A safe place to stay sharp: action learning meets cooperative inquiry in the service of NHS OD capacity building

This is an account of practice. It explores the meeting point between action learning and action research, as a way of doing capacity building in organisational development (OD) in the NHS in the UK. The authors were part of a short cooperative inquiry (Heron, J. 1996. Co-operative Inquiry: Research into the Human Condition. London: Sage). The research found that it was vital in such challenging environments as the current NHS scene to have a ‘safe place to stay sharp.' They outline here what the qualities of such a space might be for themselves, and, following the notion of parallel process (what we experience may be symptomatic of the wider system), for other OD practitioners in the NHS.     

Interprofessional Dialogues Within a Senior Mentoring Program: Incorporating Gerontology Students as Facilitation Leaders

Effective health care with older adults requires that clinicians and practitioners are knowledgeable about aging issues and have the skills to work within an interdisciplinary team context. This article describes a Senior Mentoring Program that paired clinical students in medicine, nursing, and a physician assistant program with community-dwelling seniors for regular interactions. This interprofessional education experience included graduate gerontology students as discussion facilitators. Because including gerontology students as Interprofessional Dialogue Facilitators (IDFs) was an innovative aspect of the program, their participation within interdisciplinary groups was analyzed. IDFs monitored a secure internet site where clinical students discussed their experiences with their mentors. Discussion posts by the IDFs were clustered into three major types: amplifying statements that stimulated and furthered dialogue, augmenting posts that integrated specialized content on aging within the discussions, and analyzing comments that helped students reflect on experiences from different perspectives. The advantages of including aging content experts, such as gerontology students, within aging awareness activities like Seminar Mentoring programs are discussed.     

Artefacts at the liquid interface and their impact in miniaturized biochemical assay

Droplet microfluidic technology has the potential to significantly reduce reagent use, and therefore, lower costs of assays employed in drug discovery campaigns. In addition to the reduction in costs, this technology can also reduce evaporation and contamination which are often problems seen in miniaturized microtitre plate formats. Despite these advantages, we currently advise caution in the use of these microfluidic approaches as there remains a lack of understanding of the artefacts of the systems such as reagent partitioning from droplet to carrier oil and interaction of the biological reagents with the water-oil interface. Both types of artefact can lead to inaccurate and misleading data. In this paper, we present a study of the partitioning of a number of drug-like molecules in a range of oils and evidence of protein binding at the water-oil interface which results in reduced activity of a cytochrome P450 enzyme. Data presented show that the drug-like molecules partitioned the least into fluorocarbon oils and the interaction of the 1A2 cytochrome at the water-oil interface resulted in a lower or complete absence of enzyme activity. This loss of activity of cytochrome 1A2 could be restored by the use of secondary blocking proteins although changes in the pharmacology of known 1A2 inhibitors were observed. The artefacts described here due to reagents partitioning into the carrier oil or protein binding at the water-oil interface significantly impact the potential use of these microfluidic systems as a means to carry out miniaturized biological assays, and further work is needed to understand the impact and reduction of these phenomena.     

National qualifications in Scotland: A lightning rod for public concern about equity during the pandemic

Scotland, traditionally, has high levels of confidence in teachers. Fairness and justice are key concepts in policy and practice in Scottish education. For more than 100 years, the high-stakes assessment system in Scotland, with the Scottish Higher qualification at its heart, has been crucial to that sense of opportunity and justice. However, in 2019–2020, public confidence in high-stakes assessment in Scotland, as in other United Kingdom countries, was dented. In Scotland, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that schools were closed, teachers provided online learning opportunities for pupils working at home and, for the first time in 130 years, it was not possible to run national examinations. To ensure that learners were not further disadvantaged, alternative approaches to gathering evidence for qualifications were instigated. However, these results were challenged as socially unjust and the results that had been nationally moderated were replaced by results based on locally moderated teachers' professional judgement. As Scotland looks to qualifications beyond Covid-19, trust must be re-built. This article reports on a participative research project that sought to understand public perceptions of standards and fairness across a range of key communities following this experience. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we analyse factors which affected trust in National Qualifications under the pandemic. The evidence suggests that when considering what matters for qualifications to be trusted, technocratic solutions are likely to be rejected by stakeholders. Understanding and responding to what led to the mistrust of qualifications in Scotland will be crucial to inform its future qualifications system.     

Mobilities of gaseous ions in CH3NO2H2 and CH3CNH2 mixtures

Extending previous investigations by Loeb of mobilities in gaseous mixtures using his procedure except that the auxiliary field in these measurements was made equal to the advancing field thus giving absolute values of the mobilities, measurements of mobilities were made in mixtures of CH₃NO₂H2 and CH₃CNH₂. The mobilities in H₂ were 7.12 for the positive ions and 10.46 for the negative ions in cm./sec. per volt/cm. Those in CH₃NO₂ were 0.221 cm./sec. per volt/cm. for both ions and in CH₃CN they were 0.234 cm./sec. per volt/cm. for both ions. Both ion mobilities deviated from Blanc's law in CH₃NO₂ indicating the formation of complexes with the CH₃NO₂ ions somewhat greater in size than the normal ions in H₂. The molecules attached to negative ions somewhat less readily than to the positive ions but both final ions were of the same size. In CH₃CN mixtures both positive and negative ions deviated from Blanc's law, the positive ion showing more ready attachment of CH₃CN. The negative ion had consistently a higher mobility than the positive ion, a circumstance indicating a smaller ion and suggesting that the attaching molecule might not be CH₃CN but some impurity. Both ion addition products in CH₃CN are larger than the normal ion in H₂ but smaller than those in CH₃NO₂ as was to be expected.     

Concept mapping: How should it be introduced, and is there evidence for long term benefit?

A naturalistic study, with two cycles of intervention, was carried out to investigate the effects of two methods of introducing concept mapping to students taking introductory subjects in genetics in an Australian university. Some of these students' views relating to concept mapping were also investigated in the years following its introduction. The results of this study suggest that the method of introduction can influence students' perception of concept mapping, and its potential benefit. Although most students taking introductory subjects had taken part in the project, and many had realised the benefits of concept mapping, retrospective views of students indicated that almost none had adopted it as a regular part of study strategies. This outcome raises several questions in regard to introducing learning tools to students and, in particular, the reasons for doing so.     

Expanding horizons for GIS services in academic libraries

During the past five years, libraries engaged in GIS services have encountered challenges and opportunities related to partnerships, staffing and management, user education, and data access.Many avenues exists for expanding both the scope and depth of these services to meet the user community's needs.     

Warm,sunny days

Each change in the seasons brings a certain sense of excitement. Perhaps, after a long, cold winter, the most pleasant change of all is when the signs of Spring begin to appear: warm, windy weather; tiny shoots of green peeking through the melting snow; budding trees and bushes; the first robin; rainstorms and puddles; and a chance to go outside to fly a kite or throw a paper glider into the air.... Then, finally,warm, sunny days to let us know that Spring is really here!     

Statistics in High School Science

Exploratory date analysis provides powerful numerical and graphical tools with which to summarise and interpret data. In this article the authors describe their work with students who were given the opportunity to engage in the solution of a real problem in the physics laboratory which requried statistical techniques.