High Level Of Autonomy Research Articles

The Relationship between Teacher Autonomy and Mental Health in Primary and Secondary School Teachers: The Chain-Mediating Role of Teaching Efficacy and Job Satisfaction.

Teachers in primary and secondary schools are frequently under pressure. Therefore, it is critical to understand the factors that affect their mental health. Autonomy was associated with mental health in the past. However, the mediating mechanism behind this relationship has received little attention. In this study, a chain mediation model was built to determine whether teaching efficacy and work satisfaction mediated the relationship between teacher autonomy and mental health. Our study enlisted the participation of 810 Chinese primary and secondary school teachers aged from 21 to 57 years old. They completed self-reporting measures of teacher autonomy, mental health, teaching efficacy, and job satisfaction. The results show that (1) teacher autonomy, teaching efficacy, job satisfaction, and mental health have strong positive relationships, (2) teaching efficacy and job satisfaction significantly mediate the relationship between autonomy and mental health, and (3) both teaching efficacy and job satisfaction play a chain-mediating role. The chain-mediating effect of teaching efficacy and job satisfaction plays an important role in promoting teachers' mental health. Teachers with a high level of autonomy tend to have high teaching efficacy, high job satisfaction, and improved mental health.

ODP579 An EMR And Educational Intervention To Avoid Excessive Fingerstick Blood Glucose Testing In Low-risk Hospitalized Patients With Type Ii Diabetes

Abstract Introduction Telemedicine has become the cornerstone of health care delivery in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it allows patients to be cared for at a distance. Though institutions have published experiences with telemedicine incorporated into residency training programs during the pandemic, there is a lack of qualitative data in this field. This descriptive qualitative study sought to (1) explore internal medicine resident experiences with telehealth patient encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) understand resident experiences with virtually reviewing cases with their supervisors. Methods From November 2020 to March 2021, the authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with internal medicine residents at the University of Toronto. Residents were included if they completed ambulatory rotations such as endocrinology. Interviews were transcribed, line-by-line coding was done in parallel, and themes were derived through inductive and constant comparative analysis. Results Resident experiences with telemedicine were divided into themes according to the perceived benefits and challenges with patient encounters, and with virtually reviewing cases with supervisors. Perceived benefits in patient encounters included less pressure for time and increased efficiency, and residents looked at this patient care modality as an important component of their future careers. Challenges included a deficiency of nonverbal cues to use for building rapport with patients and confirming their understanding, inability to confidently form an impression of a patient and their disease severity, the lack of physical examination, and technical audio-visual challenges. While most residents preferred in-person to virtual review with their supervisors, the benefits of the virtual review included a supportive learning environment, and a high level of autonomy for senior residents. However, residents felt that feedback over a virtual platform was generic and not constructive, and junior trainees did not have opportunities to observe staff demonstrate essential skills needed for telemedicine care. Discussion Telemedicine incorporation into postgraduate medical education is still in its early stages, and data on resident experiences is crucial to inform ways of optimizing the learning environment and preceptorship of such encounters. The virtual review process, limited by the same communication challenges that residents faced with patients, inherently involves less supervision and guidance than an in-person review. While this may support the learning needs of more experienced residents by offering more autonomy, junior residents may be affected by the lack of opportunities for observation of essential skills and the absence of coaching through constructive feedback. More research is needed especially on educational interventions that can help overcome the virtual communication challenges between residents, patients, and their clinical supervisors. Presentation: No date and time listed

ODP577 A Qualitative Exploration of Internal Medicine Resident Experiences with Telemedicine During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract Telemedicine has become the cornerstone of health care delivery in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it allows patients to be cared for at a distance. This descriptive qualitative study sought to (1) explore internal medicine resident experiences with telehealth patient encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) understand resident experiences with virtually reviewing cases with their supervisors. From November 2020 to March 2021, the authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with internal medicine residents who have completed ambulatory rotations such as endocrinology. Perceived benefits in patient encounters included increased efficiency. Challenges included a deficiency of nonverbal cues to use for building rapport with patients and confirming their understanding, inability to confidently form an impression of a patient and their disease severity, the lack of physical examination, and technical audio-visual challenges. While most residents preferred in-person to virtual review with their supervisors, the benefits of the virtual review included a supportive learning environment, and a high level of autonomy for senior residents. However, residents felt that feedback over a virtual platform was generic and not constructive, and junior trainees did not have opportunities to observe staff demonstrate essential skills needed for telemedicine care. Presentation: No date and time listed

