Distinct Academic Discipline Research Articles

Defining nursing entrepreneurship from the point of view of future professionals: A qualitative study

IntroductionEntrepreneurship comprises the development of novel projects, products, and strategies, both from a business perspective and in the context of nursing care. Despite ongoing debate as to whether entrepreneurship should be considered a distinct academic discipline, this subject remains largely unexplored within the health sciences. There is a paucity of published work examining whether entrepreneurship constitutes a specific competence and what nurses and nursing students understand by entrepreneurship. This study aims to identify, on the basis of the beliefs of nursing students from different countries, what entrepreneurship in nursing is. Based on these responses, a definition of entrepreneurship in nursing that responds to society's current needs is proposed. MethodologyQualitative descriptive methods were employed to gather insights from first- and second-year students across four nursing faculties: two located in Colombia, one in Peru, and one in Spain. The students were tasked with defining entrepreneurship within the nursing context. This inquiry was posed at the outset of the educational sessions on entrepreneurship, ensuring that the students had no preexisting information. The responses were collected using the digital platform Mentimeter, which allowed the students to submit their answers via mobile devices. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. ResultsA total of 160 written responses were received, analyzed, and categorised by the research team. Finally, 24 codes were obtained, which were grouped into 5 main themes: Healthcare and patient support, Innovation in nursing, Continuous professional improvement, nurses' contributions to society, and own project development. ConclusionDrawing from the experiences and beliefs of nursing students, entrepreneurship is characterized as the ability to innovate, conduct research, and advance scientific knowledge, thereby achieving continuous improvement in care while engaging with environmental and societal contexts.

Sejarah Pemikiran Ekonomi Islam: Aktivitas dan Etika Perdagangan pada Masa Rasulullah

Islamic Economic History thought has the potential to become a bridge between earlier and later times, reshaping the latter to counteract the emergence of Islam and transform economics into a distinct academic discipline. Concerning the economic issues.The writings of early fiqh scholars teaching the Qur'an regarding existing economic problems were few and specific. This rope can be seen in the writings of early fiqh scholars teaching the Qur'an. The Qur'an mostly provides guidelines and prohibits the use of logic.This is what encouraged the emergence of virtuous scholars who work to organize committees to address new legal issues and develop legal logic (ushûl al-Fiqh) that can be applied to various segments of society.In addressing several issues, including economics, the scholars emphasize the Qur'an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad as authoritative sources, along with various misdeeds committed by the followers of the prophet who arrived secretly. However, if they do not understand the legal implications in these summaries, they will apply analogies (qiyâs) and other derivation procedures to apply Sharia to new situations. Whenever a day passes, a number of fiqh mazhabs appear.

Foundations of operations research: From linear programming to data envelopment analysis

After the 1950s, operations research (OR) moved from military applications of scientific methods to a distinct academic discipline, applying mainly mathematical models to complex systems in the public and private sectors. Linear programming (LP) with its simplex algorithm, developed by George Dantzig in 1949, is the first method that marked OR as a new academic discipline. The purpose of this article is to examine the evolution of OR through linear programming, its leading methodology, and some of its derivatives, concentrating on one of them—data envelopment analysis (DEA)—developed by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes in 1978. We focus on DEA and its derivatives, as this article is the most cited in a search performed using the main OR journals. Although we found LP to be mentioned much more than DEA in our search of Google Scholar and beyond, DEA is still well represented in the OR literature. Furthermore, based on insights gained from examining DEA vis-á-vis LP and the “secret” of their spread, we conclude with suggestions to further enhance OR's visibility, implementing ideas from OR founders and others over the years. Thus, future directions include combining hard and soft OR, involving interdisciplinary teams, consulting of OR academic researchers, and more.

Two Decades of Computing at the University of Belize

Computer science became a distinct academic discipline in the early 1950s. The first computer science degree program was founded in Belize around 45 years later, under the auspices of the nascent University College of Belize, which would subsequently become the University of Belize. We present a twenty-year synopsis of a degree program created in 1998 to build an undergraduate curriculum using the surge of computing in the country of Belize as a catalyst coupled with the recognition of the importance of computing for national development. The four-year undergraduate degree program has resulted in steady student enrolment over the past two decades featuring a female student population consistent with female enrolment in similar computer science programs globally. The study details the origins, development efforts, successes, challenges, and recommendations for the program's future development.

