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The intersections of early years curriculum, pedagogy, policy and their research must now confront two seemingly intractable but mutually constitutive global problems within their materially ‘grounded’ geocultural-historical circumstances and conditions. The ‘lives’ of children embedded in the socioecological contexts of families, homes, meals, schools, playgrounds and neighbourhoods are ‘fast’ (dromosphere) ‘heating up’ (Anthropocene). Without alternatives, the accelerating and intensifying consequences are deeply disturbing. This chapter addresses a vital need in early childhood education and research. There is a compelling ‘early intervention’ warrant for critical problem identification, theory building, methodological innovation and empirically qualified insights into the increasingly vulnerable body~time~space scapes of childhood in the now complex, accelerated, climactic and abstracted/digitalized ‘everyday’ of their precariously ‘lived experiences’. Empirically informed theoretical development of an environmental education and its ecopedagogies capable of slowly sustaining an intergenerational ethic is overdue. This chapter anticipates the formatively sensitive development of an experience-rich education (and research within it) that is ecopedagogically meaningful to children’s immersion in various body~time~space scapes in, and with, a still vibrant nature that, in so doing, critically (en)counters the deeply problematic dromospherical advent of the Anthropocene.
BackgroundMobile technologies could be a powerful media for providing individual level support to health care consumers. We conducted a systematic review to assess the effectiveness of mobile technology interventions delivered to health care consumers.
Methods and Findings
We searched for all controlled trials of mobile technology-based health interventions delivered to health care consumers using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Global Health, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, UK NHS HTA (Jan 1990–Sept 2010). Two authors extracted data on allocation concealment, allocation sequence, blinding, completeness of follow-up, and measures of effect. We calculated effect estimates and used random effects meta-analysis. We identified 75 trials. Fifty-nine trials investigated the use of mobile technologies to improve disease management and 26 trials investigated their use to change health behaviours. Nearly all trials were conducted in high-income countries. Four trials had a low risk of bias. Two trials of disease management had low risk of bias; in one, antiretroviral (ART) adherence, use of text messages reduced high viral load (>400 copies), with a relative risk (RR) of 0.85 (95% CI 0.72–0.99), but no statistically significant benefit on mortality (RR 0.79 [95% CI 0.47–1.32]). In a second, a PDA based intervention increased scores for perceived self care agency in lung transplant patients. Two trials of health behaviour management had low risk of bias. The pooled effect of text messaging smoking cessation support on biochemically verified smoking cessation was (RR 2.16 [95% CI 1.77–2.62]). Interventions for other conditions showed suggestive benefits in some cases, but the results were not consistent. No evidence of publication bias was demonstrated on visual or statistical examination of the funnel plots for either disease management or health behaviours. To address the limitation of the older search, we also reviewed more recent literature.
Conclusions
Text messaging interventions increased adherence to ART and smoking cessation and should be considered for inclusion in services. Although there is suggestive evidence of benefit in some other areas, high quality adequately powered trials of optimised interventions are required to evaluate effects on objective outcomes.
For more than two decades, the Invitational Seminar on Research Development in Environmental (and Health) Education series has provided a unique opportunity for participants from around the planet to discuss critical problems, trends and issues in environmental education research (EER) and environmental education (EE). Using a critical realist/materialist ‘history of the present’ method, this brief commentary outlines some of the key principles and purposes of the Seminar series that helped shape the framing, conceptualization, and contextualization of the 13th Invitational Seminar held in Bertioga, Brazil in 2015. The main theme of the 13th Seminar, posed as a researchable question, was: “What is ‘critical’ about critical environmental education research (EER)?”. There are persistent concerns that the early promise and potential of EE in the 1970s is being diminished as the field develops, diversifies and is absorbed into certain dominant logics and/or prevailing practices. The Seminar series is an attractive alternative for researchers historically committed to a critical praxis of EER that promotes environmental ethics and socio-ecological justices. For the first time in the series, environmental education researchers from Brazil (as an indicator of Latin/South America) were invited to give ‘voice’ to their research efforts. In Brazil, there is an emergent ‘body of knowledge’ that serves environmentally as a ‘location of knowledge’. Possibly, this ‘literature base’ represents a distinctive ‘geo-epistemological’ understanding of the local, translocal, national, regional, and transnational achievements and aspirations of the ‘Brazilianess’ of EER. As an evolving history of the present (and future), this commentary concludes with some basic recommendations for the future local and translocal development of ‘post-critical’ framings of inquiry that highlight the importance of sustaining locations of knowledge production in and for critical perspectives of environmental education research.