Saturday, January 25, 2020

Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America

Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America Book Review: Miguel Angel Centeno. Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. Penn State University Press 2002. Centenos book begins with the mystery of absence of interstate war-what he calls limited war-in Latin America, and then goes into the genealogy of state development in South America and the role of war on that continent. His historically contextualized analysis of warfare takes up the imbricated factors of class structure, organizational power, and international restraints in Latin America. He characterizes the Latin American states institutional and administrative capacity as not well developed as a result of divisions among dominant class structures, foreign power influence and control, which in turn have contributed to the states relatively peaceful history. He succinctly argues that they have been relatively peaceful because they dont have sophisticated political institutions to manage wars -the no States-no Wars argument.[1] Centeno contends that the lack of strong state institutions and limited state capacity accounts for these states inability to create autonomy and finance these wars through internal revenue; rather, this created dependency on foreign government loans that in turn weakened local capacity to create autonomy and thwarted the establishment of strong central institutions.[2] Foreign loan dependency created the conditions for the weakening of the possibility of creating strong central institutions that resulted in limited state capacity and the associated limited scale of war.[3] According to Centeno, limited war[4] do[es] not require the political or military mobilization of the society except (and not always) in the euphoric initial moments.[5] Foreign intervention based on trade interests also limited the scale of Latin American wars.[6] Centeno substantiates his argument with assessments of the capacity of Latin American governments to collect taxes, raise troops, and establish effective bureaucracies. Equally important is his argument about the ability of governments to galvanize nationalism, an ethos that creates a coherent concept of nation.[7] Based on comparative insight derived from North Atlantic nations, he argues that compared to Latin American states, these nations have more capacity to mobilize millions of troops to fight, financed through internally raised revenue from taxes.[8] I believe Centenos work is important as it provides a thorough analysis and critique of state-building theory based on empirical study. His work invests more attention in the Latin America region and makes a country-specific study to understand the particularities and nuances of generic state-building theory. His work draws attention to institutional analysis of states. As he writes, [This] magnificent display of institutional failure deserves further attention.[9] Centeno argues that Latin America has fought limited wars and further inquires into the meaning of this in an attempt to better understand the relationship between war and state-making. His work opens the door for deconstructing conventional nation-building theory, which is largely based on a Eurocentric account of war. Grounded in a set of empirical data and rigorous analysis, Centenos critical work illustrates how war contributed to the weakening of institutions, paying due attention to the fiscal aspect of the state, and shows how war in Latin America ruined institutions and resulted in more entrenched internal divisions.[10] He discusses the institutional capacity of the state as a central theme to explain and critique the regional history and political development, and he examines wars impact, how it has shaped state-society relationships, national identity and fiscal development. Centeno repeatedly emphasizes the fact that states in Latin America did not develop the kind of institutional strength of their Western European counterparts. The author is puzzled by the process and experience and consequences of war in Latin America and how this relates to states institutional strength and capacity to undertake war in a way that has shaped their creation. Based on multiple cases, Centenos historical development of each case and the experience of war illustrates the exigencies, contextual factors, and relational dimensions that all must be taken into account in order to determine, understand and explain variations and commonalties across the continent. This theoretical approach and these methodological insights are critical to assessing the development of the state based on European history and experience while complementing the theoretical discussion of the development of the state on both levelscapturing country-specific variations and theorizing or bringing in theoretical explanations for differences and commonalities. Understanding and explaining regional and country-specific variations using comparative methods provides relevant details to critically engage conventional state-building theory. Through this work, I learned that understanding variations and contextualizing analysis case by case is an important approach. The author uses the prism of war-state development bellicist model[11] as an important theoretical framework to