Understanding people in organisations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Understanding people in organisations - Essay Example All these aspects are significant to ensure overall employee well-being (Lowe, 2012). Sears et al (2006) defined healthy workplace as an environment that enables an organisation to achieve its mission along with satisfying the needs of its employees. On the contrary, unhealthy workplace has unsupportive culture where employees do not enjoy the sense of participation, equity, success, empowerment, meaning, respect, safety, and autonomy (Sears et al., 2006). Unhealthy workplaces, according to the authors, represent dysfunctional organisations having communication gaps, unresolved conflicts, high turnover, and low employee morale. Appendix-I presents the characteristics of a healthy workplace as given by Sears et al (2006, p. 319). Emphasising on the importance of healthy and vibrant workplaces, Sears et al (2006) stated that such workplaces foster employee participation leading to mutual success. On the other hand, unhealthy workplaces are unsuccessful as they do not inspire employee dedication leading to job burnout, stress, absenteeism, and turnover; these outcomes of unhealthy workplaces are drastic and bring severe consequences and costs for the employers (Sears et al., 2006). Shukla (2008) defined organisational culture as the personality of an organisation that sets the unwritten norms and outlines the values shared among everyone within the organisation. Shukla (2008) explained that culture is not what the organisation has but what the organisation is. Organisational culture decides how people interact with each other, how they contribute, what are the shared norms and values, a formal and informal philosophy and the rules of the game. Organisational culture has a vital role in deciding if the workplace is healthy or unhealthy. The importance of organisational culture in deciding health of the workplace is evident from the fact that it is considered one of the major

Assessment for Learning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Assessment for Learning - Essay Example This essay will talk about the student-centred assessment process on vocational teaching and learning process. MCAST is offering a chance to several individuals to acquire effective knowledge and skills in order to make themselves more employable through the lifelong education and assessment process (MCAST, 2010, p.1). This study will discuss the student-centred assessment approach to MCAST Art & Design Institute’s Media Studies subject. In student-centred learning process, the students play an important part in the learning evaluation. In this process, the students can decide the demonstration of their learning process. The students should develop an assessment that supports motivation and learning which can be thought of to be an important criterion of student-centred approaches. Media studies generally deals with the history, effects and contents of several media. Media studies deal with traditions from the humanities and social sciences. Communication science, mass communi cation, communication studies and communication are the important ingredients of the media studies. MCAST Art & design institute incorporated these subject matters in Media studies. MCAST conducts assessments in the international and national context of higher education. The major aim of student-centred assessment strategy in MCAST is to develop skills, knowledge and competencies. The program learning outcomes are very much practical. These outcomes are focused to help the students to develop their skills, competencies and knowledge. This program has several clear and transparent program assessment strategies like assessment plans. The learning assessment strategies are very much student focused. Both the program teams and program board work together to develop the skills, competencies and knowledge of the students. In this process students are supported and encouraged to become significant independent learners. E-learning facility and advanced technology are implemented to assist t he students to achieve the learning outcomes. It is important that the teachers should help their students to make a positive approach to the subject matter. Student centred assessment strategy is important in the vocational institutions as it helps the students to provide the practical knowledge. It is important for the students to gain practical knowledge in the media studies. The institution focused on providing effective practical guide to the students. It is important to apply Student-centred assessment approach in media studies. It will help to fulfil the special needs of students. This educational approach of students has several propositions for the designing of the course content, curriculum, assessment of courses and evaluation process. Question 2 Formative, summative and portfolio assessment methods are three major assessment methods. Formative assessment takes place throughout the learning program. In MCAST, the learner is assessed and provided feedback during the learni ng process. It is known as the formative assessment. On the other hand, summative assignment helps to assess the students at predetermined points at the end of the learning process. Portfolio assessment can be described as the collection of activities that are linked with concepts which are required for the students to learn. Validity of an assessment method is the specific extent that helps to measure the suitability of the interpretation of outcomes. It is a matter of degree. There are four types of validity, such as content

