Midwifery care: reflections of midwifery clients

The purpose of this study was to describe the lived experience of midwifery clients throughout the life span. A qualitative study using a phenomenological approach was employed. In-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 12 midwifery clients. The research question was: What has been your experience with midwifery care? Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data saturation was achieved and analysis procedures from Colaizzi were used. Five themes emerged from the data: 1) decision to seek midwifery care; 2) working together in a therapeutic alliance; 3) formulating a birth plan; 4) childbirth education; and 5) nurse-midwives as primary health-care providers throughout the life span. There is much to learn from listening to the voices of midwifery clients.     

A Life Span Concept of Motor Development

A concept of life span motor development is presented. Evolution of the author's concept of motor development is traced from its beginnings in classic developmental theory rooted in the biological sciences. Influenced by contemporary motor control theory and the writings of Milani-Comparetti, mechanistic models of nervous system function were abandoned in favor of active organism concepts. Application of classic developmental theory to the practice of physical therapy led to a specific focus on righting behaviors and eventual discovery of the limitation of classical neurodevelopmental theory for the explanation of adult motor behaviors. The author's current research focus is summarized; it was formulated from a perspective of lifelong development and is directed toward describing age related movement patterns in a series of righting tasks.     

Accompanying the Path of Maternity: The Life History of a Colombian Doula

Doulas have fundamentally improved the health-care experience of pregnant women internationally. Women who recognize the importance of not being alone during pregnancy have embraced this role for centuries. However, less is known about doulas practicing in countries experiencing health inequities like Colombia. Miller''s methodology and Atkinson''s interview domain was used to answer the question “What life experiences led a Colombian woman to become a doula?” A central theme emerged, “A calling from within: Growing up to accompany the transition from woman to mother.” The path to becoming a doula evolved from life experiences involving health inequities, and a sense of femininity, maternity, and the women''s role in rural Colombia.     

Childbirth and Breastfeeding Over Three Decades: One Mother's Story

This article describes one mother's selected childbirth and breastfeeding experiences that transpired over the span of three decades. Her story is a source of inspiration and encouragement for breastfeeding mothers and health-care professionals who provide maternity care for today's childbearing women. Furthermore, this personal account reveals that, although breastfeeding support and childbirth services have improved over the past 30 years, more needs to be done to promote positive birth experiences and breastfeeding outcomes.     

Communicating Values,Valuing Community through Health-Care Websites: Midwifery's Online Ethos and Public Communication in Ontario

Drawing on the rhetorical concept of ethos, this study explores the professional identities, health-care relationships, and forms of community constructed by two midwifery websites in Ontario. Rather than facilitating communal and dialogic modes of communication with the public, these websites enact primarily a unidirectional consumption model. This design structure both reflects and reinforces the complexities of midwifery's recent shift from being an explicitly alternative form of health care, to becoming part of the dominant health-care framework.     

Older Computer-Literate Women: Their Motivations,Obstacles, and Paths to Success

The societal view that regards geriatrics as a period of decline may not be congruent to the views of elderly people themselves. This gives rise to the need for further understanding of how elderly individuals evaluate their lives. A phenomenological design was employed for purposes of discovering and characterizing the essence behind the life experiences and disposition of a select group of Filipino elderly and its role in shaping their attitudes toward death. Five individuals aged 65 and above were purposively chosen to participate. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and examined, applying both processing and scrutiny techniques. A set of themes representing the elderly's lived experiences was surfaced through warm and cool analyses. The study revealed that geriatrics is a period of intersection of the three dimensions of elderly's lived experience—reminiscence, living disposition, and end-of-life views. The respondents viewed their families as their main source of support and guidance, values, principles, and beliefs. Accepting problems as integral to life, they have found a driving force that made them surpass these challenges. New beliefs and attitudes were acquired, resulting in providing self-control, strength, appreciation, genuine spirituality, gratitude, fulfillment, and self-worth. In their end-of-life views, dignity was a major issue which must be recognized and reinforced prior to embracing one's destiny to die. The present study maintains that the three dimensions of elderly's lived experiences are equally important in geriatric care practice. This offers valuable insights and reflections for a better understanding of geriatrics as a neglected field in the health-care delivery system.     

Teacher pupil control ideology and pupils' projected feelings toward teachers

The relationship between teacher pupil control ideology and pupils' projected feelings toward teachers was examined. The Pupil Control Ideology Form, based on a custodial-humanistic continuum, served as the operational definition for teacher views toward pupil control. Lemeshnik's Draw-A-Teacher technique, a projective device based on a negative-positive continuum, served as the operational definition of pupils' projected feelings toward teachers. A sample of 131 teachers and their students responded to these instruments, respectively. Pearson product-moment correlations indicated that custodialism in teacher pupil control ideology was directly related to pupils' negative feelings toward teachers. Multiple regression analysis indicated that pupil control ideology, followed by teacher sex and grade level, predicted pupils' feelings toward teachers. Further analysis revealed that boys projected more negative feelings toward teachers than did girls.     

