Search Results (7)

Educational buildings, including schools, nurseries and universities, face stricter regulation and design control on indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal conditions than other built environments, as these may affect children’s health and wellbeing. In this scoping review, wide-ranging health, performance, and absenteeism consequences of poor—and benefits of good—IAQ and thermal conditions are evaluated, focusing on source control, ventilation and air purification interventions. Economic impacts of interventions in educational buildings have been evaluated to enable the assessment of tangible building-related costs and savings, alongside less easily quantifiable improvements in educational attainment and reduced healthcare. Key recommendations are provided to assist decision makers in pathways to provide clean air, at an optimal temperature for students’ learning and health outcomes. Although the role of educational buildings can be challenging to isolate from other socio-economic confounders, secondary short- and long-term impacts on attainment and absenteeism have been demonstrated from the health effects associated with various pollutants. Sometimes overlooked, source control and repairing existing damage can be important cost-effective methods in minimising generation and preventing ingress of pollutants. Existing ventilation standards are often not met, even when mechanical and hybrid ventilation systems are already in place, but can often be achieved with a fraction of a typical school budget through operational and maintenance improvements, and small-scale air-cleaning and ventilation technologies, where necessary. Full article

Background: In the context of the high turnover rate of preschool nursery teachers, the preschool nursery teacher program in secondary vocational schools has been an important channel for sending qualified nursery teachers to early education institutions, and fostering students’ professional identity, which is key to their future career construction and development; therefore, this study aims to investigate the mechanism of social support on professional identity, with a chain mediating effect of psychological adjustment and school belonging. Methods: 377 third-year students from secondary vocational schools majoring in nursery and preschool teaching were surveyed with the Social Support Scale, Professional Identity Scale, School Belonging Scale, Well-being Scale, Discrimination Perception Scale and Self-Identity Scale. Results: (1) Correlation analysis showed that social support, professional identity, school belonging, and psychological adjustment (well-being, self-identity) were significantly and positively correlated with each other. A significant negative correlation was found between discrimination perception and other variables. (2) School belonging played a partially mediating role between social support and professional identity, and psychological adjustment and school belonging showed chain mediating effects between social support and professional identity. Conclusions: Social support not only directly influences professional identity, but also indirectly affects professional identity through the chain mediating effect of psychological adjustment and school belonging. Full article

There are no secure rights without the right of free speech. Free speech is the right that is necessary to defend all other rights. Student free speech is an essential foundation for societal free speech. We will not have a society that values and protects free speech without valuing and protecting free speech for students. Schools must serve as the essential nurseries of our democracy and as examples of the responsible exercise of rights in a free society including free speech. We cannot expect students to spend most of their waking hours in institutions devoid of meaningful rights to freedom of speech and then emerge as adults prepared to exercise and defend democratic freedoms including free speech. Students who learn to exercise free speech rights in schools are more likely to become adults ready to exercise free speech rights in a civil democracy. This article addresses the ongoing evolution of student free speech rights in the U.S., providing a brief overview of free speech law; a review of student speech law in public K-12 schools and in public higher education institutions; a guide to applying the Tinker test in practice; a discussion of the continuing evolution of student speech law in public educational institutions; a review of freedom of the press in public educational institutions; and conclusions on the evolution of student speech. Full article

Product and service development based on sustainable criteria is one of the poles of innovation in design activity. Public policies, consumer preferences, and corporate social responsibility lead to the growing importance of applying sustainability principles in the current design process. However, to make this practice widespread, sustainability assessment must be included in the curricula of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in design, so that the graduates have the precise tools to use when they start their professional careers. Furthermore, sustainable design methods have mainly been applied to improve only the environmental behavior of products. In this work, a methodology that simultaneously evaluates environmental, economic, and social aspects was applied to project more sustainable designs of products and services. This approach was implemented in higher education to develop Bachelor’s and Master’s degree final projects by design engineering students. Collaboration with different companies and institutions allowed the study of a number of cases. The production process of a cash management machine, the service provided by a public nursery school, and the development of an itinerary exhibition were addressed. In each case, product and service requirements were analyzed, sustainability indicators were obtained, and more sustainable designs could be proposed. This experience is also part of a global strategy at the University of Zaragoza to support the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, enhancing sustainability education. The intention of this paper is to present a methodology for more sustainable design, and examples of its application that other teachers can easily follow when teaching design of products or services. Full article

This paper describes the implementation of a series of ventilation strategies in a nursery and primary school from September 2020, when the government decided to resume the students’ face-to-face activity in the middle of a COVID scenario. Air quality and hygrothermal comfort conditions were analysed before the pandemic and compared for different ventilation configurations in a post-COVID scenario. Ventilation strategies included the protocols issued by the Public Administration, while others were developed based on the typological configuration and use of the school. Results revealed that it is advisable to implement certain strategies that reduce the risk of infection among the occupants of the spaces, without a significant decrease in hygrothermal comfort. Given the importance of maintaining better IAQ in the future within classrooms, and regarding the pre-COVID situation, these strategies may be extended beyond this pandemic period, through a simple protocol and necessary didactic package to be assumed by both teachers and students of the centre. Full article

The Education Against Tobacco (EAT) network delivers smoking prevention advice in secondary schools, typically using the mirroring approach (i.e., a “selfie” altered with a face-aging app and shared with a class). In November 2017, however, the German assembly of EAT opted to expand its remit to include nursing students. To assess the transferability of the existing approach, we implemented it with the self-developed face-aging app “Smokerface” (=mixed − methods approach) in six nursing schools. Anonymous questionnaires were used to assess the perceptions of 197 students (age 18–40 years; 83.8% female; 26.4% smokers; 23.3% daily smokers) collecting qualitative and quantitative data for our cross-sectional study. Most students perceived the intervention to be fun (73.3%), but a minority disagreed that their own animated selfie (25.9%) or the reaction of their peers (29.5%) had motivated them to stop smoking. The impact on motivation not to smoke was considerably lower than experienced with seventh graders (63.2% vs. 42.0%; notably, more smokers also disagreed (45.1%) than agreed (23.5%) with this statement. Agreement rates on the motivation not to smoke item were higher in females than in males and in year 2–3 than in year 1 students. Potential improvements included greater focus on pathology (29%) and discussing external factors (26%). Overall, the intervention seemed to be appealing for nursing students. Full article

The issue of quality education in Nigeria has come up in a number of studies. In particular, the teacher has been identified as a major resource in achieving the very important objective of quality basic education. This comes against the backdrop that teachers are perceived to be in a better position to influence the performance of learners. However, how can they positively influence student performance if they themselves are not motivated? A total of 547 teachers in 23 schools (pre-nursery to senior high schools) in the Ibadan South-West Local Government Area in Oyo state, Nigeria participated in the study. SPSS software version 22 was used for data analysis. Descriptive analysis (mean and standard deviation) was done at the first stage and factor analysis at the second stage. The Kaiser’s criterion technique was also applied to determine the factors (components) to be retained for the factor analysis. Only factors with an Eigen value of 1.0 or more were retained for analysis. Kolmogorov-Smirnov’s and Shapiro-Wilk’s tests of normality were also used to test if the generated components (factors) are normally distributed, and the p-values of less than 0.001 for all the components indicated no normal distribution. Overall, the results suggest that teachers’ pay or salary, growth opportunities and responsibilities attached to work are the top three job characteristics variables that contribute to teacher job satisfaction. Full article