Indian Art Education and Contemporary Art Practices

Arts education is a distinct academic discipline in India, with governmental and private institutions offering specialised training in the arts.Religious paradigms such as the Hindu Ashram and Muslim madrasas, Buddhist monastery etc., were used to build ancient Indian educational systemsuntil the British instituted schools following their system of preparatory schools under the Cambridge system to promote service to the British Empire. As a result, Indian perceptions of literacy and education, as well as the culture of learning, have shiftedincluding, in the context of the arts, the concepts of differences between art and craft, the social relationship between master craftsperson and artisan, public art and individual art, religious art and secular art, and so on. Art in India, as in the rest of the world, has undergone numerous changes that have resulted in what we see today, a unique amalgamation of sensibilities from the west as well as from across Asia. In the twenty-first century, a new era in India begun.The country's cultural diversity adds to the multi-dimensional approach, which is a direct approach and a direct contribution of various religious beliefs, languages, and the still prevalent rural culture congregating with the rapidly growing urban culture.The country's diversity, like its art, is an experience in and of itself that is difficult to comprehend.This is the core and crux of the new modern India and its emerging art. The paper will discuss about the contemporary art practices in India with reference to its practising artists.

Chinese Classical Textual Studies in the 20th and 21st Centuries

The article offers a brief outline of the history of "classical Chinese textual studies" (Zhongguo gudian wenxianxue), analyzes its content and structure, as well as its place and prospects in modern China. Classical Chinese textual studies emerged as a distinct modern academic discipline based on an ancient domestic tradition and under the influence of Western textual criticism of the 19th century. Since the 1920s, over the last hundred years, it has undergone several ups and downs but steadily continues to maintain continuity with a vast philological knowledge of imperial China, as well as to appropriate new approaches from Western humanities. The most developed areas of wenxianxue are the editing and publication of ancient texts, theoretical research in the foundations of textual studies, the creation and further exploration of subdisciplines, the analysis of research methods, and interdisciplinary perspectives, the study of the history of wenxianxue as well as various specialized problems. Overall, Chinese classical textual studies gravitate toward striving for comprehensiveness, interdisciplinary approaches, and practical issues. Currently, there is still a certain lack of innovation in exploring new areas, insufficient rigor and depth in theoretical research, the uneven development of individual areas of research and their somewhat regional character, nevertheless, textual studies manage to combine extensive practical work on "ordering ancient books" (guji zhengli) with a comprehensive study on the vast and immense Chinese textual culture.

Mechatronics and Robotics Education: Standardizing Foundational Key Concepts

The field of Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering is emerging as a distinct academic discipline, but has no standardized curriculum. In order to define such a curriculum, a survey is prepared with lists of potential concept inventory items, and asks university faculty, students and practicing engineers to identify which concepts lie at the core of MRE. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field, a wide range of basic concepts including physical quantities and units, circuit analysis, digital logic, programming, computer-aided design, solid mechanics, dynamic systems and controls, and mathematics are considered. The results of this survey identify gaps between existing undergraduate curricula, student experience, and employer expectations, and continuing work will provide insight into the direction of a unifying curricular design for MRE education.

Advocacy to act - Family medicine in health policy: A decade-long journey of the academy of family physicians of India.

The 'Academy of Family Physicians of India (AFPI)', is a non-profit organisation registered in New Delhi with a membership base, spread over all India. AFPI is working towards the establishment of a distinct academic discipline 'family medicine' for doctors pursuing primary care vocation within the mainstream medical education system in India. AFPI adopted a multi-pronged approach engaging political leadership, bureaucracy, higher judiciary and other stakeholders. In 2018, a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court of India. In pursuance to the Supreme Court of India order, AFPI approached the ministry as well as the Medical Council of India. In 2018 we had received written assurance from the Prime Minister's Office - PMO that the family medicine discipline will be addressed in the NMC bill. Earlier family medicine was mentioned only as part of the National Health Policies (NHP 2002 and NHP 2017) and finally, it has become part of the act, the National Medical Commission Act 2019.

