Degree Of Autonomy Research Articles

Exploring the work and organisation of local Healthwatch in England: a mixed-methods ethnographic study

BackgroundLocal Healthwatch organisations are an important part of the landscape of health and care commissioning and provision in England. In addition, local Healthwatch organisations are a key means by which users of services are given voice to influence decisions about health and care commissioning and provision.ObjectiveWe aimed to explore and enhance the operation and impact of local Healthwatch in ensuring effective patient and public voice in the commissioning and provision of NHS services.DesignWe used mixed methods, including a national survey (96/150 responses, 68%); actor network theory-inspired ethnographic data collection in five local Healthwatch organisations (made up of 75 days’ fieldwork, 84 semistructured interviews, 114 virtual interviews, observations during the COVID-19 pandemic and documentary analysis) and serial interviews about experiences during the pandemic with 11 Healthwatch staff and four volunteers who were members of a Healthwatch Involvement Panel (which also guided data collection and analysis). Finally, we ran five joint interpretive forums to help make sense of our data.SettingOur five Healthwatch case study organisations are of varying size and organisational form and are located in different parts of England.ResultsWe found significant variation in the organisation and work of Healthwatch organisations nationally, including hosting arrangements, scale of operations, complexity of relationships with health and care bodies, and sources of income beyond core funding. Key points of divergence that were consequential for Healthwatch activities included the degree of autonomy from host organisations and local understandings of accountability to various constituencies. These points of divergence gave rise to very different modes of operation and different priorities for enacting the nationally prescribed responsibilities of Healthwatch organisations locally. Large variations in funding levels created Healthwatch organisations that diverged not just in scale but in focus. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, Healthwatch found new approaches to giving voice to the views of the public and formed effective relationships with other agencies.RecommendationsWe identified generalisable principles of good practice regarding the collection and communication of evidence. Policy implications relate to (1) the overall funding regime for Healthwatch and potential inequalities in what is available to local populations and (2) the development of Healthwatch’s role given the evolution of local health and care systems since 2012.Future workFuture studies should explore (1) the consequences of the development of integrated care systems for local Healthwatch organisations, (2) Healthwatch in an international comparative perspective, (3) how the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured the voluntary sector locally and (4) how Healthwatch responds formally and informally to a newly emerging focus on public health and health inequalities.LimitationsThe survey sought only self-reported information on impact and we were unable to recruit a Healthwatch that hosted several contracts.ConclusionsThe diversity of the Healthwatch network belies its otherwise unitary appearance. This diversity – especially in differential funding arrangements – has considerable implications for equity of access to influencing health and care planning and provision for residents across England.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme and will be published in full inHealth and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 10, No. 32. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

중학교 창의적 체험활동에 관한 교사 인식 분석

The purpose of this study was to analyze the current status and actual conditions of the Creative Experience Activities (CEA) based on the perceptions of middle school teachers and to draw implications for the improvement of the CEA. To this end, we devised a survey tool consisting of 11 questions in four areas such as overall perception of the CEA, organization and operation of the CEA, curriculum linkage, and linkage of human and physical capital inside and outside the school. A survey was conducted on 102 middle school teachers nationwide. The results of the survey are as follows. First, the degree of the achievement and purpose of the CEA in middle school was generally positive. Second, respondents were generally positive about the degree of school autonomy in organizing and operating the CEA in middle school, and they recognized the creative experience plan of nearby schools as important in selecting club activities, educational contents and activities for the first year of middle school. Third, it was generally positive about the degree of subject linkage of the CEA in middle school and 46.5% of the linked subjects were concentrated on arts and physical education subjects. Finally, respondents considered the time per subject for each teacher in assigning teachers for the CEA, and it was confirmed that the previous case of school was used for collecting information and utilizing human resources in the school. Based on these research results, this study suggested plans for improving the curriculum for the CEA in middle schools

Local potential and strategic models in a small market outside the Big Five: the case of Switzerland’s Super League

ABSTRACT Switzerland is a small country of just 8.5 million people. It comprises three distinct language regions and is split into 26 cantons, each of which has a large degree of autonomy. These factors produce a splintered market for sport and clubs are based in areas that vary in terms of their local potential (demographic and economic). Furthermore, soccer clubs face intense competition from another highly popular sport – ice hockey. How clubs exploit a very heterogeneous local potential in a specific context? In this paper, we examine the relationship between a club’s local potential (market environment and stadium) and its expertise in the areas of sporting results, management and marketing. Based on our data, we outline the characteristics of the different economic and sporting models adopted by Switzerland first division soccer clubs and we derive a typology of four types of clubs. Our study’s contribution is both methodological and empirical.

