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This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

The disparities of COVID-19 vaccination rates between the rural and urban areas have become apparent during this pandemic. There is a need to understand the root causes of vaccine hesitancy demonstrated by the rural population to increase coverage and to contain the disease spread throughout the United States. This study aimed to explore other factors influencing vaccine hesitancy among rural dwellers besides the geography-related barriers such as poor health care access and individuals having no or suboptimal insurance coverage.

By reviewing existing data and literature about vaccination, health literacy, and behaviors, and prevailing ideologies, we discuss the potential causes of vaccine hesitancy in rural areas that could create barriers for successful public health efforts related to vaccine coverage and provide suggestions to ameliorate the situation.

Geography-related barriers, health literacy, and preconceived notions are key determinants of adopting healthy behaviors and complying with public health authorities' recommendations among rural individuals during a public-health crisis. We argue that ideology, which is much deeper than preconception or misconception on vaccination, should be incorporated as a key factor to redefine the term “vulnerable populations” in public health research.

The limitation of our study is that we have not found an effective way to encourage the populations who hold conservative religious and political ideologies to join the efforts for public health. Even though geography-related barriers may strongly impact the rural dwellers in achieving optimal health, the various forms of ideologies they have toward certain health behaviors cannot be discounted to understand and address vaccine-related disparities in rural areas. There is a need to redefine the term “vulnerable population” particularly as it relates to rural areas in the United States. During large-scale public health disasters, scholars and public health authorities should consider the ideologies of individuals, in addition to other factors such as race/ethnicity, area of residence (rural vs. urban), and socioeconomic factors influencing the existing vulnerabilities and health disparities.

This study aims to identify how objective indicators of destination country risk differentiate business study abroad programs from those in other academic disciplines.

The authors trained a neural network model on six years of student-initiated inquiries about study abroad programs at a large US university. The model classified business versus nonbusiness study abroad programs using objective measures of destination country risk as the primary inputs.

The model correctly classifies business and nonbusiness study abroad programs with over 70% accuracy. Business programs were found to be 20% less likely to include destinations where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend nonroutine vaccinations and favor countries with higher Global Peace Index scores.

These results underscore the need to consider destination country risk in the design and administration of study abroad programs. An understanding of student preferences for lower risk destinations can contribute to improved planning, execution and student experiences in these programs.

Better planning and management of study abroad programs based on understanding of destination country risk can lead to enhanced student safety and experiences.

This study offers a unique perspective on understanding study abroad programs by focusing on objective measures of destination country risk rather than risk perceptions. It also is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to use a neural network to classify study abroad programs as business versus nonbusiness using objective measures of country-specify risk indicators.

The goals of this research study included evaluating the outcomes of Interdisciplinary Science Threshold Experience (InSciTE) on student experience of science discipline, level of sense belongingness to a large Faculty of Science (FoS), outcomes in learning science literacy skills and whether a student's background played a role in the differences of effects of the high-impact teaching practices. InSciTE was designed to facilitate the transition from high school to a large research-intensive university, and specifically to a FoS with over 6,000 undergraduate students.

The FoS in a Canadian university engaged in the development of a *9 credit program bundling foundational statistics and chemistry courses with integration of aspects of mathematics and biology or physics to create a new first-year, academic interdisciplinary experience called InSciTE. This project-based curriculum emphasized teamwork and leadership, and presented complex interdisciplinary challenges facing today's world. A team-teaching environment consisting of instructors, a lab coordinator and teaching assistants was instrumental for the core InSciTE courses. In addition, the authors utilized a variety of learning practices with interdisciplinary themes to meet the learning outcomes. Course activities included field experience and tours, blended learning and flipped lectures, guest speakers, discovery-based lab activities, group discussions and projects, a capstone research project, and a combination of formative and summative assessments. The authors proposed two hypotheses for the evaluative study; first that the high-impact practices (HIP) will improve students’ experiences and belongingness to science faculty, and second that InSciTE facilitates learning of scientific literacy skills. To assess the effectiveness of InSciTE, the authors used two surveys, the first being the Test of Scientific Literacy Skills (TOSLS), which measures skills related to major aspects of scientific literacy: recognizing and analysing the use of methods of inquiry that lead to scientific knowledge and the ability to organize, analyse, and interpret quantitative data and scientific information. The second survey examined student belongingness, motivation and autonomous learning, combined with demographic data questions.

The results suggest that InSciTE students reported higher feelings of relatedness, group membership, and career aspirations and performed better on the TOSLS compared to students in other science courses.

As a leader in interdisciplinary science, the FoS at a Canadian university developed a full-year course bundling foundational statistics and chemistry courses with integration of some aspects of mathematics and biology or physics to create a new first-year, academic interdisciplinary experience called InSciTE. This project-based curriculum emphasized teamwork and leadership, and presented complex interdisciplinary challenges facing today's world aiming to facilitate transition from high school to a research-intensive university.

This brief is designed to inform disaster risk reduction and management in Philippine jails and prisons. It draws upon research conducted in nine jails and prisons between July 2015 and January 2016. This research included 44 interviews with stakeholders, including inmates and prisoners, and nine focus groups with inmates and prisoners in different regions of the country. The research indicates that natural hazards are one amongst the many threats that inmates and prisoners face in their everyday life. Natural hazards are significant because inmates and prisoners are particularly vulnerable. Inmates' and prisoners' vulnerability stems from a thread of proximate and root causes that range from insalubrious and overcrowded facilities and limited resourcing from the government, to the neoliberal nature of the Philippine state. However, inmates and prisoners are not helpless “victims” in dealing with natural hazards. They display a wide range of skills, resources and knowledge (i.e. capacities) that are grounded in everyday practices and values reflective of the broader Philippine society. This policy brief finally makes some recommendations for strengthening hazard prevention, fostering vulnerability mitigation, enhancing preparedness, and reinforcing disaster management in Philippine jails and prisons. These recommendations emphasise the contributions of a number of stakeholders, including the active role of inmates and prisoners who are the first line of defence in facing disasters in jails and prisons.

Using visual materials to understand a social object requires the researcher to know that object's purpose, and this is true whether the object is an artifact, a restricted event, a small social world, or something as massive as the modern city. I argue that the purpose of the city as a settlement is driven by the need to safely sleep in peace at night while satisfying other basic biophysical needs during the day as conveniently as possible. An examination of these needs identifies 10 functional prerequisites for human settlement, entangling its inhabitants in involuntary community with entities and events other than themselves, whether they like it or not. In addition, the rise of the modern city exacerbates the challenge of living in a reluctant community and pressures its inhabitants to come to terms with the consequences for how these relationships affect daily life. I highlight nine challenges posed as questions that have been particularly salient in American urban history since the mid-nineteenth century. How these challenges have been addressed indicates not only what it takes to make a modern city a settlement suitable for satisfying human needs, but also just how deeply invested its residents are in making the city work. Finally, the 10 functional prerequisites and nine moral challenges not only provide a framework for researching the city, but also suggest a coherent outline for imagining a “shooting script” or guide for conducting visual research.