School-based Management and Its Effects on the Teacher Satisfaction in Henan Province, China

Due to its implementation and popularity, School-based management is a scientific, managerial concept. In recent years, the Ministry of Education has concentrated on implementing and promoting its development in China. Meanwhile, teacher satisfaction received wide attention. This study used quantitative research and took the multi-stage cluster sampling method, and the 392 questionnaires were collected randomly in 6 primary and secondary schools. According to the research results, the finding illuminated that the schools have a high-level autonomy for school management. Besides, teacher satisfaction is also high in schools. Furthermore, there is a significant positive relationship between the level of implementation of SBM and teacher satisfaction. However, there is no significant difference in SBM implementation in primary and secondary schools. Besides, there is also no notable difference based on different genders. Lastly, the multiple regression results show that teacher satisfaction can be predicted by the three independent variables: finance personnel and curriculum. These variables statistically significantly predicted the level of teacher satisfaction. Thus, we concluded that the implementation positively affects teacher satisfaction, and the government still needs to promote the implementation of SBM.

Task and Motion Informed Trees (TMIT*): Almost-Surely Asymptotically Optimal Integrated Task and Motion Planning

High-level autonomy requires discrete and continuous reasoning to decide both what actions to take and how to execute them. Integrated Task and Motion Planning (TMP) algorithms solve these hybrid problems jointly to consider constraints between the discrete symbolic actions (i.e., the task plan) and their continuous geometric realization (i.e., motion plans). This joint approach solves more difficult problems than approaches that address the task and motion subproblems independently. TMP algorithms combine and extend results from both task and motion planning. TMP has mainly focused on computational performance and completeness and less on solution optimality. Optimal TMP is difficult because the independent optima of the subproblems may not be the optimal integrated solution, which can only be found by jointly optimizing both plans. This paper presents Task and Motion Informed Trees (TMIT*), an optimal TMP algorithm that combines results from makespan-optimal task planning and almost-surely asymptotically optimal motion planning. TMIT* interleaves asymmetric forward and reverse searches to delay computationally expensive operations until necessary and perform an efficient informed search directly in the problem's hybrid state space. This allows it to solve problems quickly and then converge towards the optimal solution with additional computational time, as demonstrated on the evaluated robotic-manipulation benchmark problems.

SkiNet, A Petri Net Generation Tool for the Verification of Skillset-based Autonomous Systems

The need for high-level autonomy and robustness of autonomous systems for missions in dynamic and remote environment has pushed developers to come up with new software architectures. A common architecture style is to summarize the capabilities of the robotic system into elementary actions, called skills, on top of which a skill management layer is implemented to structure, test and control the functional layer. However, current available verification tools only provide either mission-specific verification or verification on a model that does not replicate the actual execution of the system, which makes it difficult to ensure its robustness to unexpected events. To that end, a tool, SkiNet, has been developed to transform the skill-based architecture of a system into a Petri net modeling the state-machine behaviors of the skills and the resources they handle. The Petri net allows the use of model-checking, such as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) or Computational Tree Logic (CTL), for the user to analyze and verify the model of the system.

Path planning for autonomous surface vessels based on improved artificial fish swarm algorithm: a further study

ABSTRACT Featuring agile controllability, high-level autonomy, and powerful field operational advantages, autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) are gaining increasing attention worldwide. Central to the control of ASVs, path planning is one of the key technologies that ensure the navigation safety. However, many of the previous works to solve the path planning problem are to find a collision-free and shortest path, but the solutions are not satisfied by the safety requirements and the non-holonomic constraints of ASVs. This paper expands on our previous work on the improved artificial fish algorithm (IAFSA) to address these challenges. The expanding technique is introduced to modify the grid cost, and a B-spline-based path smoother is applied to the algorithm to enhance its feasibility in cooperating with the ASV controller. Simulation experiments have been conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Moreover, the new algorithm is tested in the USV control system model in a practical environment. The simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed method is more efficient than the other state-of-the-art algorithms, and the simulation with the ASV model illustrated its excellent performance cooperating with the control system. Therefore, the proposed method can be considered as a reliable algorithm to solve the path planning problem of ASVs.