Community Empowerment Through Home Industry in Improving Community Welfare in East Java, Indonesia

The goal of this study was to examine community efforts in running home industries to improve welfare, the government’s role in supporting community home industry activities, and the obstacles to improving community welfare through home industries and how to overcome these. This research was conducted on a home industry in East Java, Indonesia, namely one engaged in the food industry, including providing processed fish, tempeh, emping mlinjo, and banana chips. Data were gathered through observations, interviews, and documentation analysis, and these were then analyzed using Miles and Huberman’s data analysis techniques. The results indicated that efforts to empower a community depend on the community’s degree of autonomy. The community studied was effectively empowered through the home industry, which improved the welfare of the community. The home industry needs to pay attention to business capital, raw materials, production, marketing, and a business spirit to achieve success. The role of the government in the home industry is very important, especially in terms of the policies and assistance that are needed. Barriers to community empowerment through home industries include lack of capital, market opportunities, management, cooperation, and marketing.
 Keywords: empowerment, home industry, community welfare

Integrated Structures of Corporations: Ukrainian Legal Reality

The article is devoted to the study of legal nature of the mechanism for association of legal entities. Such associations of legal entities are realized in order to attract not only capital and other production resources, including labor, but also in order to satisfy nonproperty interests.Legal capacity of legal entities in the process of their merger is analyzed, based on what – statutory or contractual – association of corporations is determined. The statutory association does not lead to the creation of another fiction other than a legal entity, due to which it is ensured through its inherent organizational legal forms. The contractual association does not require the formation of a new legal entity (concern, consortium, association (union), syndicate, conglomerate, cartel, pool).In the event of such consolidation of legal entities, the contractual structure of a simple company or other joint activity is formed, formally close to such person at law as a legal entity. The difference between the above procedure of merging from the first option lies in the degree of autonomy of the members from each other, as well as in the expected result of such merger.

Influence of task decision autonomy on physical ergonomics and robot performances in an industrial human-robot collaboration scenario.

Adoption of human–robot collaboration is hindered by barriers in collaborative task design. A new approach for solving these problems is to empower operators in the design of their tasks. However, how this approach may affect user welfare or performance in industrial scenarios has not yet been studied. Therefore, in this research, the results of an experiment designed to identify the influences of the operator’s self-designed task on physical ergonomics and task performance are presented. At first, a collaborative framework able to accept operator task definition via parts’ locations and monitor the operator’s posture is presented. Second, the framework is used to tailor a collaborative experience favoring decision autonomy using the SHOP4CF architecture. Finally, the framework is used to investigate how this personalization influences collaboration through a user study with untrained personnel on physical ergonomics. The results from this study are twofold. On one hand, a high degree of decision autonomy was felt by the operators when they were allowed to allocate the parts. On the other hand, high decision autonomy was not found to vary task efficiency nor the MSD risk level. Therefore, this study emphasizes that allowing operators to choose the position of the parts may help task acceptance and does not vary operators’ physical ergonomics or task efficiency. Unfortunately, the test was limited to 16 participants and the measured risk level was medium. Therefore, this study also stresses that operators should be allowed to choose their own work parameters, but some guidelines should be followed to further reduce MSD risk levels.

Multi-factor based session secret key agreement for the Industrial Internet of Things

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the main field of application of the Internet of Things (IoT). The high degree of autonomy and resource constraints of the IIoT network poses challenges to the security of IIoT. Enabling the legitimate users to securely and remotely access resource-constrained intelligent terminal nodes in an open wireless channel has become a challenge in the IIoT environment. User authentication and key agreement schemes have been proposed for different IoT application scenarios to solve this problem. However, most existing three-party authentication and key agreement schemes for remote users have high computational costs and do not consider sufficient security attributes, such as unlinkability and anonymity. To address the aforementioned problems, the proposed scheme uses the IIoT as the application scenario and proposes a novel three-factor authentication and lightweight remote user identity authentication key agreement. This scheme is effective for devices with limited resources because it mainly uses a one-way hash function and a bitwise XOR operation. The security of the proposed scheme is demonstrated under the real-or-random model via a rigorous formal security analysis.

