Considered evaluation of clinical placements in a new medical school

This article suggests that quality assessment in the UK has been largely set apart from learning and teaching and reports on a pilot project at the Hull York Medical School which attempted to integrate students’ evaluation of their clinical placements into the curriculum. It outlines the operational demands of this integrated method and compares the student experience of different evaluation methods. It argues that, when properly prepared and considered, evaluation can help students to practise useful skills and suggests that integrating this type of evaluation into the curriculum could be a step towards encouraging academic staff to engage with quality processes.     

Motivated by Meaning: Testing the Effect of Knowledge‐Infused Rewards on Preschoolers' Persistence

Research and theory suggest that young children are highly attuned to causality. This study explores whether this drive can motivate task engagement. Fifty‐six 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds completed a motor task as many times as desired, viewing a picture of a novel item upon each completion. Forty‐two randomly assigned children then received either: (a) causally rich information regarding the item, (b) causally weak information regarding the item, or (c) a tangible reward. The remaining 14 children participated in a baseline condition featuring no rewards. Preschoolers completed more trials when rewarded with causally rich than causally weak information, or when given no reward. Children also trended toward lengthier persistence in the causally rich than the tangible reward condition. Implications for theory and educational practice are discussed.     

Measurement of communication flexibility: Working adults vs. college students

Earlier work has indicated that certain groups of adults might be disproportionately inflexible in their communicative interactions, but conclusions are uncertain due to the accepted practice of sampling college students to develop and validate measures. This study compared working adults with college student respondents on the Communication Flexibility scale (Martin & Rubin, 1994). Results from two samples of working adults indicate that adults score lower on communication flexibility than do traditional college students. This reinforces researchers’ need to be aware that some measures’ norms may vary depending on the targeted population.