The Canticle of the Skeleton

Great anticipation surrounded the release of the first ever Surgeon General's report on physical activity and health in 1996. The report stated that physical activity can contribute significantly to overall levels of health and the quality of life for all Americans. However, since the report's release, little has improved in the health status of children and adults in the United States. Over 33% of the adult population and 16% of the nation's children are obese (CDC, 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2009. Obesity: Halting the epidemic by making health easier. At a Glance, 2009: 1–4.  [Google Scholar]). The purpose of this review is to examine the historical role of physical education, the impact of the Surgeon General's report, the role of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programs in preparing future physical education teachers, and current developments related to physical activity and health in the United States.     

Supporting Maternal Transition: Continuity,Coaching, and Control

The transition from maternity services to community child health services on discharge from hospital occurs at a potentially vulnerable time for women in their transition through the childbearing/early parenting continuum. Their experiences contribute to their developing maternal efficacy and parenting skill. The ideal attributes of services that aim to support women and their families during this time include continuity of care, service integration, and birth in accessible, community-based contexts. The purpose of this study was to investigate aspects of maternal experience of mothers attending with their infants a publicly funded drop-in postnatal health-care service, as well as their reasons for attending and their perceptions of its usefulness to them as a mechanism of continuity and a source of support.     

Notes on British education: an American's perspective

Abstract

This paper argues that the Scottish Education Department (SED) has dispensed with its earlier advocacy of human relations management approaches to staff development. The concept of ‘collaboration’, stressed in the National Committee for the In‐service Training of Teachers (NCITT) reports of 1984, is not mentioned in the SED's consultation paper School Teachers’ Professional Development into the 1990s. The period between 1979 and 1984 is analysed briefly. This period was typified by a declared preference for collaborative INSET. Consideration is given to the SED's consultation paper School Teachers’ Professional Development into the 1990s, and the SED's concept of ‘professional development’ is examined. The SED's management ethos as implied in Curriculum and Assessment in Scotland: a policy for the 1990s is incorporated into the analysis.     

Pragmatism,Purpose, and Play: Struggle for the Soul of Physical Education

Pragmatic inclinations focused on health and wellness have begun to shape much of kinesiology. The wisdom of this trend is challenged as it tends to define leadership development. Chief among the problems with this trend is the loss of professional meaning. The inadequacy of pragmatism in establishing meaning for our professional activities is the central critique of this article. Michael Polanyi's understanding of the development of meaning, rooted in his theory of personal knowledge, is the basis for the critique. Polanyi's theory is expounded and then applied to the current pragmatic dispositions of our profession showing that such utilitarian approaches destroy meaning. A reorientation of the profession is then proposed toward a concept that has the capacity to capture a more genuine sense of professional meaning: play.     

Pedagogy and Post-coloniality: Teaching “Education” online

The academic study of Education1 1. A capital E is used when Education refers to Education as an academic subject or discipline. A lower case e is used to refer to education as a process. View all notes (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of “contrapuntal reading” with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday involvement in their object of study, Education. How do the questions raised by post-colonial and other critical social writers “appear” from such a position? How does the fact of our involvement complicate our theoretical or scientific knowledge of these? By means of an episodic, narrative form of writing, this paper describes a life history pedagogy for teaching a compulsory “social issues” course online to New Zealand pre-service teacher education students. As data I draw on online conversations with and between students as they engage in the production of contextualized life history interview narratives.     

Problems and issues in the use of concept maps in science assessment

The search for new, authentic science assessments of what students know and can do is well under way. This has unearthed measures of students' hands-on performance in carrying out science investigations, and has been expanded to discover more or less direct measures of students' knowledge structures. One potential finding is concept mapping, the focus of this review. A concept map is a graph consisting of nodes representing concepts and labeled lines denoting the relation between a pair of nodes. A student's concept map is interpreted as representing important aspects of the organization of concepts in his or her memory (cognitive structure). In this article we characterize a concept map used as an assessment tool as: (a) a task that elicits evidence bearing on a student's knowledge structure in a domain, (b) a format for the student's response, and (c) a scoring system by which the student's concept map can be evaluated accurately and consistently. Based on this definition, multiple concept-mapping techniques were found from the myriad of task, response format, and scoring system variations identified in the literature. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the reliability and validity of these variations. The review led us to arrive at the following conclusions: (a) an integrative working cognitive theory is needed to begin to limit this variation in concept-mapping techniques for assessment purposes; (b) before concept maps are used for assessment and before map scores are reported to teachers, students, the public, and policy makers, research needs to provide reliability and validity information on the effect of different mapping techniques; and (c) research on students' facility in using concept maps, on training techniques, and on the effect on teaching is needed if concept map assessments are to be used in classrooms and in large-scale accountability systems. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