Regard des patients psychiatriques sur leur prise en charge somatique en psychiatrie : enquête et propositions

Literature's data report the existence of numerous somatic comorbidities in patients with mental diseases. In order to improve practices, HAS-labeled recommendations were written in 2015. These recommendations advocate the improvement of current practices, by integrating into the accreditation procedures of institutions the somatic management of patients including a complete somatic examination of any hospitalized patient. Outpatient follow-up is also mentioned, especially when the patient does not have a general practitioner: “the psychiatrist will naturally be in charge of managing the patient's somatic problems”. This text reminds us that psychiatry belongs to the medical world and that it is necessary to improve patient care. Nevertheless, these recommendations may come up against the usual practice of psychiatrists who do not generally carry out a somatic clinical examination. Indeed, the particularity of the French psychiatric practice is that it is rooted in the field of human sciences where subjectivity plays a major role. However, the somatic examination is in essence objectifying, leading to an ethical conflict for the psychiatrist between an adapted somatic management and an optimal psychiatric management. In order to help us in our reflection, we decided to question the patients, by focusing our work on their social representations concerning the psychiatrist and his function. The objective of our work will thus be to discuss the dilemmas resulting from these recommendations in the light of other ethical principles and to propose practical reflections on their implementation with an ethical concern by placing the patient at the center of the care system. In France or internationally, no study on the social representations that patients have of their somatic care has yet been conducted. MethodWe conducted a prospective study in the form of semi-structured interviews with a sample of 21 patients treated in a general psychiatric ward. The interview guide included four themes: definition of the doctor and the psychiatrist, the course of care in psychiatry, the relationship between patients and therapists in psychiatry, and the role of the psychiatrist in somatic care in psychiatry. The results show the ambivalence of patients who wish to receive comprehensive care without expecting psychiatrists to invest in their somatic evaluation. These representations are linked to the heritage of French psychiatry, but also to the subjective link between the patient and his psychiatrist in the psychotherapeutic framework and finally, to the position of specialist assigned to the psychiatrist treating a specific medical field. ConclusionIt is therefore the psychiatrist's ethical responsibility to question the practical implementation of his medical skills (in particular in the field of somatic comorbidities) and his psychotherapeutic skills by adapting them in a singular way to each patient according to his pathology, his degree of autonomy and his social representations in order not to be harmful on the psychic level while wanting to be beneficial on the somatic level. The psychiatrist must inform the patient of his or her competencies and limitations in terms of somatic care and of the specific somatic aspects of the patient's pathology. Finally, patients followed in psychiatry often have a lack of access to care as well as an unfavourable socio-economic level. In this context, they may have difficulty accessing the various medical specialists. Most inpatients benefit from appropriate somatic care thanks to the development of somatic care units in the institutions. Thus, we see that the will to improve the situation in the hospital has led to socio-economically favourable solutions and to the training of competent general practitioners in this field. It is necessary to continue efforts in this direction, but also in general medicine. Even if psychiatrists are aware of patients’ somatic pathologies, take them into account, and occasionally perform a somatic examination, they cannot replace a trained and competent general practitioner.

Autonomous agriculture in public perception - German consumer segments’ view of crop robots