Junior Seminar class Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Junior Seminar class - Essay Example l Wild Animals made up 58.3% of the animals featured, Real Domesticated Animals made up of 8.3% of the animals featured, Fantasy Wild Animals made up of the animals featured, and Fantasy Domesticated Animals made up 25.0% of the animals featured. The magazine was made up of 62 pages which means that there was an animal featured for every 5 magazine pages. It is also interesting to note that except for the bird, no other animal was featured twice in the magazine. Other animals featured include the Marine Iguana, Wild Tortoise, Ocelot, Crab, Sea Lion, Elephant, Shark, Monkey, Crocodile, Water Buffalo, and the Horse. Given the nature of the statistics taken from these data, it can be inferred that the publication places a focus on nature and its elements because of the high rate of animals featured in it. The society may also be expected to be a nature loving one because of the emphasis placed on exotic creatures. It may also be noted that a great degree of importance is placed on the animals because of the advertisements and articles made that feature

The History Of Special Education Education Essay

The History Of Special Education Education Essay This essay will explain how Special education has changed in many different ways throughout the last century. How it views of the way students with differences should be taught and treated have changed due to different laws that have been passed over the past years. I will explain the different phases of special education in its largest span of time. It will discuss how the term learned disabled was derived after it took the place of phrase brain injured. And it will explain the stages in which the IEPs are developed and how a child with special needs should be taught to produce success. Additionally, this essay will discuss the court case of Brown v. Board of Educations decision to demand that all special needs children be granted an opportunity to receive a free and appropriate education. In past years people would lock their disabled children up in rooms and isolate them from others because they were ashamed of them or because they were different and they didnt know how or what to do with them. This made matter worse, disabled children were left isolate and alone, sometimes being abused physically and sexually, they were not considered human. This continued to happen until a few pioneer, people who were advocates for children with special stood up for them and brought their cases to court, but thats something of the past now. The education laws have also seen a turn -about. One major area of education was in a desperate need of changed was opinions and beliefs. Education for children with learning problems had emerged from no education for children with special needs to special funding for programs especially for those individuals with learning problems. Mostert, M., Crokett, J. (2000, June) The special education for special needs children went through man y phases before they were recognized by the court systems. The first phase of special education is the largest span of time. The foundation Phase was from 1800 to 1930, children who had any sign of learning problems were labeled as being dumb, retarded, and even brain injured. The reason students would have been labeled as brain injured is because of studies done on war victims and soldiers of war. Many soldiers had head injuries and the way they acted related vary similarly to the way brain injured students acted. At this time period researchers and doctors located the area of the brain related to language, or the language function of the brain. Then there was the transition Phase began in 1930 and lasted until 1960. This phase had some turning points in the way brain injured children were taught. Researchers developed instruments for assessments, analyzed specific types of learning problems and also presented a plan for teaching brain injured children. At this stage the labeling of the children with learning problems was not as harsh as brain injured. The students were called children with minimal brain dysfunction Then the turning phase for the education of students with learning problems was later called the Integration Phase which lasted from, 1960s to 1980s. There was a man by the name of Samuel Kirk, who came up with the name learning disabled. After this term took the place of brain injured and minimal brain dysfunction, it seemed like there was hope for children with learning problems. The U.S. legislature began to recognize the rights of individuals with disabilities, which prevents schools from discriminating against special needs students. The US legislature laws demand that all of the rights be reserved for the rights of anindividual with special needs to have an appropriate education, even if the disabilities are not covered under the special needs law. The teachers and educators of special needs students remain accountable for the appropriate education of these students, and they will be held accountable in the court of law even if it means losing their job or locked up in jail. Schools started establishing programs for the learning disabled. Funding was provided for teachers to be trained in learning disabilities. The most impo rtant part of the Integration Phase is the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142) in 1975. This act was to ensure that all students no matter what type of problem they had would receive a free and appropriate public education.( IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities and Special Needs Act). The last phase is the Current Phase, from the 1980s to the present. One of the major aspects of this phase is inclusion. Inclusion is educating students with disabilities in regular classrooms in their neighborhood schools, with collaborative efforts and support services as needed for each individual student. Another aspect of the Current Phase is when the EMA of 1975 was written as IDEA in 1990. IDEA, individuals with Disabilities Education Act, made it hard to suspend or expel student s with learning disabilities because of their behavior. IDEA also required that each learning disabled child have an IEP, Individual Education Plan. An IEP is a document that must include current performance of the student, the annual goals the students need to achieve, special education and related services. This Plan also included the child needs, participation, if any, with nondisabled children, modifications needed to take state test, dates and places of when and where special services will be pro vided and the measuring progress of the child, and any special accommodations that the child may need. Before a student can have an IEP, they first must be labeled as a student with a learning disability. The parents, special education teachers, the school guidance counselor, regular teacher, the schools psychologist, and the principle are always notified and included in the plans for this meeting. There are stages to figure out whether or not a child has a learning disability and need special services. The first stage is noticing if a student is having difficulty in one or more subject areas. The next step is to evaluate the childs suspected disability area, but before this can take place the school must receive permission from the parents to evaluate the child. The eligibility is decided by a group of qualified professionals along with the parent to determine if the child has a disability defined in IDEA. If the child is found eligible, the IEP team will meet to discuss and write and IEP for the disabled child within 30 days of the student being identified as disabled. The IEP team meeting is held and the IEP is written in collaborative efforts from all members of the IEP team. (U.S. Department of Education, 20, Feb, 2001) Services are then provided for the student. At the end of the year, progress is measured and the IEP is reviewed. After this process takes place, every thr ee years the student is reevaluated. By law certain individuals must be involved in the writing of a childs Individual Education Program. Parents must be involved because they know their child and what their child may need. Regular education teachers, if the student will be mainstreamed into regular classrooms some time during the day, are a need on the team, because they know the general curriculum of the student. They also have knowledge of how to handle students with behavior problems. The next member of the IEP team should be a special education teacher. This person will be able to contribute their knowledge in how to modify general curriculum and testing to help the special needs child learn and show what they have learned. The special education teacher also has the responsibility to teach the student and carry out the IEP process. The individuals involved in the IEP team are individual who can interpret evaluations results, represent the school system, individuals with knowled ge of special expertise about the childs, representatives from transitional service agencies and the student who the IEP is being written for. In conclusion, special education has gone through many phases and stages of the way a child should be taught in the past decade. The law has made a path for those with learning problems and now there is not stopping them. Children with learning disabilities finally have a chance to excel in school and the laws have made it possible for them to take advantage of the opportunities for them to have normal life.