problematize and further explain the nuances and regional and country-specific conditions and factors that alter and critique Eurocentric generalizations of the causal relationship between war and state development. Indeed, Centeno uses the counterfactual realties of Latin America to successfully refute the European model of state-building theory that suggests that wars created modern states and enhanced their institutions, creating the capacity for states to exploit resources, monopolize violence and make more wars. In fact, he successfully illustrates how (limited) wars in Latin America destroyed institutions and thwarted nation-state building. Here, he introduces internal factors such as class structure, internal elite divisions and the enduring impact of postcolonial chaos, noting how all contributed, along with the international factors related to how trade interest played out and to debt/loan dependence. An important lesson we can draw from this book is that the experience of war in Latin America, its role and influence on state creation (both the types and kinds of state formation) are distinct here, different from the significant role war played in the development of some European states. No doubt more cases from Latin America and elsewhere would further refute, contextualize, deconstruct and critique the conventional presuppositions, assumptions and models of state-building theory. The complex historical realties of states problematize and create an elaborated space for other factors, beyond war, providing complementary explanations related to creation of the state. Centenos central message is that the link between war and state-building is contingent on historical specificities and case-specific factors. However, his work does not help us to understand how strong states could develop without wars. The logic in Centenos theory and argument is important as it highlights important elements in appraising the link between war-making and state-making as understood in conventional theories, putting the focus on certain contingent factors-history, domestic socio-economic and political structures, and international politics. [1] Centeno, M. A. (2002). Blood and debt: War and the nation-state in Latin America. Penn State Press.p 26 [2] Ibid p 28 and Chapter 3 [3] Ibid [4] Ibid p 20-26 [5] Ibid p 21 [6] Ibid p 26 and 72-73 [7] Ibid p. 23, 7 and Chapter 4 and 5 [8] Ibid p 108- 109 191 and Chapter 5 [9] Ibid p 17 [10]ÂÂ   Ibid p 142 -145, 14, 6-7 and Chapter 3 [11] Ibid p. 19 and 266 What Makes a Teacher Effective? What Makes a Teacher Effective? What do you think it means to be an effective teacher? An effective teacher utilises aspects of their background, professional knowledge and personality to boost students academic growth (Whitton, Barker, Nodworthy, Sinclair, Phil, 2004). The favourable characteristics that follow an effective teacher are their high confidence, optimism and knowledge of the content. Effective teachers are confident in their knowledge, skills and their ability to guide students as well as feeling secure about their status as master of their subject. As well as having confidence in themselves, teachers must have confidence in their students, and believe that they will learn (Killen, 2013). The teacher should have strong beliefs that even the most complicated concept can be explained in such a way that students find it easy to learn. The teachers deeper understanding of the content should provide a means that makes it easy for them as teachers to alter known concepts to suit the students, making it easier for students to consume (Killen, 2013). Teaching is more than just presenting content, our Australian curriculum displays content that students must intake and how their academic level should be judged e.g. Tests and exams. A starting point for an effective teacher is to understand that learning is based on understanding the concept of the content, and the means of an effective teacher is to motivate learners from a state of not understanding to deeper understanding (Killen, 2013). Teachers must be able to create an environment where learners can understand the content presented. Specific techniques that are used to effectively create this environment involve the transformation of the content to something that is easier to understand, motivating learners and engaging them in learning tasks and the teachers adaptability to different students and different learning styles (Killen, 2013). Interactions with students gives teachers the chance to know what is happening around the class room so teachers have a chance to manipulat e their teaching style to best suit the students (Whitton et al., 2016). Why do teachers need to purposely plan for learning? Planning is an important technique teachers use to amplify student achievement as well as teacher satisfaction, the best teachers are able to organise and deliver the best learning experience through thoughtful planning. Overall planning put into class rooms should meet the curriculum requirements and learning needs, to further extend student academic achievement and make the learning experience worthwhile (Whitton et al., 2016). In order for students to meet the learning goals set out by the curriculum, teachers must understand the importance of effective planning. An effective plan helps students to learn