Public acceptance of agricultural technologies is an important determinant of their success. In the case of autonomous crop robots, recent research from Germany suggests that societal acceptance of the technology plays an important role for farmer acceptance of crop robots. Yet little research has been conducted so far into how the public perceives autonomous agricultural technologies like crop robots. Investigating the public’s opinion on crop robots will provide answers to one of farmers’ questions in the decision to invest in crop robots. Through consumer segmentation and hypotheses-based characterization, specific consumer groups with differing attitudes towards crop robots are identified. Two discrete choice experiments on digital and autonomous methods of weed management (n = 675) and tractor size and degree of autonomy (n = 645), conducted as part of a larger representative consumer survey in Germany (n = 2,012), are submitted to a Hierarchical Bayes estimation and subsequent latent class analysis. The identified consumer segments are characterized in a hypotheses-based approach with hypotheses centering on consumer attitudes measured as 5-point Likert-type items and as spontaneous image associations. Both subsamples can be segmented into three groups, which are comparable between the experiments in their socio-economic composition. Results suggest that the German public is largely positively inclined towards autonomous agricultural technologies. The method of weed control is considered more important than the vehicle type (i.e., conventional tractor or crop robot) and vehicle size is considered more important than degree of autonomy. Only the respective smallest consumer segments in the two experiments indicate indifference or a more conservative perspective. Participants’ attitude towards environmental preservation appears to have a positive influence on their evaluation of autonomous agricultural technologies. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first investigation into the public opinion of crop robots, based on a large sample representative of the German population in four socio-demographic variables. It indicates that the German population is most interested in the reduction of agrochemicals in plant production and will also accept autonomous agricultural technologies to achieve this goal. Policymakers should make use of these insights when communicating about novel technologies in agriculture and extension agents should relay this information to farmers, particularly those already interested in investing in crop robots.

Geographic Cross‐Sectional Fiscal Spending Multipliers and the Role of Local Autonomy: Evidence from European Regions

AbstractUsing a panel of 268 European regions during 1990–2014, we document that the degree of local government's autonomy, measured with the “Local Autonomy Index,” has a significant positive effect on the fiscal spending multiplier. The estimated geographic cross‐sectional fiscal spending multiplier is on average close to zero in countries with the lowest degree of local autonomy, and around unity in countries with the highest degree of local autonomy. Multipliers are state‐dependent: larger when gross domestic product is below trend and when there is slack in the labor market; in those states, local autonomy has a particularly large positive effect on the multiplier. To interpret the empirical findings, we build a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model where both local and central government spending contribute to a public good that enhances private labor productivity. Local governments are more efficient in producing the public good and the multiplier is higher in countries where local government spending has a larger share in the production of the public good.

Mediated Representation of Sharia in Aceh: A Hybrid Approach to Media Frames

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia with an exceptional degree of autonomy to implement Sharia. This paper explores how Serambi Indonesia—the leading Acehnese local newspaper—framed the implementation of Sharia in the region. This study employed content analysis of the Sharia coverage in Aceh from 2012 to 2020 using a hybrid approach, combining issue-specific and generic frames. The results revealed the four identified frames: Sharia codification, deviance from Sharia, desirable Sharia enforcement, and Islamic morality. among those frames, the deviance from Sharia was much preferred. The frame prominence was more prevalent after Qanun Jinayat (Islamic Criminal Bylaw) took into effect in Aceh. It was also given more prominence on the front page than on other pages. However, other frames made up 60% of the articles, implying that the Acehnese local newspaper positively represented the implementation of Sharia in Aceh while highlighting Sharia problems surrounding its enforcement. These findings exemplify the use of a hybrid approach to better examine the media frames, support the effect of critical events on changes in the media frames, and confirm the different prominence of the frame based on the page placement.

Physician-Patient Relationship in Current Cosmetic Surgery Demands More than Mere Respect for Patient Autonomy-Is It Time for the Anti-Paternalistic Model?

The ethical framework of cosmetic surgery is distinct from the one associated with clinical medicine. This distinctiveness has led to significant difficulties in conceptualizing the physician-patient relationship (PPR), as most models have been developed specifically for the latter. The purpose of this article is to show that the PPR in cosmetic surgery can be better described through a distinct approach that we name the anti-paternalistic model of the PPR, and we will briefly present the differences between it and autonomy-based models. We will analyze the principle of non-interference, the variable degree of autonomy of both the patient and the physician within this relationship, the handling of the relevant information, the principle of beneficence as satisfaction, the difficulties regarding the informed consent, the algorithm allowing for the refusal of the procedure, and children-related issues. Based on this analysis, we will show that an anti-paternalistic model of the PPR is preferable to an autonomy-based one, as it allows for better clarification of the underlying ethical issues involved in cosmetic surgery.

