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PurposeThis study aims to examine the role of trust in management and state government in mitigating the relationships between individual- and state-level stressors and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from a US sample still working during the first wave of infections (N = 437) and was supplemented with objective state-level data. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression modeling with the PROC MIXED procedure with SAS software to incorporate both individual- and state-level variables.FindingsResults indicated that individual-level stressors (work and family role overload) were positively associated with stress; however, the relationship between family role overload and stress was mitigated among those with high trust in state government. Results indicated that state-level stressors (infection rates and population density) were not associated with stress; however, the relationship between state population density and stress was positive among those with low trust in management and negative among those with high trust in management.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the need for organization and government leaders to build trust before and during crisis situations, as well as engage in a collaborative approach to managing stressors in crisis situations.Originality/valueThis study highlights the importance of expanding the focus of employee trust across organizational boundaries for understanding employee well-being during a crisis situation. This study also demonstrates the cross-over effects of trust, such that organization leaders can protect workers from community stressors, while government leaders can protect workers from family stressors.

Almost all 3- to 6-year-olds attend preschool programmes in Hong Kong, yet until recently early childhood education (ECE) was excluded from the boundaries of formal government policy and the sector received minimal financial support from the government. The eventual introduction in 2007 of the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS) — a HK$2 billion government package to subsidise ECE, instead of bringing the early childhood predicament to an end, generated considerable controversy due to its unique nature. Unlike other education voucher programmes, which promote and rely on the "free" market to regulate the quality of education provision, the PEVS limits the vouchers to a restricted sector of the ECE market and ties financial assistance with official quality assessments. Against this background, the purpose of this study was to examine the evolution and the continuous development of this atypical education voucher scheme in the policy context of Hong Kong. The PEVS is conceptualised as both product and process, constantly shaped and reshaped by policymakers as well as parents and ECE providers. To adequately capture the evolving and emergent nature of the policy process and reflect the divergent voices of these stakeholders, a mixed-method approach was employed, and a historical approach is used to analyse and discuss the findings. Focusing on the context of policy text production, in the first two time periods, namely Pre-voucher (Pre-2006) and Announcement and Amendments (2006 – 2009), the rationale for the development and the modifications of the policy text was explored through documentary analyses. In the following time period, After Amendments (2009 – 2010), a survey of 628 parents, kindergarten principals, and teachers, and in-depth interviews with 16 kindergarten principals and teachers were conducted to determine the opportunities for parents and ECE providers to reform and reinterpret the policy text in different contexts of practice. In the final time period, the Official Review and Further Re-modification of the Policy Text (2010 onwards), the results obtained were compared with that of a critical analysis of the official government review of the PEVS and the resulting package of enhancement measures endorsed by the government to understand how parents and ECE providers in the context of practice might in return affect the production of the policy text. Taken together, the results illustrate a full depiction of the policy process. They also show the intertwining relationship among the government, parents, and ECE providers, as well as between the two contexts of policymaking. The illumination of these previously unexplored subjects has important theoretical and practical implications for educational change and policymaking in ECE, and lays the foundation for future research in related areas. ; published_or_final_version ; Education ; Doctoral ; Doctor of Philosophy

Abstract Walking ethnography studies are increasingly present in the literature on the numerous mobility methodologies found in the social sciences and humanities that potentially expand our phenomenological interpretations of the embodied and emplaced dimensions of lived experience. In this study, the mobile investigations as ontologically and epistemologically co-generative in the embodied production of aesthetic meaning-making in nature were examined, aiming to comprehend relations with the human and more than human world and reflect on the potentialities and limits of this methodology in phenomenological research and practices in environmental education. Moreover, the process of (non) representation of these experiences has been problematized insofar as they are not restricted to language, but are essentially bodily and involve multiple dimensions and connections, simultaneously with the human world and the materialities of the more than human world.

English
Education has been repositioned in the Labour policy hierarchy – no longer a straightforward social policy item, it now straddles the social and economic agendas to an extent that makes it possible to talk about education as industrial policy.This article begins by charting the trajectory of ideas and trends which coalesced in the marriage of economic and social policy, the prioritising of education and its role as a key component in the New Labour analysis of Britain's renewal. It then looks at the role of education in New Labour's 'new industrial policy' and examines some of the problems arising from its approach.

The Government's Action Plan for Jobs contained the following commitment regarding a review of apprenticeship: "Initiate a review of the apprenticeship training model, including costs, duration and demand with a view to providing an updated model of training that delivers the necessary skilled workforce to service the needs of a rapidly changing economy and ensures appropriate balance between supply and demand." The first stage of the review process involves the preparation of this background issues paper which, inter alia, provides a factual description of the current system of apprenticeship, including the governance arrangements, trends and forecasts in relation to recruitment and identified strengths and weaknesses of the model and proposes a range of possible options for change.

This paper examines what has been called the 'neo-Marxist' or, more unkindly, the 'vulgar Poulantzian', approach to the state. The typical feature of this approach is a formulation of the relation between capital and the state in terms of the struggle between 'fractions of capital' to establish the position of 'hegemonic fraction' within the 'power bloc'. The state then represents the unity of capital in relation to the proletariat and the dominance of the hegemonic fraction in relation to the other fractions of capital. Research which is guided by this view of the state tends, therefore, to examine state activity in relation to the policies proposed by various political parties and pressure groups which are said to be the 'representatives' of particular fractions of capital. This examination is usually complemented by an account of the particular 'interests' of the fractions in play. The policy actually adopted by the state is then explained by reference to the supposed 'hegemony' of the fraction in whose interest the policy is said to be. This paper aims to develop a critique of this 'fractionalist' approach to the state through a critique of its conceptions of class, of class fractions and of the state. It is argued that the 'fractionalist' approach is 'overpoliticised' in seeing the state as condensation of the social, at the same time as being 'economistic' in directly identifying the state with capital. The critique is developed with reference to the best 'neo-Marxist' work on the state that has blossomed in recent years, that on the South African state. It is hoped, however, that the critique will have a wider relevance.(1)

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Author corporate affiliation: National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C. ; Subject code: DEBC ; Subject code: FGD ; Subject code: RCBDB ; Subject code: RCGC*DEB ; Subject code: RCGC*EOX

"This book explores the situation of rural women and the various measures that have been taken to support them. Based on case studies from Ghana, this book looks at two critical tools - Adult Education and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for enhancement of rural women. It is anticipated that if the full potential of Adult Education is harnessed and the ICTs as an educational media is fully utilized, rural women will not continue to be educationally and digitally divided from their urban counterparts."--Jacket