purposefully with more efficiency as time is always a constraint in a class room, a developed plan also helps the teacher to clarify what goals are set for students and a step by step process on how to achieve those goals (Killen, 2013). An in-depth plan can boost the teachers confidence as it mirrors to the teacher that they understand the content the students want to learn, the increase in confidence will propel the overall teaching effectiveness. Purposely planning for learning is a must if a teacher is to grow in the art of teaching as it develops the teachers capability for effective teaching and gives a mean to reflect on their planning and effectiveness (Killen, 2013). A plan for learning needs to be effective in order to ensure the learning procedure is productive. Teaching can be simplified into a learning cycle: Planning, implementing then evaluating. Planning requires thorough knowledge of the students in the class their age, gender, interests, learning styles, academic talents and social / emotional states all come into effect when identifying the most effective techniques to be highlighted in the plan (Whitton et al., 2016). Knowledge and understanding of the curriculum must also be taken into account when setting up the plan so learning outcomes can be met. With an active and comprehensive plan the implementing of the actual teaching shows more effectiveness, evaluation of the lesson taught will provide feedback to the teacher on if the content and process was suitable for the students (Whitton et al., 2016). The purpose of the lesson taught must be clear so that students know why each lesson is important, simultaneously the lesson should al so be used by the teacher as means to guide their planning (Killen, 2013) How can effective teachers best engage students in learning? Engaging students in learning is just as important as teaching the students. In order for learners to take in the content being taught they must be focused on the objective and have a clear understanding as to why theyre being taught this. Various strategies are used together by teachers to best engage students to learn. Lesson introductions are one of the major components to involve learners and have them drawn into the learning experience, a lesson introduction should spark the students interests and have them feel connected to the learning environment (Whitton et al., 2016). Just as we discussed in the tutorial in week 3 examples to get the class interested in learning are setting up display materials, objects that students can touch and build understanding through a hands-on experience (e.g. cutting fruit into pieces when examining fractions) or reading a childrens book as audio-visual resource. The introductions should always be related to the topic and spark interests (Whitton et al., 2016). Just as lesson introductions lesson closures should also be given high amounts of attention. The lesson closure must also be relevant and involve the learners to make them aware that the lesson is over. Recapping what occurred, having groups display their work or discuss amongst themselves are good closures that give the teacher an idea if learning outcomes were met during the lesson (Whitton et al., 2016). Therere are many teaching and learning strategies, all the strategies can be broken down into 4 planning components: content, process, products and environment. The content is what is taught, process is how the content is taught, products are the teachers themselves that guide and help students (Whitton et al., 2016). Discovery learning is a strategy used that challenges students understanding and their thinking skills, this strategy of learning focuses on the students, expecting them to develop a solution and a method to the solution (Whitton et al., 2016). Discovery lessons require hands-on research activities to best engage the students. The advantages of discovery learning are that students are involved in the process of learning, the actives used in this type of learning are more meaningful and students acquire their own research and reflective skills (Westwood Peter, 2008). Why is developing positive communication skills important for effective teachers? The idea of enforcing positive communication skills upon teachers to further present in the classroom serve a clear purpose, an effective teacher will use their communication skills to create a rich and positive learning environment. Specific teaching strategies, skills and attitudes impact the learning environment as a whole and in turn these characteristics of the teacher can be manipulated and adjusted and then presented with strong communication skills to the students in order to gage their interests and create a healthy, productive classroom (Whitton et al., 2016). In an educational setting the relationship the teacher has with the students has a significant impact on the communication that occurs between teacher and student (Howell, 2014). If a teacher builds a positive relationship with their students there is a direct influence on the type of communication they will engage in, positive relationships opens a positive environment and negative relationships will generate a negat ive environment (Howell, 2014). An effective teacher will aim to promote a positive learning environment through means of displaying approachability and