Ethics - Virtue of Patience Essay -- essays research papers

Virtue and Patience In order to survive these days, there need to be at least some standards and goals of morality in a person's life. Moral excellence is definitely hard to achieve, but is something worth while to attempt. Personally, there are many distractions and obstructions the present day provides, creating a difficulty of direction in my own life. I need to overcome obstacles such as peer pressure in order to become a confident, successful person. The present day provides impediments which I believe I can overcome by way of morality and virtue. I have chosen to work on more patience in my life. According to Aristotle, for every virtue there are two vices. One is in excess and the other being deficit. Patience is a deficiency in my life. In having barely any patience, I am often stressed out and make more of simple situations. Aristotle would call this vice impatience. On the other end of the spectrum, the excess of patience is being passive. Aristotle and Plato, it was all about having balance in your life. I believe this theory is still in tact today. What I am striving for is not passivity, it is a moderate amount of patience, not too much and not too little, but just enough to make me more of a moral individual. The hard part about being virtuous is not practicing virtue sometimes but mastering it and doing it consistently. I have always been impatient and it would be extremely difficult for me to master being patient. One of Aristotle’s points about being a virtuous person is not doing everything well but doing what you do well and doing it consistently. Patience is defined as â€Å"good natured tolerance of delay or incompetence.† (www.dictionary.com) for me, this definition does the word a world of just... ...s outside and we ended up waiting for and hour for him to come back. I was going to flip out and tell my mom I wasn’t going to do this and that we should just leave and come back tomorrow but I remembered this essay and my goal of becoming more patient. So I put on my headphones and I went for a walk to find my cat, when I finally found him I was so excited for myself, I really felt like I accomplished something. For me this was a gratifying process and I actually enjoyed the journaling and paper. I think I could have put a little more effort into the specific instances. But over all it was alright for me. Before this I would have never noticed what lack of patience I had and how annoying it must be for the people around me. I’m excited to continue being a more virtuous person and improving my character through practicing more patience.