Effects of human-machine interaction on employee's learning: A contingent perspective.

The popularization of intelligent machines such as service robot and industrial robot will make human–machine interaction, an essential work mode. This requires employees to adapt to the new work content through learning. However, the research involved human–machine interaction that how influences the employee’s learning is still rarely. This paper was to reveal the relationship between human–machine interaction and employee’s learning from the perspective of job characteristics and competence perception of employees. We sent questionnaire to 500 employees from 100 artificial intelligence companies in China and received 319 valid and complete responses. Then, we adopted a hierarchical regression for the test. Empirical results show that human–machine interaction has a U-shaped curvilinear relationship with employee learning, and employee’s vitality mediates the curvilinear relationship. In addition, job characteristics (skill variety and job autonomy) moderate the U-shaped curvilinear relationship between human–machine interaction and employee’s vitality, especially the results of moderating effects varying with employee’s competence perception. Exploring the mechanism of the effect of human–machine interaction on employee’s learning enriches the socially embedded model. Moreover, it provides managerial implications how to enhance individual adaptability with the introduction of AI into firms. However, our research focuses more on the impact of human–machine interaction on employees at the initial stage of AI development, and the level of machine intelligence in various industries will reach a high degree of autonomy in the future. The future research can explore the impact of human–machine interaction on individual’s behavior at different stages, and the results may vary depending on the technologies mastered by different individuals. The study has theoretical and practical significance to human–machine interaction literature by underscoring the important of individual’s behavior among individuals with different skills.

Quantum-inspired cognitive agents

The concept of intelligent agents is—roughly speaking—based on an architecture and a set of behavioral programs that primarily serve to solve problems autonomously. Increasing the degree of autonomy and improving cognitive performance, which can be assessed using cognitive and behavioral tests, are two important research trends. The degree of autonomy can be increased using higher-level psychological modules with which needs and motives are taken into account. In our approach we integrate these modules in architecture for an embodied, enactive multi-agent system, such that distributed problem solutions can be achieved. Furthermore, after uncovering some weaknesses in the cognitive performance of traditionally designed agents, we focus on two major aspects. On the one hand, the knowledge processing of cognitive agents is based on logical formalisms, which have deficiencies in the representation and processing of incomplete or uncertain knowledge. On the other hand, in order to fully understand the performance of cognitive agents, explanations at the symbolic and subsymbolic levels are required. Both aspects can be addressed by quantum-inspired cognitive agents. To investigate this approach, we consider two tasks in the sphere of Shannon's famous mouse-maze problem: namely classifying target objects and ontology inference. First, the classification of an unknown target object in the mouse-maze, such as cheese, water, and bacon, is based on sensory data that measure characteristics such as odor, color, shape, or nature. For an intelligent agent, we need a classifier with good prediction accuracy and explanatory power on a symbolic level. Boolean logic classifiers do work on a symbolic level but are not adequate for dealing with continuous data. Therefore, we demonstrate and evaluate a quantum-logic-inspired classifier in comparison to Boolean-logic-based classifiers. Second, ontology inference is iteratively achieved by a quantum-inspired agent through maze exploration. This requires the agent to be able to manipulate its own state by performing actions and by collecting sensory data during perception. We suggest an algebraic approach where both kinds of behaviors are uniquely described by quantum operators. The agent's state space is then iteratively constructed by carrying out unitary action operators, while Hermitian perception operators act as observables on quantum eigenstates. As a result, an ontology emerges as the simultaneous solution of the respective eigenvalue equations.

A survey on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data utilisation in Italian clinical laboratories.

The Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology (SIBioC) Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (BAI) Working Group promoted a survey to frame the knowledge, skills and technological predisposition in clinical laboratories. A questionnaire, focussing on digitization, information technology (IT) infrastructures, data accessibility, and BAI projects underway was sent to 1,351 SIBioC participants. The responses were evaluated using SurveyMonkey software and Google Sheets. The 227 respondents (17%) from all over Italy (47% of 484 labs), mainly biologists, laboratory physicians and managers, mostly from laboratories of public hospitals, revealed lack of hardware, software and corporate Wi-Fi, and dearth of PCs. Only 25% work daily on clouds, while 65%-including Laboratory Directors-cannot acquire health data from sources other than laboratories. Only 50% of those with access can review a clinical patient's health record, while the other access only to laboratory information. The integration of laboratory data with other health data is mostly incomplete, which limits BAI-type analysis. Many are unaware of integration platforms. Over 90% report pulling data from the Laboratory Information System, with varying degrees of autonomy. Very few have already undertaken BAI projects, frequently relying on IT partnerships. The majority consider BAI as crucial in helping professional judgements, indicating a growing interest. The questionnaire received relevant feedback from SIBioC participants. It highlighted the level of expertise and interest in BAI applications. None of the obstacles stands out more than the others, emphasising the need to all-around work: IT infrastructures, data warehouses, BAI analysis software acquisition, data accessibility and training.

Marginal Communities and Cooperative Strategies in the Kerma Pastoral State

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between marginal Nubian communities—who are culturally different and who occupy peripheral contexts—and the Kerma “pastoral state” in Upper Nubia during the Classic Kerma period (1750–1550 BCE). It is argued that the funerary assemblages of two such communities—Mirgissa and al-Widay I—document localized identities and active roles in cross-cultural interactions with other cultural groups. These interactions and identities may have been intentionally encouraged and utilized by the Kerma state in order to gain access to exchange systems and maintain power within a more decentralized “pastoral state.” Cooperative processes such as commensality and social reception presented mechanisms for forming friendly relationships with these communities and a variety of Nile valley and desert groups and polities. It is argued that these communities were not marginalized and exploited by the state and but instead used their marginality to achieve degrees of autonomy and form their own localized practices.

Overcoming the Lumberjack Effect Through Adaptive Autonomy

Research shows that there are a variety of performance advantages to increasing the degrees of autonomy that human-supporting autonomous systems possess, including organizational productivity and the reduction of human workload. Yet, not all the consequences of increasing autonomy are positive. One such negative consequence is the risk of human operators becoming more incapable of responding to system failures as autonomy levels increase, a phenomenon known as the Lumberjack Effect. This paper proposes a conceptual model for using adaptive autonomy as a means to avoid the risks of this phenomenon while retaining the advantages of higher autonomy levels in earlier stages of an organization’s work cycle. We apply our model to two research-based scenarios and discuss future research necessary to validate the model. This model provides the Human Factors community with a possible solution to the debate over the risks of designing human-supporting autonomous systems with higher degrees of autonomy.

“The World in a Verse”: Stevens, World History, and Global Modernisms

“The World in a Verse”: Stevens, World History, and Global Modernisms Gül Bilge Han I. Introduction IN HIS 1942 ESSAY “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” Wallace Stevens commented on the situation of the modern subject in a global context in the following way: It is not only that there are more of us and that we are actually close together. We are close together in every way. We lie in bed and listen to a broadcast from Cairo, and so on. There is no distance. We are intimate with people we have never seen and, unhappily, they are intimate with us. (CPP 653) Written in the midst of US involvement in the Second World War, when seemingly distant events felt closer to home than ever, Stevens’s lines weave together the intimate and the global as a constitutive feature of ordinary, common life. His remarks highlight the emergence of new forms of cognitive and affective proximity between diverse places and subjects, fostered through new media technologies—particularly, the radio and how it relayed the news. The experience of a lack of “distance,” or of being “close together in every way . . . unhappily,” indicates an imposed mode of connectivity that threatens the demarcation of the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the local and the global, the private and the public realms. Stevens implicitly figures this new mode of collective intimacy as a threatening force against the domain of the individual self, which, in turn, suggests a common modernist trope. But Stevens’s poetic responses to the demands of the global and its distant others, especially from the 1930s onwards, express more than a desire to salvage a degree of individual autonomy and interiority from the intrusions of an increasingly globalized modernity, just as his skeptical reflections on the “broadcast from Cairo” do more than exhibit an anxiety over the advent of [End Page 133] communication technologies—resulting in “an extraordinary pressure of news” (CPP 655)—that brought the world closer in unprecedented ways. Certainly, the new media environment of the early and mid-twentieth century shaped the aesthetic and social sensibilities of modernist writers, including Stevens (Kalliney 121–56). Mass media and circulation of the news are, in fact, part and parcel of modernism’s global networks, in which the news sparked alternative forms of engagement with world events that were negotiated through different journalistic and media discourses. Such developments had crucial implications for modernist conceptualizations of world and self, since they allowed for new ways of imagining cultural and political transfers, across spaces and peoples, without necessitating physical closeness or direct contact. The news as a poetic and creative source, in particular, played a constitutive part in Stevens’s responses to the historical pressures of the actual world. He was, as Jahan Ramazani and Rachel Galvin have discussed most prominently, well aware of how the news “mediate[d] between the individual and the event,” how it shaped “the raw material of history” (Galvin 169), and thereby produced what Stevens called the “pressure of news . . . of a new world” against which he imagined poetry should and would push back (CPP 655). But what seemed equally pressing for Stevens, judging by his wartime remarks, is the emergence of a global collective consciousness reinforced by the news technologies and the media: the heightened presence of an imaginative collective vision, intensified by the globally perceived events of his epoch, which included the Great Depression, two world wars, and the rise of fascism. In “The Noble Rider,” Stevens refers to this shared collective sensibility as “the consciousness of the world,” which he feared would replace the “imagination,” as he put it in the same essay.1 “[F]or more than ten years,” Stevens wrote, “the consciousness of the world has concentrated on events which have made the ordinary movement of life seem to be the movement of people in the intervals of a storm” (CPP 655). Seen at once as a creative and suffocating force, this consciousness of the world manifests itself most markedly in Stevens’s envisaging of the poetic imagination as a potential source for a global vision of collectivity, or what he calls a “civil...