showing assertiveness in their communication. Assertiveness is categorised as communication style as well as aggressiveness and passivity (Howell, 2014). A good teacher will avoid aggressive and passive styles in communicating as they foster a negative learning environment but should focus on being assertive. The assertive teacher will display the capabilities to be an effective active listener; non-judgemental; able to express himself with honesty; respect others values; able to check on others feelings, all while being proactive, flexible, trustworthy and confident (Howell, 2014). All these highlighted qualities make the teacher approachable, if a student finds a teacher approachable theyre more likely to confide with the teacher and should they have a problem in the future they will feel encouraged to come to the teacher to share their concerns and feelings (Whi tton et al., 2016). By advocating positive relationships and communication, through assertiveness and approachability teachers promote a healthy and positive classroom environment for effective learning (Whitton et al., 2016 Howell,2014). References Whitton, D., Sinclair, C., Barker K., Nosworthy, M., Humphries, J., Sinclair, C. (2016)Learning for teaching: Teaching for learning. VIC, Australia: Cengage Killen, R. (2013). Effective teaching strategies: Lessons from research and practice. South Melbourne, Australia: Cengage Learning Australia. Retrieved from http://CURTIN.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1696408 Westwood, P. (2008). What teachers need to know about. VIC, Australia: ACER Press. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=569324157817332;res=IELHSS Howell, J. (2014). Teaching and learning: Building effective pedagogies. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/lib/curtin/detail.action?docID=4191370

Friday, January 17, 2020

Professional Development Plan Essay

Nursing as a career is about providing quality care while upholding the people involved with dignity. Nurses are thought to offer quality care to all regardless their tribe, race, gender, religion or social status in the society. Nurses are called to serve others. As a nurse I want to be the patient’s advocate and do all within my powers to see to it that I put a smile on the patient’s faces. I will offer a patient centered care and the interests of the patient will come first. (Delaney C. and Piscopo B, 2002) A person’s health is affected by many factors including emotional needs, physical needs, spiritual needs and cultural needs. Addressing these needs will be offering quality care as they all work for the well being of the whole person. I personally value caring for others and this will be easy for me. Â  Nursing entails or comprises of three parties for it to proceed successfully. These are the environment, the patient and health. The patient includes the sick person, his or her family members and the community as a whole. A nurse is responsible in ensuring that quality care is offered. This is only achievable if an all inclusive approach is used. I would incorporate the patient and his family in the decision making so that our relationship with the patient and his family is not dead. Failure to include all parties calls for negative appraisal by the patient or his relatives. The environmental factors include internal and external factors and they comprise the social, economic, political, legal and ethical perspectives. Â  A better understanding of people’s cultural backgrounds and spiritual aspects explains why some regard health the way they do. Patient’s satisfaction levels will be higher if their needs are well addressed. A baccalaureate prepared nurse has developed from a generalist nurse to a complex nurse who exercises leadership in disease prevention or illnesses. He or she is an instrument of change who can invent creativity in ensuring that nursing incorporates emerging health needs an addresses them amicably. Such nurses are leaders and change agents. On completion of the degree course one can advance by taking a masters program. The nurse will be able to better handle prevention of diseases and thus works to see a healthy community. Â  The nurse will provide a patient advocate care where care will be through collaborative interactions between the patient and other care givers. He or she will be an advocate of change and will work tirelessly innovating new concepts or ideas that will improve the current predicaments in health care provision. Such a nurse has the capacity to make clinical judgments in all areas be they industries or hospitals. They are qualified for community health nursing. Options of where such a nurse can pursue include in home care, community based health agencies, nursing homes, government and industries. A baccalaureate nurse provides competent care and is a good teacher who can organize transcultural nursing care for all parties in the community. He or she is able to use critical thinking in providing therapeutic care. Communication with other health care givers should be effective and he ought to be at the fore front in advocating for positive changes in the health system. He will be able to manage care for all parties and provide preventive care measures like educating the masses on the critical issues. He will adopt an all inclusive approach in care giving in