UNDERSTANDIN OIL :: essays research papers

The brutal attacks/bombings this week in New York, and Washington D.C., along with threats of attacks there and elsewhere in the country have changed our times forever. While the mass media concentrates on the details of the destruction, and the blanketed words of politicians, I will attempt to understand and explain the events from the fence. BOMBING AND BEING BOMBED ARE THE SAME THINGS ON DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE FENCE. Terror is not a spontaneous human action without credence. People just don’t hijack planes and commit harikari (suicide) without any weight of thought to the action. No one in the media seems to ask WHY DID THESE PEOPLE DO THIS HORRIFIC ACT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION? To be able to understand the answer to this, we must first look at our U.S. Mideast Policy. During most of the 20th century, U.S. businesses have worked on attaining oil rights and concessions from countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. After WWI, secret back door deals by our State Dept. yielded oil rights from then defeated Turkey to fields in what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in return for looking the other way at a crime against humanity, the Genocide of the Armenians by the Turks. Oil profits have been the motivating factors behind many attempts at counterinsurgency of democratic regimes by the CIA and the U.S in the Middle East (such as Iran in the 1950s, where the Shah replaced the Prime Minister who refused to give up oil rights to the U.S., and since the people couldn’t deal with the Shah, an extremist government headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini ultimately prevailed). During the Iran-Iraq war, America supplied both sides with weapons and advice. These are n ot the actions of a rich superpower wanting peace. Let’s not forget that Saddam Hussein, before being America’s vision of the Anti-Christ, was a close ally of the U.S., and the CIA. So what was the firm belief system of consecutive American administrations that caused all this to occur ? PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST WILL LEAD TO HIGHER OIL AND GASOLINE PRICES. Let’s not also forget the power of the Arms industry, disguised as defense, that still sells billions of dollars of weapons to the area. Therefore it has not been in the short-term economic interest of the U.S. to foster Peace in the Middle East. Using the above reasoning, the U.

Personal Statement Prompt #2 Essay

PERSONAL STATEMENT Prompt #2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are? I’ve never been so interested in my spiritual life, my religion, and my service to others as I have been these past three years. One of the proudest moments of my life is when I was accepted into my school’s LIFE team, which stands for Living in Faith Experience. The trips, retreats, and activities that I have shared with my peers have formed me into a completely new person and have allowed me to experience things that I wouldn’t have been able to experience on my own. Being able to be a part of the LIFE team is an accomplishment that has given me many opportunities, and has showed me ways that I can go out into the world and grab hold of the millions of other opportunities that awaits me. This particular team isn’t like the sports a nd organizations that my school offers. You first have to be nominated by three teachers or administrators, which allows you to receive an application. The end of my freshman year, I received an application, and I was confused. I wasn’t too sure of what exactly the team was, except for the fact they were religious and helped the campus minister out. The application did not only involve basic information, it also required short answers for approximately 15 questions. I ignored the fact that it was so time consuming because I enjoyed having to think about the answers, which were new to me. Later in the week, I was called into our Campus Minister’s office and was interviewed. The questions allowed me, for once, to just be me and talk about what I’ve been through and what I want for my future. Just being myself paid off, in a way that changed my whole high school career and life. The person that LIFE team has helped make me is much more open, compassionate, and helpful. From small groups on the retreats, large group discussions in class, and getting guidance through liturgies, I have opened up to where I can more easily express myself. I learned the importance of trusting people and being trusted. From being a servant leader, I have deepened my qualities of compassion and being helpful. LIFE team is focused on being good leaders for others, while being a servant to them and to Christ. I’m able to learn something and actually feel anxious to go and teach others the same. I couldn’t be more proud of the way  that I’ve progressed in my spiritual knowledge, deepened in my faith, and have become much more willing to open up and try new things. Being a part of the LIFE team for these past 3 years is an accomplishment for myself, a contribution to our school and society, and has helped me to better portray the qualities that I want and need to expose in order to be the best person that I can be.