Radical institutional changes while maintaining strong links between VET and the labour market: The Dutch VET experience

Abstract This article intends to show that while the strong VET-labour market link has a long tradition in the Netherlands and likely maintains strong in the future, the dynamics that substantiate this link, especially in terms of institutional arrangement have seen a radical shift in the last decades. To explore the shifts we make use of Rageth and Renold (2020) model of three ideal types of linkages between education and employment system and the ideas concerning vocational and academic drift (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Cedefop, 2017, 2020). This article is based on a literature review and case studies conducted in recent years on the Dutch system in the context of various (European) research projects. The article concludes that while the ownership for VET of the employment system decreased, the VET schools, due to the high level of autonomy and institutional capacities, were effectively able to install cooperation mechanism, joint delivery mechanisms in VET programmes and effective feedback mechanisms. The article shows that powerbalancing on VET content and supporting vocational drift does not necessarily require powerbalancing institutionally. In doing so, the article offers reflections to other countries’ VET systems on how to balance education and labour market systems in the determination of the VET content and the governance of the VET system.

Managing Without Managers: How Self-Managing Organizations Fulfill the Functions of Managers

Middle managers play an important function in organizations, taking responsibility for many crucial roles in decision-making, leadership, and communication. Synthesizing existing literature, we identify ten task-oriented, people-oriented, and systems-oriented functions that managers in a typical organization fulfill. Self-managing organizations, however, challenge the necessity of managers by demonstrating that an organization can function and thrive even without any middle managers. In a case study of a self-managing IT service company from Finland with 550+ employees but no middle managers, we identify the alternative practices and solutions through which the ten key functions of managers are fulfilled in this organization. The organizing was built around self-managing teams with high levels of autonomy and served by dedicated supportive roles, such as coaches supporting team development, and a specific salary team negotiating the salaries. The remaining managerial functions were replaced by a strong culture and shared cultural practices such as agile team practices and an advice process for bigger decisions ensuring the necessary coordination and coherence. The investigation expands the functional approach to leadership and managerial work by highlighting the alternative practices through which managers can be replaced, while also offering a new way of understanding how self-managing organizations are able to function.

Hong Kong Security Law 2020: Between State Sovereignty and Breach of Treaty

In 1984 the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom (UK) signed an international agreement to hand over Hong Kong to the PRC on the condition that it be granted a high level of autonomy, except in the field of defence and cooperation with foreign powers. In 2020, PRC Government issued the 2020 Hong Kong Security Law, which contains restrictions on political rights for the people of Hong Kong. This provision will automatically lead to discourse in international law, whether the HKSL 2020 is a manifestation of the implementation of PRC's legal sovereignty or violates the Sino-British Joint Declaration 1984 as a treaty which contains requirements for the transfer of Hong Kong. This article is intended to examine these problems using a normative, historical and conceptual approach. As a result, even though PRC has sovereignty to implement its national law in the territory, the authority must be placed within the limits of compliance with international law. Non-compliance with international treaties will lead to consequences of internationally wrongful acts as a breach of the treaty.

Does default organ donation registration compromise autonomous choice? Public responses to a new donor registration system

Defaults have been shown to increase the number of organ donor registrations but it is unclear whether they violate personal autonomy of the people being registered. The implementation of a new Donor Act in the Netherlands, providing people with the opportunity for active registration before being defaulted, allowed for examining to what extent default registration affects personal autonomy and associated concepts. In an online survey among a representative sample (N = 1259), four groups were compared regarding autonomy, decision-making competence, decision satisfaction, and being pressured to register as a donor: people (1) who had registered their status prior to the Donor Act, (2) who had not yet received an invitation for default registration, (3) who had received an invitation and then registered their choice, and (4) who had received an invitation but took no action and were defaulted into donor registration. We found that among the three groups who were the target population of the new arrangement, people who registered their status reported relatively high levels of autonomy and related concepts. However, people who were invited to register but passed the opportunity to respond reported lower scores on these outcomes. We conclude that default organ donation registration may bear negative consequences for a minority of people who feel unable to take action after having been invited to make a choice for registration.