meeting the health needs. The nurse should read, well interpret and analyze nursing practices. He should be keen in the society and he should follow the professional growth and hence a member of a nursing organization that offers such supportive background. Such a nurse will offer competent care while respecting beliefs and values of patients. (Archer A, 2000) Role transition from acquisition of the BSN will work to increased skills or attributes like unique skills, know how and nursing expertise through learning. It will equip me with appropriate skills. The BSN will help me advance in my career. My thinking capacity will be replenished through the program and critical thinking in sensitive issues will be possible. I will be able to come up with other measures that ensure that quality community health is attained. I will improve my self awareness which will be an important step in enabling me to produce culturally sensitive care. (Eckhardt et al, 2002) My short term goals will be to improve on the quality of care I offer. Acquisition of necessary skills will equip me in achieving this cause. I also want to better understand myself so that I can better understand others. I would also like to advance my leadership skills and communication skills to better link with parties in the health care facilities. My long term professional goals are to be among the policy makers so that I can better advocate for the patients. I want to be contributing in the designing and implementation of quality community health care programs. I also want to pursue a master’s degree to enhance my skills and this will see me move to becoming a nurse manager in the community health department. To achieve the desired professional development I will graduate from a RN to BSN or Baccalaureate nurse and achieve a master’s degree. I will also join an organization that will work to enriching my skills by providing a conducive environment. Advancing in education is crucial as it translates to acquisition of more skills and thus becoming better qualified to perform tasks at hand. Continued education enables one perpetuates his or expertise thus making people better of in their areas of specialization. Mentorship programs are very crucial for all nurses regardless their gender or area of specialization. Mentors help one to learn the tricks in the career or how to go about challenges that are bound to occur. (Eckhardt et al, 2002) Nursing entails a lot of challenges that see many quit. Male nurses are quite vulnerable in quitting due to the discrimination that they face. Introduction of mentors and support systems will encourage them to persevere despite the challenges. Achieving the set goal will entail a lot of studying and one must be committed to multitask between the studies and the practical lessons for instance the research on the fields. Critical thinking will only be achieved through serious concentration and losing such focus will hinder attainment of the goals. Financial constraints could also threaten attainment of the goals as one need to pay for the masters program which is expensive. Intrapersonal and cultural factors encourage pursue the program while racism poses a threat to the effective establishment of baccalaureate nursing programs. Time frame for the steps on the development plan will entail approximately 10 years. Qualifying as a registered nurse or RN with a baccalaureate will take 4 to 5 years 3 of which will entail attaining diploma education and 2 in acquiring an associate degree. Transition from RN to BSN will take 2 to 3 years and from BSN to MSN will take 2 years. References: Eckhardt A, Anderson M, Campbell E Clarke E., Pavlish L. 2002: A theoretical framework for RN to BSN education. Nursing Education Perspectives. Archer A.2000. Fundamentals of nursing. There really is a Difference: Nurses’ Experiences with Transitioning from RNs to BSNs. Springhouse. Delaney C. and Piscopo B. 2002. Journal of Professional Nursing, Volume 23, Issue 3, Pages 167-173.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Global Variables in Ruby

Global Variables are variables that may be accessed from anywhere in the program regardless of scope. Theyre denoted by beginning with a $ (dollar sign) character. However, the use of global variables is often considered un-Ruby, and you will rarely see them. Defining Global Variables Global variables are defined and used like any other variable. To define them, simply assign a value to them and begin using them. But, as their name suggests, assigning to global variables from any point in the program has global implications. The following program demonstrates this. The method will modify a global variable, and that will affect how the second method runs. $speed 10 def accelerate $speed 100 end def pass_speed_trap if $speed 65 # Give the program a speeding ticket end end accelerate pass_speed_trap Unpopular So why is this un-Ruby and why dont you see global variables very often? Put simply, it breaks encapsulation. If any one class or method can modify the state of the global variables at will with no interface layer, any other classes or methods that rely on that global variable may behave in an unexpected and undesirable manner. Further, such interactions can be very difficult to debug. What modified that global variable and when? Youll be looking through