Game-based structural debriefing

PurposeThe authors developed a pedagogical framework called the game-based structural debriefing (GBSD) to leverage the affordances of video games for teaching systems thinking. By integrating system dynamics visualization tools within a set of debriefing activities, GBSD helps teachers make systems thinking an explicit goal of the gameplay and learning when they use available educational games in the classroom.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a design-based research methodology with the goals of validating GBSD and investigating the utility of GBSD across different contexts as a design source to develop game-based curriculum. Over the course of 12 months, the authors conducted one focus group interview and three design workshops with participating teachers and master teachers. Between the workshops, the team rapidly iterated the framework, as well as curricular materials, in collaboration with the teachers.FindingsThe authors developed a curriculum unit that integrates systems dynamics visualization tools and a video game for middle school life science ecosystem curriculum. The unit was implemented by the three teachers who participated in the co-design. The implementations confirmed the flexibility of the unit because teachers created additional instructional materials that supplemented the GBSD protocol and addressed the unique limitations and needs of their classrooms.Originality/valueGBSD builds on system dynamics, which is a distinct academic discipline and methodology, and it uses its visualization tools, which are not widely used in the systems thinking educational literature. GBSD is also unique, in that it applies these tools within the debriefing activities developed for an off-the-shelf educational game. This paper illustrates how a design framework can be used to support teachers’ thoughtful integration of games in curriculum development.

Critical Statistical and Methodological Issues in Sport Management Research

ABSTRACTSport management research has evolved significantly despite its relatively short history as an academic discipline. Although the pace of scholarly progress has been impressive, the extent to which many research efforts have aided sport management in becoming a distinct academic discipline is, at times, questionable. A major challenge many scholars face is their confusion regarding the adoption of appropriate research and statistical methods. Consistent with the aims of MPEES, this special issue sought contributions that critically examine and shed light on broad perspectives of sport management research protocols. Creating a special issue on critical methodological issues in sport management will help to highlight the significance of research protocol, provide in-depth analysis, adopt contemporary measurement techniques, identify good research examples, and ultimately enhance the rigor of scientific inquiries in sport management. Selected are five articles that address pressing statistical procedures and innovative methodological techniques that advance sport management research.

Rebalancing power in global mental health

Global Mental Health has become clearly defined as a distinct academic discipline and area of practice since the 1990s, and has gained increasing prominence. Its roots lie in international and cultural psychiatry, but it has taken a clear direction of focusing on effective real-world change through application of evidence-based health interventions in a scientific psychiatric paradigm, strongly influenced by social psychiatry. While culture is acknowledged as important, it is seen as an overlay, presuming a common scientific paradigm for mental health globally. One example of this is the use of local adaptation of international guidelines like the WHO’s mhGAP. While a growth in investment, prioritization, and application of knowledge has the potential to positively impact on lives of people affected by mental ill health, there is a risk of causing harm by inappropriate application of ideas not well-suited to local needs. Global frameworks for mental health and human rights already advocate a human rights approach with participation of people affected, but it is only by rebalancing power towards local actors that national authorities can be held to account, and potential benefits of Global Mental Health be realized.

Development finance as an emerging discipline: Perspectives from the South African context

ABSTRACT It has never been assessed whether development finance is regarded as a distinct and autonomous professional or academic discipline. This qualitative study explored the current perspectives on development finance from within the South African development finance context. Key individual informants (n = 31) were purposively sampled and surveyed in order to capture their perceptions, and to maximise the variance in perspectives identified. The findings revealed pervasive disagreement regarding the defining characteristics of development finance, its pedagogy, and professionalisation. Furthermore, the majority of informants perceived a shortage of local experts and agreed that practitioners should possess qualifications in development finance explicitly. The majority of informants regarded development finance as a separate academic discipline; and agreed that universities should offer undergraduate development finance education. It is recommended that future research and pedagogy address obvious epistemological issues: what counts as development finance knowledge and who has authority to define and produce it?

