Attachment Predicts College Students’ Knowledge,Attitudes, and Skills for Working With Infants,Toddlers, and Families

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Adults’ attitudes about attachment relationships are central to how they perceive and respond to children. However, little is known about how attachment styles are related to teachers’ attitudes toward and interactions with infants and toddlers. From a survey of 207 students taking early childhood (EC) courses at 4 U.S. universities, we report relations among students’ attachment styles and their (a) career goals, (b) attitudes about caring for and educating infants and young children, and (c) interaction skills for responding in developmentally supportive ways. Overall, attachment security was positively associated with career goals focused on working with younger children, knowledge about infant/toddler development, attitudes that acknowledge the importance of adult support in children’s development, and developmentally supportive interaction skills. Students who scored high on attachment fearfulness minimized the importance of adults in children’s lives, minimized the importance of the early years for later learning, and endorsed strict and controlling forms of child guidance. Practice or Policy: A conceptual mediation model linking a path from attachment to caregiving skill through knowledge and attitudes is articulated. We propose a person-centered pedagogy for infant/toddler professional preparation that provides opportunities for reflection on one’s own attachment and its effects on work with young children.     

Exploring perceived support of postgraduate medical science research students

There is still much to learn about the support required by postgraduate research students, across academic disciplines, to facilitate successful completion of a research degree. The primary aim of this study was to explore postgraduate medical science research students’ perceptions of academic and mentoring support at different stages during their degree programme. A second aim was to explore the feasibility and acceptability of peer mentoring as a strategy to enhance student support in this population. A mixed method study design was used. Students first completed an online questionnaire, which was then supplemented with focus group discussion to explore emergent findings in greater depth. The main results indicated that the nature and quality of academic supervision support have a significant influence on research student training and development. ‘Functional’ and ‘relationship development’ concepts of supervisory styles were highlighted as important aspects to perceived support in this research population. The main facilitators to enhance academic support were effective communication, project planning and timely feedback. There was a high degree of acceptability for a peer mentoring programme as a complementary approach to enhance student support. Peer mentoring psychosocial functions such as friendship, counselling and career guidance were considered potentially beneficial to enhancing student support. Students also discussed peer coaching as central to their learning and research skill development. This work is a useful starting point to explore perceptions of research student support in the target population. Further work is required to develop strategies to enhance student support in academic practice.     

Large-scale curriculum change in a system of ten indonesian medical schools — A case study of educational innovation

This article reviews the literature on educational innovation and change, and emphasises factors which are held to facilitate rapid change. The remainder of the paper presents a detailed case history o1 educational innovation in 10 Indonesian medical schools, involvingN=260 academic departments. Within a 3-year period three-quarters of these departments have developed new curricula haled on sets of explicit instructional objectives, and most of these departments now indicate they are using these sets of objectives both for their teaching and for assessing students' competence. This case history describes how this task was approached, provides a synoptic picture of the results which have been obtained: then attempts to provide an overall account o1 those factors which assisted these changes to take place. It is contended that this case history of change within a system of established medical schools clarifies selected aspects of the theoretical literature on educational innovation and diffusion, on the planning of effective programmes of staff development, and provides planners with sonic practical guidelines for programme development and evaluation.     

Facilitating agency: the change laboratory as an intervention for collaborative sustainable development in higher education

To cope with the rapidly changing higher education climate, teachers need agency to act proactively in initiating and steering changes in practice. This paper describes an academic development activity in the form of a Change Laboratory, an intervention method based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, to facilitate agency among teachers. The results of the study indicate that transformative agency emerges when teachers are given the opportunity to analyse, envision, and redesign their practice collaboratively. This has implications for academic development, suggesting that activities facilitating discussion, analysis, and criticism of current practices are needed to support the development of agency.     

Take away body parts! An investigation into the use of 3D‐printed anatomical models in undergraduate anatomy education

Understanding the three‐dimensional (3D) nature of the human form is imperative for effective medical practice and the emergence of 3D printing creates numerous opportunities to enhance aspects of medical and healthcare training. A recently deceased, un‐embalmed donor was scanned through high‐resolution computed tomography. The scan data underwent segmentation and post‐processing and a range of 3D‐printed anatomical models were produced. A four‐stage mixed‐methods study was conducted to evaluate the educational value of the models in a medical program. (1) A quantitative pre/post‐test to assess change in learner knowledge following 3D‐printed model usage in a small group tutorial; (2) student focus group (3) a qualitative student questionnaire regarding personal student model usage (4) teaching faculty evaluation. The use of 3D‐printed models in small‐group anatomy teaching session resulted in a significant increase in knowledge (P = 0.0001) when compared to didactic 2D‐image based teaching methods. Student focus groups yielded six key themes regarding the use of 3D‐printed anatomical models: model properties, teaching integration, resource integration, assessment, clinical imaging, and pathology and anatomical variation. Questionnaires detailed how students used the models in the home environment and integrated them with anatomical learning resources such as textbooks and anatomy lectures. In conclusion, 3D‐printed anatomical models can be successfully produced from the CT data set of a recently deceased donor. These models can be used in anatomy education as a teaching tool in their own right, as well as a method for augmenting the curriculum and complementing established learning modalities, such as dissection‐based teaching. Anat Sci Educ 11: 44–53. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Building Legal Competency: Foundations for a More Effective Criminology and Criminal Justice Discipline

This article argues for the need to build legal competency in the discipline of criminal justice and criminology through incorporating law courses in its PhD program curriculum, whether as black letter law (i.e. criminal law, criminal procedure, courts), sociology of law, or socio-legal studies (i.e. law and society courses). Through requiring law courses as a necessary and integral part of the curriculum, and recognizing the mainstream impact of these courses, the discipline stands to enrich the field of legal studies in criminology and criminal justice. The discipline’s need and demand for law trained tenure track faculty with PhD credentials can only be met through consistent law course offerings.     

Instructor-provided summary infographics to support online learning

Infographics are a visualisation tool that can be used to improve retention, comprehension and appeal of complex concepts. The rise of infographic use in education has facilitated new forms of application and design of these tools. Instructor-provided summary infographics are a new form of infographic, whereby key learning objectives and content are summarised in graphical form at the end of a lesson. However, it is unknown whether these types of infographics can support learning in online environments. This exploratory research investigates student perceptions, retention, applications and activity generation of instructor-provided summary infographics in a massive online learning environment. Using both post-course learner survey data (n = 1,899) and text mining analysis (n = 72,490 words), results present how learners perceived instructor-provided summary infographics as useful and appealing for retaining, clarifying and understanding learning concepts. The research contributes a novel understanding of summary infographics in online learning environments, and supports their use as a design tool for educational delivery in the online space.