysis of the impacts of social exclusion on Brazilian childhoods and youths brings relevant elements to the construction of the idea of school exclusion as a phenomenon produced by the perverse effects of social inequality on peripheral school trajectories. In addition, this work focused on a case study carried out in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro through a social project that worked over three years with the active search for children and adolescents in a situation of school disengagement in partnership with the management municipal. The project identified 23,735 cases across the city and produced a detailed database on each of them through a fieldwork strategy, mediation with public policies and social mobilization. When investigating the situations mapped by the project, it was possible to carry out an analysis that pointed out the profile of this public and inventoried the situations of school exclusion, indicating its relationship with the aspects of the broader social exclusion that is manifested by constraints to other fundamental human rights, such as the rights to the city, to security, to housing, transportation, health, assistance, food, work, culture, and ultimately, to the right to one's own life and physical integrity, among others. From a systemic perspective, the fragility of the relationship between peripheral families and the public educational and assistance systems has proved to be an exclusion factor, central in the study. The problems related to the provision of school places suitable to family needs, constraints related to circulation in the city territories, deficient family income and extreme poverty were highlighted. Thus, the work points out issues that contribute to the improvement of social and educational policies, inserting itself into a debate about the importance of integration between public policies in the direction of strengthening a comprehensive protection network for children and adolescents, under the legal framework supported by the Brazilian Federal Constitution (1988) and its legacy of affirming citizenship for all. The right to education appears as an axis around other human rights gravitate, functioning as an important indicator of life quality or social exclusion of children, adolescents and their families.

This study investigated exploring the influence of continuous professional development (CPD) on teacher competency (TC) and assessing how school leadership support (SLS) moderates this relationship among junior high school teachers in the Amansie Central District of Ghana. The research used a convergent mixed-methods design. Quantitative data were collected through standardized questionnaires and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with 10,000 bootstrap samples, while non-parametric tests such as the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon H-test were also applied. Qualitative responses were gathered through open-ended questions and analyzed thematically. Results showed that many teachers in the district had high levels of competency, especially in teaching methods, classroom management, assessment, and subject knowledge. Teachers who participated in CPD activities demonstrated stronger professional practices. The study also revealed that SLS positively moderated the relationship between CPD and TC. When school leaders actively supported CPD efforts by sharing information, giving encouragement, and providing resources, the influence of CPD on competency became stronger. Yet, this moderating effect was also minimal, mainly due to inconsistent support across schools. Furthermore, there were no discernible differences in competency between male and female teachers, indicating that both sexes function equally in the classroom. The main challenges for effective CPD were financial constraints, inadequate availability of resources, poor internet connection, and lack of motivation coupled with lack of relevance of CPD programs. Conclusion Findings suggest that the District Education Directorate and school leadership need to collaborate to overcome financial and logistical barriers, enhance the quality of CPD, and make it equitably accessible to all teachers. These efforts will help to improve the impact of CPD and build stronger teacher capacities. This research adds practical knowledge to the field by showing how teacher development can be improved when CPD efforts are backed by strong and consistent school leadership.

Institutional supervision is a component of general supervision .This is one of the activities that educational supervisors are supposed to carry out in teaching and learning. Its’ primary function is to improve instruction and its’ outcomes. It is aimed at enhancing teaching and learning. Principals in secondary schools are the immediate supervisors in the schools that they head. The aim of this research was to investigate instructional supervisory practices used by School Principals in Nakuru Municipality, Nakuru County, Kenya. It sought to find out the academic and professional qualifications and training of such supervisors, the extent of their involvement in carrying out supervisory activities, adequacy, frequency and methods of carrying out clinical supervision, attendance of in-service courses and the relationship between instructional supervision and performance of public Secondary schools in national examinations. The study employed an ex-post factor design targeting a population of nineteen Principals in public Secondary schools in Nakuru Municipality. Purposive sampling was used to get the respondents. A questionnaire with three sections of personal data, professional training, preparation, supervisory activities carried out and effect of those activities on performance in national examinations was used to collect data. The findings established that majority of principals in public Secondary schools were male, most of them had inadequate professional training, were ill prepared for clinical supervision hence handled it poorly and inadequately. In-service courses offered were inadequate of poor quality and that instructional supervision did not have a significant influence on schools’ performance in national examinations .The study recommended that more females be appointed as Principals ,the Principals be given specific professional training and preparation before appointment to the position of Principalship ,in-service courses be more frequent ,and relevant topics covered to equip Principals with knowledge and skills on instructional supervision and that instructional supervision ought to be restructured and be more frequent so as to positively influence performance of public Secondary in national examinations .

With the vigorous development of the intellectual property (IP) industry, the national IP talent pool has exceeded 700,000 individuals, posing higher demands on the cultivation of specialized talents. In 2022, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education introduced a new professional degree category for IP, but in its initial stages, it confronted challenges such as imbalanced curriculum systems, inadequate teaching resources, and restricted enrollment in professional qualifications. Simultaneously, the connections between the IP professional degree and national unified legal professional qualifications, patent attorney qualifications, IP professionals, and other professional certifications point to a high degree of consistency and mutual relevance in talent cultivation objectives. The professional degree education must reference the content of professional qualification certifications to ensure that talents meet industry demands. Additionally, the professional degree education exerts a positive influence on the professional entry qualification certification, elevating the overall standards within the professional field.