quite a lot of code to find what did it, and that could have been avoided by not breaking the rules of encapsulation. But thats not to say that global variables are never used in Ruby. There are a number of special global variables with single-character names (a-la Perl) that can be used throughout your program. They represent the state of the program itself, and do things like modify the record and field separators for all gets methods. Global Variables $0 - This variable, denoted by $0 (thats a zero), holds the name of the top-level script being executed. In other words, the script file that was run from the command line, not the script file that holds the currently executing code. So, if script1.rb was run from the command line, it would hold script1.rb. If this script requires script2.rb, $0 in that script file would also be script1.rb. The name $0 mirrors the naming convention used in UNIX shell scripting for the same purpose.$* - The command-line arguments in an array denoted by $* (dollar sign and asterisk). For example, if you were to run ./script.rb arg1 arg2, then $* would be equivalent to %w{ arg1 arg2 }. This is equivalent to the special ARGV array and has a less descriptive name, so it is rarely used.$$ - The interpreters process ID, denoted by $$ (two dollar signs). Knowing ones own process ID is often useful in daemon programs (which run in the background, unattached from any terminal) or system services. However, this gets a bit more complicated when threads are involved, so be wary of using it blindly.$/ and $\ - These are the input and output record separators. When you read objects using gets and print them using puts, it uses these to know when a complete record has been read, or what to print between multiple records. By default, these should be the newline character. But since these affect the behavior of all IO objects, theyre rarely used, if at all. You may see them in smaller scripts where breaking the encapsulation rules is not an issue.$? - The exit status of the last child process executed. Of all the variables listed here, this is probably the most useful. The reason for this is simple: you cant get the exit status of child processes by their return value from the system method, only true or false. If you must know the actual return value of the child process, you need to use this special global variable. Again, the name of this variable is taken from the UNIX shells.$_ - The last s tring read by gets. This variable may be a point of confusion for those coming to Ruby from Perl. In Perl, the $_ variable means something similar, but totally different. In Perl, $_ holds the value of the last statement and in Ruby it holds the string returned by the previous gets invocation. Their usage is similar, but what they really hold is very different. You dont often see this variable either (come to think of it, you rarely see any of these variables), but you may see them in very short Ruby programs that process text. In short, youll rarely see global variables. Theyre often bad form (and un-Ruby) and only really useful in very small scripts, where the full implication of their use can be fully appreciated. There are a few special global variables that can be used, but for the most part, they arent used. You dont really need to know all that much about global variables to understand most Ruby programs, but you should at least know that theyre there.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Evaluation Of A Qualitative Research Tool Critical Appraisal

According to Young and Solomon (2009) critical appraisal is a systematic process which can identify both, the strengths and weaknesses of a research study. During this process the reader is able to assess studies’ usefulness and whether or not the findings are trustworthy, it also supports in decision making in terms of whether to apply the study’s results in practice The aim of this paper is to critically appraise two qualitative research papers. The appraisal includes discussion of the authors, title, and topic discussed with the use of a qualitative research tool Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP). This tool is chosen to assess due to its usefulness and effectiveness as it focuses on the areas that will be assessed. Additionally, both research papers being qualitative it meant that the use of any other tool would not have facilitated my understanding to critically appraise. Also, it would have been impossible to break both articles into sections in order to examine them closer to help absorb the literature that could have possibly been missed. The appraisal will include comments on the structure of the articles, the methodology used and research findings, also will discuss any ethical issues that needs addressing. Finally, summarising my findings in conclusion. Critical appraisal of article entitled: â€Å"Troubled families: Vulnerable families’ experiences of multiple service user† by Kate Morris and published by Blackwell Publishing (2011). A small scale ofShow MoreRelatedHealth Promotion Model : A Meta Synthesis1303 Words   |  6 Pages Critical Analysis of a Published Research Article Ho, A.Y.K., Berggren, I., Dahlborg-Lyckhage, E. (2010). Diabetes empowerment related to Pender’s Health Promotion Model: A meta-synthesis. 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