The Library of the Royal Society of Physicians in Budapest becomes today's Semmelweis Medical History Library

Objectives:

The 170-year history of the library of the Royal Society of Medicine in Budapest illustrates both that political and cultural context matter and that “medical” libraries, if they survive, in due course become primarily “medical history” libraries.

Methods:

Two of the authors are on the staff of the Semmelweis Medical History Library; the third is a US scholar who makes frequent use of the library. Together, they avail themselves of archival and published materials—and personal experience with the collection—to establish the context that produced the original library, trace its evolution, and describe its present-day incarnation.

Results:

A tale of transformation emerges that reflects how collections are likely to change. The authors present events and individuals in the life of the Royal Society''s library and paint a picture of the value of today''s Semmelweis Medical History Library. Unique treasures in the collection are described.

Conclusion:

The story told here is of how a particular nineteenth-century library became a twenty-first–century institution. The authors establish its peculiarly Hungarian context and potential value to librarians and historians from outside Hungary. The overall message is that general medical libraries everywhere are perforce likely to become medical historical libraries over time.

Highlights

• Context matters. The historical background of a library helps determine its functions and its future; shifts in modes of publishing affect and monetary concerns shape the development and preservation of an historical collection.
• Libraries evolve. Medical libraries undergo a normal and profoundly useful transformation over time into repositories of medical history.
• Books alone do not a library make: Libraries can and should be settings for continuing education, cultural affirmation, and assistance to scholars by preserving and making available for use a variety of sometimes rare archival and published materials.

Implications

• Knowing the political and cultural background of a library is essential to understanding its history as well as its present-day status.
• Preserving and expanding historical collections demands vigilance and creative management, especially under difficult fiscal and political circumstances. The loyal and diligent work of Hungarians and others who helped build and preserve this library can serve as a model for other threatened collections.
• Sharing the story of a relatively unknown library''s development brings its general assets and unique resources to the attention of a wider audience of librarians and scholars. Few outside Hungary have previously had any way of knowing about the Semmelweis Medical History Library''s rich holdings.

     

Other Ways to Wisdom: Learning Through the Senses Across Cultures

Most of us in the Western world are accustomed to learning about the world primarily through our senses of sight and hearing. Despite a few interesting experiments in the education of the "lower" senses, smell, taste and touch have not been accorded a place in mainstream Western education. These senses tend to be associated either with "savagery" or sensualism. When we look across cultures, however, a different sensory picture emerges, in which each of the senses has a vital role to play in the acquisition of knowledge of the world. The example is taken of the Desana people of the Colombian rainforest. For the Desana the sound of every bird call, the colour and scent of every flower, the taste of every fruit is imbued with a message about the social and cosmic order. The Desana remind us in the modern West that knowledge does not just come from books and computers, it comes from the full-bodied experience and interpretation of our environment.     

THE FAMILIES WHO CARE PROJECT: MEETING THE EDUCATIONAL NEEDS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND RURAL FAMILY CARE GIVERS DEALING WITH DEMENTIA

Successful educational outreach to address the informational needs of African American and rural families dealing with dementia requires a concerted strategy that fosters trust and conveys a genuine commitment to the targeted communities. The Families Who Care project formed a partnership that included majority and minority institutions of higher education, state and local human services organizations, and two chapters of the Alzheimer's Association. These advisory groups were asked to identify the educational needs of family caregivers and guide the implementation of a train-the-trainer effort in Virginia. The results of strategic planning sessions are detailed, and analyses of evaluation data point to racial and cultural differences in the project's effect on participating family caregivers. Conclusions support increasing the availability of cultural competence training for those who provide services to diverse caregiving families. elders and their families and communities through the development and dissemination of culturally relevant materials emphasizing both the established facts about {Alzheimer's disease and related disorders} and the efficacy of seeking treatment''(Advisory Panel on Alzheimer's Disease, 1992, p. 50). There is a similar need to train family caregivers of rural elders with dementia, whose informational and service needs     

La autonomía como objetivo de la educación: implicaciones de la teoría de Piaget

RESUMEN

Para Piaget el fin de la educación debe ser el desarrollo de la autonomía, tanto en el terreno moral como en el intelectual. Esto significa desarrollar la capacidad de pensar críticamente por sí mismo. Tanto los valores morales como los conocimientos intelectuales no deben ser interiorizados por los niños, sino construídos desde el interior a través de la interacción con el medio. La educación actual refuerza la heteronomía de los niños y les impide desarrollar su autonomía, que es una tendencia natural en el hombre de base biológica. Algunos principios de enseñanza de una educación que tenga como objetivo el desarrollo de la autonomía son: reducir el poder de adulto del profesor; inducir al niño a intercambiar y coordinar sus puntos de vista con otros niños y con el profesor de igual a igual; incitar a los niños a tener una mentalidad activa y a tener confianza en su propia capacidad de descubrir cosas.     