“A Cross-Comparative Study of Adolescent Mental Health and Social Media Use in South Korea and Canada”

In an increasingly digital world, the mental health of adolescents is reflected in their interactions on social networking sites (SNS). As adolescence represents a pivotal transitional period characterized by an increase in social relationships, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its transferal of in-person interactions to online spheres is a crucial component of adolescent mental health in 2022. Where excessive social media using during the lockdowns led to an increase in cyberbullying (highlighted in Canada’s updated criminal code) and eating disorders (explored through mukbang, or ‘escapist eating’ in South Korea), the type of SNS interactions adolescents engage in—comparative social media use and more passive, autonomous enjoyment—are critical to distinguishing between the positive and negative effects of social media on adolescent health. To identify the link between pre, during, and post-pandemic adolescent mental health, this study utilizes a comparative analysis of surveillance and harm within social media consumption in South Korea and Canada. For South Korean and Canadian adolescents, the distinction between active and passive social media use and the degree of online autonomy can define the level of harm to mental stability, emphasizing the importance of autonomous social media consumption in ‘safe digital spaces.’

A Study on the Teacher-Related Predictors about the Early Childhood Teacher’s Autonomy in the Implementation of Early Childhood Curriculum

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the level of autonomy early childhood teachers have in implementing the curriculum. Furthermore, the study aimed to find variables that predict early childhood teachers’ autonomy in curriculum implementation. These include “play sensitivity,” “organizational health,” and “professional knowledge and skill perception.”Methods: This study was conducted on 375 early childhood teachers. The teachers responded to questionnaires on “their autonomy in the implementation of early childhood curriculum,” “play sensitivity,” “organizational health,” and “professional knowledge and skill perception.” The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, partial correlations, and multiple regression analysis.Results: First, early childhood teachers’ showed a high degree of autonomy in the “support for child-centered play environments and interactions” and “flexible daily management.” They showed low autonomy in “cooperation and participation with the family and local community” and “use of learning community”. Second, it revealed variables predicting the degree to which early childhood teachers’ had autonomy in curriculum implementation. This included areas such as “play sensitivity,” “organizational health,” and “professional knowledge and skill perception.”Conclusion: This study confirms the autonomy status of early childhood teachers in curriculum implementation reflecting the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum. The study offers potential for revitalizing research on various autonomy-related factors in curriculum implementation. Educators can utilize these findings to develop teacher education programs emphasizing the importance of autonomy in curriculum implementation. Furthermore, the results are expected to contribute to the correct understanding of early childhood education and realize the necessary autonomy of early childhood teachers’ in curriculum implementation.