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This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To compare with the literature on Taiwan study of wage inequality by the turn of Twenty-First Century, using Taiwan's 1978-2003 Manpower Utilization Survey data, this paper estimates the trends of returns to education and experience and investigates the relationship between returns to human capital, ability, and wage inequality. Over the period, return to higher education has an increasing trend while the wage inequality reveals a declining tendency, a phenomenon also contradicted to existing literature, e.g., Castelló-Climent and Doménech (2014). Using quantile regression, we further discover the relations between human capital accumulation and unobserved ability, i.e., education and ability are substitutes while experience and ability tend to complement each other. Education enables those less able people to improve upon their disadvantages and thus improve wage inequality. Moreover, wage inequality is lower in females than in males for every educational level and more experienced groups. Contrary to the existing literature, Taiwan's empirical study demonstrates that the increasing employment share of more educated workers and/or females will improve instead of worsen wage inequality. Policy implications are also discussed based on Taiwan's experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To explore how parents of children with cancer offer educational supports during the treatment process. Methods: Based on a descriptive qualitative method design, 29 mothers and 19 fathers of children with cancer were interviewed on their experiences of supporting their child's education during their child's treatment through semi‐structured interviews. Result: Six themes were summarized from the parents' experiences in supporting their child's education during treatment: initial emphasis on survival over education; educational strategies important when returning to everyday life post‐treatment; parents and educators have different expectations; child's extracurricular activities provided a sense of accomplishment; preparing for transition to school; and long‐term concern was for the child's health and happiness. Conclusion: Education is part of children's normal development, but education is often placed on hold for a child receiving cancer treatment. Parents of children with cancer are unable to focus on the child's education because of the threat to their child's life. When their child's illness stabilizes, they will begin to utilize their resources to arrange lessons to facilitate returning to school. Through understanding parents' learning expectations, medical professionals can support adjustments to parents' attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of an instrument which measures clinical teaching competencies of nursing preceptors. It is necessary to investigate what kinds of teaching competencies are required in modern, more student-centered higher education teaching contexts. Nurses need to possess teaching competence to perform the role of preceptor properly. However, empirical studies exploring teaching competence are rare. Psychometric testing was conducted on a sample of 389 clinical nursing preceptors from three hospitals in 2010. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability testing were conducted on the 53-item Clinical Teaching Competencies Scale. Results indicated that principal axis factoring extraction identified four factors through a promax rotation: Student evaluation, goal setting and individual teaching, teaching strategies, and demonstration of organized knowledge. The Cronbach's α values for the four factors ranged from 0.82-0.87. The Clinical Teaching Competence Inventory was found to have adequate construct validity and internal consistency of reliability for clinical nursing preceptors to assess clinical teaching behaviors in practice settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]