Increasing the personal autonomy of preadolescents from rural areas

The role of sports activities in the training and development of school graduates cannot be disputed. The benefits of this type of activity can be manifested in several aspects: development of motor indicators, maintenance of optimal physical health as well as development of cooperation skills, interpersonal relationships and personality traits, among which personal autonomy is thought to be one of the most important acquisitions. Preadolescence is a stage characterised both by significant changes in the physical and mental plane. The maximum use of sport in school can be achieved by initiating and carrying out extracurricular sports programmes adapted to the needs of students and the specifics of the grade. The research was conducted between 2018 and 2021 in two schools from rural areas in Vrancea County. The study involved 40 participants (30 boys and 10 girls) aged between 12 and 15 years. A comparative analysis of the results obtained by students in the control and experimental groups was performed through the SPSS program using the statistical method for Independent Samples t-Test, Levene’s Test and Cohen’s d. The results obtained from the statistical analysis support the idea that students participating in the extracurricular sports programme have a higher level of autonomy, are more confident in their future and opportunities and show determination, stability and perseverance in their own beliefs and principles.

Personalized Teaching Strategy of University Ideology Course Based on Lagrange Neural Network and Big Data Technology.

Individualized instruction is a type of educational principle. On the one hand, it necessitates the creation of individualized teaching resources, courses, and methods. Students, on the other hand, require a high level of autonomy and the ability to make personalized plans based on their own cognitive characteristics and needs. The big data (BD) era opens up new possibilities for IE (ideological education) work in universities, but it also poses some challenges. IE development will be greatly aided by recognizing opportunities to meet challenges and optimizing and integrating PL (political lesson) resources. The LNN (Lagrange neural network) model has been established. The simulation results show that the LNN network can converge to the optimal solution quickly and effectively and then reconstruct sparse signals. Individualized college PL instruction using LNN and BD technology helps students communicate more effectively and improves the pertinence, immediacy, and positivity of IE.

Defining and characterizing self-awareness and self-sufficiency for deep space habitats

Future deep-space crewed exploration plans include long duration missions (>1000 days) that will be constrained by lengthy transmission delays and potential occultations in communications, as well as infrequent resupply opportunities and likely periods of habitat unoccupancy. In order to meet the high level of autonomy needed for these missions, many essential capabilities and knowledge previously accomplished through ground support and human operators must now be designed into onboard systems to enable increasing self-reliance. Emergent technologies, including autonomous systems, have the potential to be mission enabling in deep space; however, as these technologies are often low-TRL and without defined mass, power, or volume, their net impact to the design must be assessed through alternative means, especially during the early planning phases. This paper proposes the concept of designing for self-reliant space habitats as the foundation for assessing potential contributions from the integration of emergent technologies. The term ‘self-reliance’ can be thought of as a combination of the spacecraft system and onboard crew's knowledge (self-awareness) and capabilities (self-sufficiency) independent of external intervention. In order to provide context for human spaceflight, these terms are first derived from related terrestrial applications. Subsequently, a methodology for characterizing the degree of self-awareness and self-sufficiency in a space habitat is outlined to provide designers with logic for assessing the contributions of emergent technologies to the overall self-reliance of the habitat as needed to allow future Earth-independence. The definitions and characterization logic provided in this work offer a systematic process for designing toward self-reliance in future deep space missions.