This thesis, entitled: "Development of Professors in the State of Santa Catarina (1960 -2002): Control and Discharge of the State" is among the researches whose number has been increasing since the 80s and that in Brazil, as well as in other countries have covered a great range including themes such as: the locus of the development, the practical theory relation, professor's identity, nature of the professor's work, the professor as a proletarian, certification, level, graduation and modality of the development of the professor, development at distance, in service, profissionalization, professional qualification. But, it differs from the others for its analysis of the professor' s development in the historical process and giving priority to the relation -development of professors and the State in the state of Santa Catarina between 1960 and 2002. It points out that in this period the relation between the development of professors and the State was characterized by its discharge and control. Effectively, when analyzing how the development of this category of workers was made, in order to perform the educational job, it outstands that the State discharged itself of the maintenance the Educational Institutions and kept the control through organizations such as the Secretaria de Educao e Cultura do Estado and the Conselho Regional de Educao and a set of ideologies that don't oppose to each other, but compose and complete each other, among those, the ideology of the communitarianism and the post -modem ideas. It is presupposed that the development of professors is not explained by itself and only History in a perspective of tota1ity and contradiction gives us the possibility of understanding the nexus of it. The study identifies, for the relation development of xv professors and State, between the decade of 1960 and 2002, three periods: The first one for the decades of 1960 and 1970, characterized by the advance of the discharge and control of the Sate, process which includes the conception of Education as the mediator of the economical development of the State of Santa Catarina, time when it was made an enhancement of the industrial production and a conservative agricultural reform was taken to the fields. That didn 't happen without resistances, since there were movements created such as the Movimento dos Sem Terra, another of the Mulheres Agricultoras and the Atingidos por Barragens, whose beginning happened in the decade of 1980 and still exist with their vindications in the social scenery. Also, in this decade and in the context of democratization of the country as well as strong social movements of several workers categories, the educators of the state, as the movement known as democratization of education, resisted against the control and discharge of the State for the development of professors, what enables us to make a second period in the elected relation. The third one, whose beginning is in the first years of the decade of 1990, is characterized by a taking again the control and discharge and is a real reform for the development of professors in Brazil, idealized and carried out second to the rules of a set of neo liberal policies and the including of the country in the social division of work in this phase of monopolist capitalism. The development of professors as it has happened has contributed for making fragile and alienating this category of workers in charge of the educational job. This development under the analyzed relation isn't convenient to the working class, hence it is necessary an inversion in the relation: that the State assume and a social control happen specially for the class that survives of its work.

В условиях социально-культурных и педагогических трансформаций высших образовательных организаций важным компонентом их модернизации становится реформирование системы профессионального развития педагогов, перед которой процессы глобализации и цифровизации выдвинули новые требования. Все это вызывает необходимость формирования у преподавателей вузов готовности к постоянному повышению своей профессиональной квалификации и непрерывному профессиональному развитию в контексте единого образовательного пространства. Следовательно, компаративные исследования проблем профессионального развития преподавателей вузов в России и за рубежом являются принципиально актуальными и своевременными. Данные исследования являются ответом на требования современного демократического общества к профессионально-личностным качествам педагогов и векторам их профессиональной деятельности в новых условиях. Готовность к профессиональному развитию у педагогов неразрывно связана с их стремлением к повышению профессионального мастерства и с достижением успеха в работе. Формирование данной готовности, так же как и процесс профессионального развития, в целом должны носить индивидуализированный и одновременно добровольный характер. Для этого необходимы определенные условия, в том числе реальная заинтересованность руководства вуза в профессиональном развитии каждого педагога, наличие различного рода ресурсов и развитая инфраструктура для организации данного процесса, разработанные и апробированные модели индивидуализации профессионального развития педагогов вуза. Бенчмаркинг как технология проведения сравнительно-педагогического исследования моделей профессионального развития педагогов показал свою эффективность в выявлении успешных практик в данной области и позволил выявить три основные модели в организации процесса повышения профессионального мастерства и развития в вузе. Представленные в статье зарубежные модели организации профессионального развития преподавателей вузов могут быть использованы в российских вузах при условии их адаптации к российским реалиям и образовательным традициям. In the context of socio-cultural and pedagogical transformations of higher educational organizations, the reform of the system of teachers’ professional development becomes an important component of their modernization, before which the processes of globalization and digitalization have put forward some new requirements. All this causes the need for university teachers to be ready to constantly improve their professional qualifications and be ready for continuous professional development in the context of a single educational space. Therefore, comparative studies of the problems of professional development of university teachers in Russia and abroad are fundamentally relevant and timely. These studies are a response to the requirements of modern democratic society for teachers’ professional and personal qualities and the vectors of their professional activity in new conditions. Teachers’ readiness for professional development is inextricably linked with their desire to increase their professional skill and achieve success in their activities. The formation of this readiness, as well as the process of professional development as a whole, should be individualized and, at the same time, voluntary. To do this, it is necessary to have certain conditions, including the real interest of the university leadership in the professional development of each teacher, the availability of various kinds of resources, and a developed infrastructure for organizing this process, as well as developed and tested models of individualization of the process of teachers’ professional development. Benchmarking as a technology for conducting a comparative pedagogical study of the models of teachers’ professional development has shown its effectiveness in identifying successful practices in this field and made it possible to identify three main models in organizing the process of increasing professional excellence and development at the university. Foreign models of the organization of professional development of university teachers, presented in the article, can be used in Russian universities, provided that they are adapted to the Russian realities and educational traditions.