Ontology of Public Health in University Curriculum: Exploring Basic Elements of an Interdisciplinary Field of Knowledge

Public health has constituted itself as a distinct academic discipline. The present paper attempts to understand ontology of this discipline. A study has recently been carried out which concerns, first, conceptualization of ontology of public health, secondly, nature of public health, and thirdly, curriculum development. Ontology is a philosophical doctrine that refers to an understanding about the basic elements theorized about. As the paper unveils, the tenet of public health is that the health state is not a matter of ‘individual’ only; rather this is a question of the ‘collective’ too. Diverse aspects take forms of intellectual construction which are transformed into the subject of the discipline. They are categorized as worldview, theory, methodology, instrumentation, and application. The constructions are internalized in the discipline’s nature to be ‘epistemic’, ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘componential’. In order to produce knowledge, the discipline involves an epistemic process consisting of priori and posteriori approaches. Public health, though the prevailing thoughts and practices are derived from biomedical paradigms, contains an interdisciplinary trait that draws from the fields of formal, organic, inorganic and social sciences. The discipline comes to be appeared as an integral whole being componential. The aforementioned categories of intellectual constructions are viewed as the basic elements of public health. Elements exist and operate in a center/periphery binary relationship. Center (worldview), while it holds the whole structure of the discipline together, limits the movement of rest elements and keeps them in the periphery. The paper concludes by pointing out few issues for developing curriculum for universities.

Parallels of alienation and industrial psychology: A critical analysis

The rapidly growing global market conditions and the corresponding expansion of various market and economic variables and the global stage dramas played by various world powers to accumulate capital and establish their economic control over other countries (i.e. economic imperialism) and widening growth of the income disparity of the developing world, sets a perfect platform to initiate a broad discussion about the “human factor” which works in industries who generate the necessary capital to make countries rich and poor. When some selected businesses get richer and richer marginalised workers continuously are confronted with the grave issue of Alienation. It is the author’s contention here to highlight the inadequacy of Industrial Psychology, the capitalist framework designed to deal with Alienation through a comprehensive discussion of Marxist principles and Industrial Psychology-proper. The paper will argue showing the evolution of Industrial Psychology as a distinct academic discipline that the persisting problem of alienation will continue to exist until political solutions are provided for wider class issues.

Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century South Africa: A “usable past”?

Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century South Africa:A “usable past”? Poppy Fry Imagining the Cape Colony: History, literature, and the South African nation. By David Johnson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Settler Colonialism and Land Rights in South Africa: Possession and dispossession on the Orange River. By Edward Cavanagh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The extermination of the Cape San people. By Mohamed Adhikari. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. The Farmerfield Mission: A Christian community in South Africa, 1838-2008. By Fiona Vernal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Thomas Pringle: South African pioneer, poet and abolitionist. By Randolph Vigne. Woodbridge, Suffolk: David Currey, 2012. The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829-1856. By Robert Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. The rise of African history as a distinct academic discipline coincided with a shift away from formal colonial control and towards independent African nation states. It is not surprising, then, that the first generation of historians of Africa took very seriously the potential for historical narratives and analyses to produce and shape political change. The writing of Africans’ history was, to many of them, an explicitly anti-colonial act—asserting the complexity and humanity of the continents’ residents against an image of Africa as “without history.” In the early 1970s, Terence Ranger distilled this approach to two commitments: “firstly, to African agency in… historical analysis, and, secondly, to the production of ‘usable history’ for the newly independent nation states of Africa.”1 Although the imbrication of historical scholarship and nationalism proved problematic in some cases, Ranger’s invocation of a “usable past” continues to resonate, and historians of Africa continue to operate with the “added urgency” that their work must speak to the continent’s pressing concerns.2 In South Africa, in particular, it seemed obvious that historians needed to engage with the political present. The apartheid state justified its legitimacy through a particular historical narrative—the production of alternative histories was, by definition, anti-apartheid activism. Julian Cobbing’s 1988 article “The Mfecane as Abili: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo” is one of the more extreme—and influential—examples of South African historians addressing themselves as much to the contemporary political landscape as to historical events. In it, Cobbing argued that British missionaries and officials’ claims of having rescued refugees following an 1833 battle masked their actual purpose—slave raiding. He further suggested that violence in the early nineteenth-century South African interior originated not from the conquests of the Zulu kingdom (as earlier historians had argued), but from the labor-hungry machinations of Europeans—machinations which were hidden in the colonial record.3 This theory of secret interests driving conflict amongst Africans was influenced by and ultimately directed towards so-called “third force” violence in late 1980s and early 1990s South Africa, in which the apartheid state secretly funded and fomented brutal hostilities between African National Congress supporters and other black South Africans. In the end, “The Mfecane as Abili” proved to be trenchant political commentary but problematic history. In the bloody context of late-apartheid South Africa, this may be understandable. Cobbing’s account of events has not held up to scrutiny, but more than a few scholars defend, if not the specific argument of the article, the idea that political usefulness might outweigh historiographical or methodological concerns. Twenty years into the “new South Africa,” historians might be expected to take a somewhat more clear-eyed approach. Yet the question of how, if at all, the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century history of the region speaks to its twenty-first-century present and future remains a contentious one. Clifton Crais, for example, has offered increasingly explicit political critiques in his work, but he has done so by shifting his focus towards the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining events and trends wherein the chain of contingency and causality to the present can be more easily demonstrated. Norman Etherington, on the other hand, has argued for a “struggle history” of the early nineteenth century, framed but not determined by South Africa’s post-apartheid political and social needs.4 For better or worse...