What is the meaning of spiritual health among older adults? A concept analysis

ABSTRACT

The different dimensions of spiritual health among older adults remain unknown to date and no globally acceptable definitions have yet been provided for the concept. To conduct the current study, the databases including Proquest, Medline, CINAHL, Science Direct, Blackwell, Iranmedex, SID, Noor Magazine and Irandoc were searched for the articles published between 1980 and 2014 in both English and Persian using keywords including spirituality, spiritual well-being, spiritual health, geriatric, older adult and old people and their Persian equivalents. The search for articles yielded into 197 titles, 31 of which were repeated and were therefore excluded. The remaining 166 articles were screened based on the inclusion criteria. A total of 29 articles were ultimately selected as the study samples. Rodgers’ evolutionary approach to concept analysis is used to identify the attributes, antecedents, consequences and surrogate terms of “spiritual health” and to provide a more comprehensive definition of the concept. The results obtained showed that spiritual health from the perspective of older adults is a multi-dimensional concept with cognitive, functional, affective and consequential components. Each component was found to be composed of several indicators. The results may help in providing a more thorough definition of spiritual health which can be a solid base for future researchers to develop appropriate tools for the assessment of older adults’ spiritual health and encourage research into this partially neglected subject. Care providers may also benefit from the results through acquiring a better understanding of the concept which can be used in designing appropriate spiritual interventions.     

Rape Trauma Syndrome

When the topic of sexual assault is presented in high school and college health courses, it is mostly from a prevention perspective. Rarely do such courses include the mental and emotional health issues suffered by the rape survivor. Knowledge about rape trauma syndrome helps significant people in the victim's life understand the full range of reactions to the traumatic experience of rape. This lesson describes survivors’ behaviors and reactions after a rape, otherwise known as rape trauma syndrome. Included in this lesson is the federal definition of rape, a summary of rape trauma syndrome, lyrics to a song with relevant applications to the phases of rape trauma syndrome, and a rubric for grading a reaction paper related to the lesson. Three National Health Education Standards are addressed via the lesson as well.     

A European Demos? The Nordic adult education tradition-- folkeoplysning --faces a challenge

The keyword in the Nordic tradition for adult education is 'people' (folk). But the term 'people' is used in three different ways: people as a political category, a cultural category and a social category. Therefore, the term 'people's enlightenment' ( folkeoplysning ) has been defined as different ways to create empowered citizens, to provide enlightenment on the people's culture, and to educate the underenlightened and marginalised. What kind of adult education is required in the current situation? Is a political, cultural or social interpretation of the term most needed? This question is discussed in light of the European integration process. ' Folkeoplysning ' is not, by definition, based on a specific interpretation of the concept 'people'. On the contrary, the concept constitutes a battlefield on which different interests attempt to leave their own imprint.     

A Survey on Dementia Training Needs Among Staff at Community-Based Outpatient Clinics

Dementia is a major public health concern. Educating health-care providers about dementia warning signs, diagnosis, and management is paramount to fostering clinical competence and improving patient outcomes. The objective of this project was to describe and identify educational and training needs of staff at community-based outpatient clinics related to treating and managing veterans with dementia. Health professionals took an online survey consisting of questions related to general knowledge and skills in working with veterans with dementia and their families, staff training, and attitudes toward people with dementia. Most participants considered knowledge of dementia important; however, few reported having received training in dementia care within the past year. Furthermore, over half of participants considered themselves beginners in terms of knowledge and skills in dementia care. Regarding training needs, topics that could improve the overall care of veterans with dementia and their caregivers were most often cited. Participants reported being most satisfied with in-person training. Physicians rated their dementia knowledge and skill as greater than nurses'/other medical professionals’ and support staff's. Compared with support staff, nurses/other medical professionals held more positive attitudes toward persons with dementia. Survey results suggest that staff are interested in improving knowledge of, and skills for, working with persons with dementia, and that job classification is associated with differences in attitudes.     

A Janus‐faced Approach to Learning. A Critical Discussion of Habermas' Pragmatic Approach

A realist approach to learning is what I propose here. This is based on a non‐epistemic dimension whose presence is a necessary assumption for a concept of learning of a life‐world as complementary to learning within a life‐world. I develop my approach in opposition to Jürgen Habermas' pragmatic approach, which seems to lack of something from a realist point of view.