Suchergebnisse

This report aims to promote public awareness of after school programs (ASPs) as a potential solution for the current issues surrounding women's access to paid work and for improving the education of children. In addition, this report focuses on after school programs for older children aged 9 to 14 years old, as this is a neglected sector in child care services. More support is needed for working parents who have children of that age as these children are too young to be left at home alone and students could also receive additional educational support from ASPs. As this report has been written for the benefit of the general public, and people who are in need of solutions for improving and developing ASPs, it states the supporting reasons for improving ASPs, the problems that should be solved and suggests solutions about how to improve the current situation. The findings are based upon a review of the literature on ASPs in the United States and Australia concerning child care policies and ASP curriculum. Chapter I explains the importance of developing ASPs for working mothers with a focus on 9 to 14 year old children who need quality care. Chapter 2 describes the problems that the ASP system in Australia is facing. These include unbalanced attention towards certain age groups, a lack of united organisation and regulation, a scarcity of cooperation between schools and ASP coordinators, an absence of proper evaluation processes, and difficulties reflecting children's needs and interests. Based upon these problems, this chapter suggests considerations and solutions relevant to the remainder of the report. Chapter 3 will introduce organising processes divided into two levels. Firstly, school-level ASP is presented as an ideal solution, and outlines steps that school-based ASPs can take to improve their care. Secondly, city-wide ASPs are discussed, as this is the minimum scale that is able to construct a comprehensive curriculum and arrange an ASP organisation that can solve fundamental systemic problems. Chapter 4 introduces considerations necessary for organising quality ASPs. This includes developmental characteristics of youth adolescents aged 9 to 14 years, who form the target group for this report. It also discusses strategies that can be taken when setting goals for designing the curriculum of ASPs, such as using evidence-based approaches and focusing on relevant skills that can lead to outcomes. In addition, the chapter finds that personal and social skills are the basic foundation for learning, and introduces three types of programs to guide curriculum design which are academic, peer bonding, and enrichment programs. Chapter 5 discusses possible solutions. As the most efficient way to develop ASP quality is to improve the standard of instruction, instructor training through university partnerships and a website to support instructors in preparing materials are suggested. To adopt the proposed suggestions, it is necessary to tailor the circumstances to target students, goals, and affordability of the programs. One of the most important premises supporting the development of quality ASPs is the governmental support that can coordinate the system. Moreover, further research is needed, especially in Australia, to accumulate empirical data and raise public awareness.

This study aimed to examine the effects of commenting on a Facebook misinformation post by comparing a user agency–based intervention and machine agency–based intervention in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) fact-checking labeling on attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccination. We found that both interventions were effective at promoting positive attitudes toward vaccination compared to the misinformation-only condition. However, the intervention effects manifested differently depending on participants' residential locations, such that the commenting intervention emerged as a promising tool for suburban participants. The effectiveness of the AI fact-checking labeling intervention was pronounced for urban populations. Neither of the fact-checking interventions showed salient effects with the rural population. These findings suggest that although user agency- and machine agency–based interventions might have potential against misinformation, these interventions should be developed in a more sophisticated way to address the unequal effects among populations in different geographic locations.

Disinformation presented in multiple modalities (textual, visual, and auditory modes; multimodal disinformation) has become a serious concern. This study examines how disinformation, portrayed using an image or video format, may be more powerful than text-only disinformation. In particular, we examined the impact on affective mechanisms, as well as the moderating role of perceived issue relevance. Through an online experiment with modality conditions and a control group (text-only disinformation vs image-plus-text disinformation vs video-plus-text disinformation vs control; N = 413), results indicate that while anxiety is a critical mechanism that explains the overall effects of disinformation on misperceptions, video-plus-text disinformation turns out to increase misperceptions directly or indirectly through anxiety. Video-plus-text disinformation (vs control) showed a significant interaction with perceived issue relevance; that said, the difference in anxiety decreased between those with low and high perceived issue relevance in the video-plus-text disinformation. Implications are discussed in light of the realism heuristic, affect heuristic, and modality-biased processing in explaining the emotional impact of multimodal disinformation.