Latin America Isn’t ‘Going South’: A Qualitative Sampling Analysis

This article analyses a qualitative sample of recent judicial decisions from Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Peru. Almost all decisions in the sample show ordinary courts’ deference towards arbitration. As long as the courts operate within the framework established by the UNCITRAL Model Law or the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, arbitral awards enjoy a high level of autonomy and protection against unjustified attacks. This allows for conclusion that Latin America isn’t ‘Going South’ on its path into global arbitration realm. At the same time, in almost all jurisdictions included in the sample, Constitutional courts and Tribunals and constitutional actions for protection of fundamental rights play an extremely – indeed excessively – relevant role. Admittedly, these constitutional actions have been mainly unsuccessful and have not led to amendments of arbitral awards. Nonetheless, its sole availability generates legal uncertainty and undermines the reliability of arbitration as a mechanism of dispute resolution. It seems to be the last hurdle that Latin American countries will have to overcome before they are considered safe and appealing seats for international arbitration. Arbitration, Latin America, setting aside, recognition and enforcement, amparo, constitutionalization of arbitration

Saudi parents’ privacy concerns about their children’s smart device applications

In this paper, we investigate Saudi parents’ privacy concerns regarding their children’s smart device applications (apps). To this end, we conducted a survey and analysed 119 responses. Our results show that Saudi parents expressed a high level of concern regarding their children’s privacy when using smart device apps. However, they expressed higher concerns about apps’ content than privacy issues such as apps’ requests to access sensitive data. Furthermore, parents’ concerns are not in line with most of the children’s installed apps, which contain apps inappropriate for their age, require parental guidance, and request access to sensitive data such as location. We also discuss several aspects of Saudi parents’ practices and concerns compared to those reported by Western (mainly from the UK) and Chinese parents in previous reports. We found interesting patterns and established new relationships. For example, Saudi and Chinese children have a higher level of autonomy in installing apps on their devices than Western children who mostly request apps installation from their parents. However, there are more Saudi parents who end up uninstalling apps from their children’s devices due to privacy concerns than Western parents. This suggests that parents’ involvement in installing children’s apps is related to a reduced number of uninstallation incidents, which are mostly negatively received by children. Furthermore, Saudi and Western parents show higher levels of privacy concerns than Chinese parents. Finally, we tested 14 privacy practices and concerns against high versus low socioeconomic classes (parents’ education, technical background, and income) to find whether there are significant differences between high and low classes (we denote these differences by “digital divide”). Out of 42 tests (14 properties × 3 classes) we found significant differences between high and low classes in 7 tests only. While this is a positive trend overall, it is important to work on bridging these gaps. The results of this paper provide key findings to identify areas of improvement and recommendations, especially for Saudis, which can be used by parents, developers, researchers, regulators, and policy makers.

Comparative analysis of contraceptive use in Punjab and Manipur: exploring beyond women\u2019s education and empowerment

BackgroundWomen’s education and empowerment are important predictors of contraceptive use across countries. However, two of the Indian states, namely, Punjab and Manipur, showed large variations in contraceptive use, despite the similar level of women’s educational attainment and empowerment. Therefore, this paper attempts to understand variation in contraceptive use between these states, despite having similar level of educational attainment and empowerment among the married women.MethodsThis study primarily used cross-sectional data of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015–16 and to some extent the District Level Household Survey (DLHS) 2012–13 data. The analytical sample includes 13,730 currently married women in Punjab and 8,872 in Manipur. Modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) is the key outcome variable of this study. Bivariate, multivariate, and multilevel regression analysis are applied to understand the differences in mCPR between these states and its determinants.ResultsMean years of schooling was about 8 years among women of both the states, and about 34% of the women in Punjab and 27% of the women in Manipur have high level of autonomy. Despite this, use of modern method was 66% in Punjab and only 13% in Manipur. Coverage of family planning program indicators were significantly lower in Manipur than Punjab – frontline workers’ (FLWs) outreach for family planning was only 18% in Manipur compared to 52% in Punjab. Similarly, only 11% of the public health facilities in Manipur compared to 50% of the health facilities in Punjab were ready to provide at least one clinical method of family planning.ConclusionDespite the similar level of individual level characteristics across the two states, poor coverage of family planning programs – low outreach of FLWs, low level of facility readiness, as well as sociocultural norms discouraging contraceptive use – might be responsible for lower contraceptive use in Manipur than Punjab. This implies for strengthening the health system for family planning in Manipur to meet the contraception needs of women by addressing sociocultural barriers in the state.