Trying to Make a Lever Work at Ages 1 to 4: The Development of "Functions" (Logico-mathematical Thinking)

To find out if children could make functions before age 4, 73 children aged 1 to 4 were encouraged to imitate the use of a lever to make a beanbag fly up. Functions are mental relationships that preoperational children can make between 2 things at a time in a unidirectional way (Piaget, Grize, Szeminska, &; Bang, 1968 Piaget, J., Grize, J.-B., Szeminska, A. and Bang, V. B. 1977. Epistemology and psychology of functions, Boston: Dreidel. (Original work published 1968)[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]/1977). The child's construction of the following 3 functions was hypothesized and confirmed: (a) As a function of being pushed down, the up end of the board (the lever) goes down; (b) as a function of this descent, the down end of the board goes up; and (c) as a function of this ascent of the board, the beanbag flies up. Three developmental levels were found, and educational implications are discussed.     

An Initial Comparison Of Collaborative And Expert-Driven Consultation On Treatment Integrity

Although over 15 years have passed since Witt (1990) Witt, J. C. 1990. Collaboration in school based consultation: Myth in need of data. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 1(3): 367–370. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] noted that no empirical evidence exists to support the contention that a collaborative approach to consultation leads to more positive outcomes than a hierarchical or expert driven approach, this issue generally remains unaddressed (Schulte & Osborne, 2003 Schulte, A. S. and Osborne, S. S. 2003. When assumptive worlds collide: A review of definitions of collaboration in consultation. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 14(2): 109–138. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). While the literature documenting the benefits of consultation has continued to grow, a true head-to-head comparison has not been conducted. The purpose of the present study was to directly address Witt's call by empirically examining the impact of two consultation styles on a critical variable, practitioner treatment integrity. It was hypothesized that the involvement of practitioners in all aspects of intervention design would increase their level of treatment integrity. Two single-subject experiments using multiple baseline across subjects designs were used to examine the difference in level of treatment integrity for an imported, expert-driven intervention and a partnership-designed intervention. The first experiment was divided into three phases: (a) Phase I, Expert-driven Model; (b) Phase II, Treatment Integrity Intervention; and (c) Phase III, Partnership Model. The second experiment presented the three phases in reverse order to address the possibility of presentation effects: (a) Phase I, Partnership Model; (b) Phase II, Expert-driven Model; and (c) Phase III, Treatment Integrity Intervention. In general, the five participants who completed the three phases of the experiments demonstrated higher levels of treatment integrity during the partnership phase. Overall, the results suggest that engaging with consultees in a collaborative approach may increase the level of integrity with which the intervention is applied.     

Creating a Culture of Reform and Reflection

“The most important words in the teaching profession are ‘I have an idea.’ Someone needs to be there who is genuinely interested in hearing that idea or it will get lost.”

— Margaret, Science Teacher of 22 Years

     

The university of the future: Stiegler after Derrida

Abstract

Higher education has not been spared from the effects of the disruptive aspects of technology. MOOCs, teach bots, virtual learning platforms, and Wikipedia are among technics marking a digital transformation of knowledge. The question of the university, the foundation of its authority and purpose is more than timely; it is urgent to any future philosophy of higher education. Will the university survive in the future and if so, for what purpose? We examine two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, who take on this challenge. Derrida, writing at ‘the scene of teaching’, proposes new humanities for a university ‘without condition’, one with increasing autonomy to democratize it further. Stiegler takes issue with him on the conditions of the university of the future. Stiegler offers not an ‘anti-Derridian discourse’ but a ‘deconstruction of a deconstruction’ of Derrida. Stiegler’s critique of Derrida on the role of the professoriate and the university of the future expand the fissure between them. In this article, we argue that Stiegler’s reading of Derrida points to the university not as an anachronistic way of knowing displaced by the digital revolution but as vital to a politics of the spirit in a democratic future.     

Piaget's theory and the teaching of arithmetic

Conclusion For centuries, education has been a folk art based on tradition and opinions called philosophies. With the advent of associationism and behaviourism, however, education began to enter a scientific era. Now that we have Piaget's constructivism—a more adequate scientific theory—it is time to change the way arithmetic is taught in elementary schools.I hope educators and researchers in other countries will also experiment in classrooms to test the hypothesis that I tested. Because logico-mathematical knowledge is universal and the same in all cultures, I expect the same kinds of results in other countries.Constructivist teaching is much harder than the teaching of algorithms and correcting of worksheets. However, in spite of this difficulty, an increasing number of teachers in the United States are becoming convinced of the truth of Piaget's constructivism. When these teachers encounter children's originality and intelligence that they have not observed before, they are truly overjoyed. Once they have seen the possibility that exists in each child, these teachers do not think of going back to their old ways of teaching.Constance Kamii studied under Jean Piaget, Barbel Inhelder and Hermina Sinclair in the late 1960s and during the 1970s and subsequently developed a pre-school curriculum based on Piaget's theory. She later extended this work to mathematics education in the first three grades and is now working at the fourth and fifth grade level. She has taught at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the University of Geneva, and is now a professor of education at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, in the United States.I am grateful to Janice K. Ewing for critically reading a draft of this paper and making helpful suggestions.