This research presents a descriptive study on regarding the use of a research-based approach by teachers to clarify problems they encountered in multicultural classrooms. It analyses the outcomes of a training in which seven teachers from a Dutch Senior Secondary Vocational Education school participated conducting a research-based approach to explore the current practice of their multicultural classrooms. To determine the learning outcomes semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers with questions matching the domains of change in Clarke and Hollingsworth(2002) Interconnected Model of Teachers Professional Growth. Our main question was to what extent a research-based approach can help teachers to clarify the problems they encountered in their multicultural classrooms. According to the external domain of Clarke and Hollingsworth they become encouraged by sources of information from experts and literature. The teachers did not always have a positive attitude towards all research activities.
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Designers have grown increasingly interested in social consequences of new technologies. As social impacts become increasingly important it might be fruitful to understand how social impacts develop and how a designer can anticipate these consequences. In health care practices, for instance, it is important to control unintended social impacts at forehand. Social impact is an outcome of the mediating effect of a technology with its social environment. Human behaviour in a social environment can be analysed from the perspective of a social ecological system. To anticipate social impacts simulations of social practices are needed. To simulate practices the persona approach has been adapted to a screenplay approach in which the elements of a social ecology are used to gain a rich description of a social environment. This has been applied for a 'Heart Managers' case. It was concluded that the screenplay approach can be used for a systematic simulation of future social impacts.
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As the Dutch population is aging, the field of music-in-healthcare keeps expanding. Healthcare, institutionally and at home, is multiprofessional and demands interprofessional collaboration. Musicians are sought-after collaborators in social and healthcare fields, yet lesser-known agents of this multiprofessional group. Although live music supports social-emotional wellbeing and vitality, and nurtures compassionate care delivery, interprofessional collaboration between musicians, social work, and healthcare professionals remains marginal. This limits optimising and integrating music-making in the care. A significant part of this problem is a lack of collaborative transdisciplinary education for music, social, and healthcare students that deep-dives into the development of interprofessional skills. To meet the growing demand for musical collaborations by particularly elderly care organisations, and to innovate musical contributions to the quality of social and healthcare in Northern Netherlands, a transdisciplinary education for music, physiotherapy, and social work studies is needed. This project aims to equip multiprofessional student groups of Hanze with interprofessional skills through co-creative transdisciplinary learning aimed at innovating and improving musical collaborative approaches for working with vulnerable, often older people. The education builds upon experiential learning in Learning LABs, and collaborative project work in real-life care settings, supported by transdisciplinary community forming.The expected outcomes include a new concept of a transdisciplinary education for HBO-curricula, concrete building blocks for a transdisciplinary arts-in-health minor study, innovative student-led approaches for supporting the care and wellbeing of (older) vulnerable people, enhanced integration of musicians in interprofessional care teams, and new interprofessional structures for educational collaboration between music, social work and healthcare faculties.
The focus of this project is on improving the resilience of hospitality Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by enabling them to take advantage of digitalization tools and data analytics in particular. Hospitality SMEs play an important role in their local community but are vulnerable to shifts in demand. Due to a lack of resources (time, finance, and sometimes knowledge), they do not have sufficient access to data analytics tools that are typically available to larger organizations. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a prototype infrastructure or ecosystem showcasing how Dutch hospitality SMEs can develop their data analytic capability in such a way that they increase their resilience to shifts in demand. The one year exploration period will be used to assess the feasibility of such an infrastructure and will address technological aspects (e.g. kind of technological platform), process aspects (e.g. prerequisites for collaboration such as confidentiality and safety of data), knowledge aspects (e.g. what knowledge of data analytics do SMEs need and through what medium), and organizational aspects (what kind of cooperation form is necessary and how should it be financed).Societal issueIn the Netherlands, hospitality SMEs such as hotels play an important role in local communities, providing employment opportunities, supporting financially or otherwise local social activities and sports teams (Panteia, 2023). Nevertheless, due to their high fixed cost / low variable business model, hospitality SMEs are vulnerable to shifts in consumer demand (Kokkinou, Mitas, et al., 2023; Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, 2023). This risk could be partially mitigated by using data analytics, to gain visibility over demand, and make data-driven decisions regarding allocation of marketing resources, pricing, procurement, etc…. However, this requires investments in technology, processes, and training that are oftentimes (financially) inaccessible to these small SMEs.Benefit for societyThe proposed study touches upon several key enabling technologies First, key enabling technology participation and co-creation lies at the center of this proposal. The premise is that regional hospitality SMEs can achieve more by combining their knowledge and resources. The proposed project therefore aims to give diverse stakeholders the means and opportunity to collaborate, learn from each other, and work together on a prototype collaboration. The proposed study thereby also contributes to developing knowledge with and for entrepreneurs and to digitalization of the tourism and hospitality sector.Collaborative partnersHZ University of Applied Sciences, Hotel Hulst, Hotel/Restaurant de Belgische Loodsensociëteit, Hotel Zilt, DM Hotels, Hotel Charley's, Juyo Analytics, Impuls Zeeland.
Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
