Mathematical modelling has played a pivotal role in understanding the epidemiology of and guiding public health responses to the ongoing coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Here, we ...review the role of epidemiological models in understanding evolving epidemic characteristics, including the effects of vaccination and Variants of Concern (VoC). We highlight ways in which models continue to provide important insights, including (1) calculating the herd immunity threshold and evaluating its limitations; (2) verifying that nascent vaccines can prevent severe disease, infection, and transmission but may be less efficacious against VoC; (3) determining optimal vaccine allocation strategies under efficacy and supply constraints; and (4) determining that VoC are more transmissible and lethal than previously circulating strains, and that immune escape may jeopardize vaccine-induced herd immunity. Finally, we explore how models can help us anticipate and prepare for future stages of COVID-19 epidemiology (and that of other diseases) through forecasts and scenario projections, given current uncertainties and data limitations.
In his belated reply to my 2006 article 'Against autonomy as an educational aim', Christian Wendelborn advances two objections to my argument and proposes two new candidates for an educational aim ...deserving of the name autonomy. I show here that his objections miss their mark and that neither of his new candidates is appointable.
When parents are asked what they want for their children, they usually answer that they want their children to be happy. Why, then, is happiness rarely mentioned as an aim of education? This book ...explores what we might teach if we were to take happiness seriously as an aim of education. It asks, first, what it means to be happy and, second, how we can help children to understand what happiness is. It notes that, to be truly happy, we have to develop a capacity for unhappiness and a willingness to alleviate the suffering of others. Criticizing the present almost exclusive emphasis on economic well-being and pleasure, it discusses the contributions of making a home, parenting, cherishing a place, development of character, interpersonal growth, finding work that one loves, and participating in a democratic way of life. Finally, it explores ways in which to make schools and classrooms happy places.
Abstract
This article reports the results of an empirical study into the relationship between school leaders' experiences of contingency, and how they formulate goals and aims for the future of the ...children at their schools.
We distinguish between three ways of handling experiences of contingency: contingency denial, contingency acceptance, and contingency receiving. We expect that school leaders who have received new insights in their experiences of contingency (contingency receiving) formulate future aims more often than school leaders who have accepted or denied experiences of contingency. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that both contingency receiving and formulating aims are characterised by transcendental openness and an ethical orientation towards the good life.
The study consisted of qualitative interviews with 24 school leaders of primary schools in the Netherlands. The results confirm the hypothesis, and give insight into the complex relation between personal biography and professional identity in school leadership.
This open access book looks critically at how education, migration and development intersect and interact to shape people, communities, societies, ideas, values, and action at local, national and ...international levels. Written by leading scholars and practitioners based in Belgium, China, Columbia, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Mongolia, South Africa, the UK and the USA, the book introduces the reader to how such interactions play out through a series of case study examples drawn from across the globe. It explores education in all its forms and raises critical questions about its purpose and value in different low- and middle-income contexts and settings, in the context of migration. The contributors engage with the multiple reasons why people move, and also consider how people and societies are shaped not just by the movement of humans but also of ideas, concepts and values across different national and international contexts. The chapters cover a range of topics and themes including gender and feminisation, dignity, internal migration, migrant camps, museum pedagogies, migrant teachers and migrant identities. The book decentres dominant theories and ideas emerging in global north scholarship and prioritises empirical studies conducted in relation to low- and middle- income country contexts written by scholars from those contexts where possible.
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