A Critique of the Question of African Philosophy

The history of African philosophy as a distinct academic discipline has witnessed a lot of controversies, debates, arguments and counter-arguments bordering on the issue of the existence or non existence of the discipline. This debate has been described by an erudite scholar, Makinde, as unnecessary. According to him, if African philosophy exists, then do it, teach it and write it instead of engaging in endless debate on its ontology. The focus of this paper is to examine his arguments in support of his (Mankinde’s) claim that there is African philosophy. This is to show how his arguments authenticate African philosophy as a“specie” of philosophy thereby putting an end to this controversy. This is because, an end to this controversy, will move African philosophy forward to contribute to human, social and political development through its ethics, social and political philosophy, to mention a few.

Business history and economic globalisation

Recent reviewers of the current state and future direction of business history have complained that, despite the growth of business history as a distinct academic discipline in recent decades, the field has tended to become side-lined in a number of debates which traditionally have been of major concern to business and economic historians. The paper discusses this issue by focusing on one of the major fields of research among economic historians and social scientists in recent years, namely the history of economic globalisation, and specifically the spectacular growth in international trade characterising the process. The history of economic globalisation and the causes of international trade growth has been a flourishing field of research in recent years, but business historians have not managed to make their mark on the major debates. The article argues that one way of altering this situation would be to reinvigorate the old established link between business history and maritime history. Two case studies show how maritime firms played essential roles in putting in place vital organisational, technological and institutional preconditions for international trade growth. On this basis it is argued that business historians of maritime firms are uniquely placed to understand the inner workings of the economic globalisation process and provide explanatory content to the macro-oriented analysis dominating the existing literature.

1(st) National Conference on Family Medicine and Primary Care: A Journey Toward Stronger Primary Care in India.

Academy of Family Physicians of India organized the first National Conference on Family Medicine and Primary Care (FMPC) on 20-21 April 2013 at India International Centre New Delhi. The conference was a major success towards positioning of requirement for a distinct academic discipline (family medicine) within the medical and nursing education system as a means for strengthening of primary care in India. The event gained its prominence in the times when universal health coverage is being debated. A generalist approach in development of human resource prominently figured in the discussions. The deliberations and talks of the Indian as well as international experts were recorded and released as the report of national consultation on family medicine programme.

Disciplinarity and the study of world Englishes

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the ways in which world Englishes studies are developing into a distinct academic discipline, and discusses the consequences of this regimentation of knowledge for teaching and research. By first outlining the various ways in which bodies of knowledge are organized into discrete disciplines, and then surveying the history and current status of world Englishes studies according to these classificatory processes, the paper presents a metadisciplinary inquiry into prevailing approaches to the study of English in the world today. It is hoped that reflexive investigation of this type can contribute to research and education in this area by making explicit the organizational framework – in terms both of the politics and epistemology – which structures present‐day investigations into the worldwide use of the English language.

The Role of International Entrepreneurship Capability on International Performance in Born Global Firms

More than two decades, international entrepreneurship (IE) has come out as a distinct academic discipline, and that concentrates on firms that become international from inception or near after it. However, comparatively little is known about the international entrepreneurship (IE), its capability and what drives the international performance of these firms with early and rapidly internationalizations. Therefore, the objective of the investigation is to reveal the dimensions of international entrepreneurial capability (IEC) and its effect on international performance (IP) in born global firms. The study will give an instruction to the born global (BG) managers, vision and strategy to the policymakers, and introduce the effectiveness role of international entrepreneurship capability (IEC) on international performance.