The teacher as street-level bureaucrat: science teacher’s discretionary decision-making in a time of reform

ABSTRACT This article explores teacher discretion in the context of the English 2014 science curriculum and assessment reforms. The study positions primary and secondary school science teachers as “street-level bureaucrats” in which they are not just mere implementers of policy but instead pivotal actors with much agency. Through the analysis of questionnaire and interview data drawn from a sample of 26 science teachers in England, this empirical research advances our understanding of teachers’ discretionary decision-making considering policy change and reform. The findings indicate that discretion varied, not simply between the secondary and primary sectors, but within each key stage. With the introduction of the new curriculum, secondary teachers expressed higher levels of autonomy and more discretion teaching key stage 3 than with key stage 4 and key stage 5. Despite this, we argue that it has become more difficult for teachers to circumvent the “rules” associated with the attainment measures in the ways that were previously possible. We conclude that the embodiment of teachers as street-level bureaucrats is not perfect as the boundaries around teacher’s discretion and decision-making are heavily dependent on the school and national policy context, but it remains a useful theory in advancing our understanding of teacher.

Developing next generation marine risk analysis for ships: Bio-inspiration for building immunity

Research on autonomous ships has led to several ideas about how they could be operated in terms of level of automation and human presence. However, all seem to point towards systems that will be more complex due to issues such as the tighter integration with software and the interactions with humans-in-the-loop. These ships will likely be completely different compared to conventional ones, which puts into question the usefulness of our current understanding of risk and how it is managed for ensuring safe operation. By a critical review of the literature, this paper highlights the need for advanced methods that will combine machine learning and simulation for dynamically assessing risk in a life cycle context and effectively transferring acquired operational knowledge back to the design phase. The main objective of this paper is to describe a novel life cycle risk framework for developing algorithms inspired by the biological immune system, which provides lifetime protection from harmful pathogens. This framework can be used to construct machine learning algorithms for dynamic risk monitoring and adaptive risk control that address different types of risk, while enabling faster future response to previously unencountered risks and operational feedback to design through learning. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in a specific maritime context with a case study on collision risk identification. Considering the lack of experience for autonomous ships, the benefit of our immune-inspired approach is that it departs from the classic risk scenario concept and that it does not rely on safety performance data for identifying risk factors and training the algorithms. We suggest this framework is particularly suitable for autonomous ships with high levels of autonomy, although applicable to conventional ships as well, as it can contribute to empowering them with risk awareness and the capability to deal with any risk environment.

Response to TMS treatment for depression associated with higher levels of psychological well-being

Treatment resistant depression (TRD) is a complex condition associated with a great deal of disability and suffering. The relationship between TRD and psychological well-being (PWB) appears to be more complex than a simple antithesis. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a well-tolerated treatment for TRD. However successful, a drawback for TMS is that it has a lack of predictive biomarkers for treatment response. Our study focuses on the relationship between PWB and treatment resistant depression, and how PWB relates to TMS treatment response. We hypothesized that TMS treatment responders would have higher levels of PWB at baseline. In this study of 21 patients with TRD, we used the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). We found a significant relationship between environmental mastery, purpose in life, self-acceptance, and total PWB with baseline depression but no significant correlation between autonomy, personal growth, and positive relations with others and baseline PHQ-9 scores. No Ryff domain of PWB significantly predicted change in PHQ-9 score. Interestingly, however, we found that TMS responders had higher levels of autonomy (M(SD) = 62.10(10.46), p = 0.022) and personal growth (M(SD) = 65.00(11.04), p = 0.007) than non-responders at baseline. These specific aspects of well-being appear to be distinct from depression and particularly important in treatment response. This discovery suggests that assessing PWB might prove clinically useful when assessing future candidates for TMS treatment of TRD. Further research is necessary to evaluate the effects of TMS on PWB since these may be distinct from its effect on depression symptomology.