A Review of: “Urology Board Review: Pearls of Wisdom, 3rd ed., by Leslie,Stephen W., ed.”

ABSTRACT

Pediatric Care Online is the American Academy of Pediatrics’ point-of-care tool designed for health care providers. Pediatric Care Online builds on content from Red Book Online and Pediatric Patient Education and features Quick Reference topic pages for more than 250 pediatric health care topics. The multitude of resources available within Pediatric Care Online will be reviewed in this column, and a sample search will be used to illustrate the type of information available within this point-of-care pediatric resource.     

A Review of: “Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2009. McPhee,Stephen J., and Papadakis,Maxine A., eds.”

At the Ohio State University, a health sciences librarian is the co-instructor in a required information competencies course for first-year undergraduate students in the Honors Biomedical Science Major. This article discusses the creation and development of the credit-bearing, in-person course from the curriculum planning phase in 2005 to present. Improvements to the course are described by year. Student feedback, student performance, and reflection by the co-instructors influenced the course improvements, including changes in content, delivery, student feedback mechanisms, and assessment of student learning. The course teaches students to access, organize, read, and analyze the biomedical research literature.     

Disciplinary Differences in Student Ratings of Teaching Quality

Comparisons of large samples of course and teaching evaluation questionnaire data show consistent disciplinary differences. The current study examined the disciplinary differences in a theoretical model positing the impact of the perceived nature of teaching and learning environment on the development of generic capabilities by testing of (1) whether a common model of good teaching operated across disciplines and (2) the extent of deployment of teaching variables and their impact on learning outcomes. The sample consisted of 3,305 first and third year Chinese undergraduates of a university in Hong Kong, divided into four broad disciplinary groupings. Multiple-group structural equation modelling analysis showed configural invariance of the hypothesised model, suggesting a common model of good teaching across disciplines; and significant differences in the magnitude of structural paths and latent mean values across the four disciplinary groups were obtained reflecting differences between disciplines in the extent to which elements within the teaching and learning environment were brought into play. Possible reasons in terms of the epistemological nature of the disciplines were given to explain for the disciplinary variations.     

Metalinguistic awareness and reading strategies

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Competent performances of situated identities: Adult learners of English accessing engaged participation

The Communities of Practice (CofP) framework and theories of engaged participation have profoundly shaped how we theorize, investigate, and represent a variety of learning and teaching processes, both in and out of classroom contexts. Within this framework, useful distinctions have been made between a teaching curriculum and a learning curriculum, with the former being interrogated for ascribing limited identities to its learners and the latter valued for the ways it prioritizes learning (and its resources) from a learner's perspective. Analysis of data collected utilizing ethnographic methods (e.g. document collection, participant observation, interviews) demonstrates that, even though the teaching curriculum of one adult ESL program itself provided limited “structuring resources” (and learning opportunities) to its learners, the learners' participation in the program helped them to recognize and value the kinds of engaged participation necessary to access membership in local workplace communities of practice. However, findings also show that while these adult learners of English managed to learn and adopt the practices of one community of practice, they remained excluded from legitimate membership in other communities of practice. The analysis raises questions about the limits and possibilities of a teaching curriculum that values “real world” experiences (and situated learning) in theory but does not prioritize them in practice.     

Die Anliegen der Studierenden an Fachhochschulen: Wer/Wie/Was?

Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet den Umgang mit Studierendenanliegen iwS an Fachhochschul-Studieng?ngen. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf die Zust?ndigkeiten der beteiligten „Stakeholder“ im Fachhochschulwesen und deren Interaktion gelegt. Im Zentrum stehen die Rollen der Studiengangsleitung, des Fachhochschul-Kollegiums sowie der Studierendenvertretung. Diese Stakeholder sind ma?geblich beteiligt an der Qualit?tssicherung der Lehre an Fachhochschul-Studieng?ngen. Das Fachhochschulstudiengesetz (FHStG) wurde durch das Qualit?tssicherungsrahmengesetz (QSRG)* umfassend novelliert; dadurch ergeben sich auch ?nderungen in bezug auf den Umgang mit Studierendenanliegen. Dieser Beitrag stellt die neue Rechtslage nach dem QSRG dar. Abschlie?end wird thematisiert, inwieweit die im Fachhochschul-Recht grundgelegten Verfahren und die Aufgabenverteilung zwischen den beteiligten Personen und Organen den Erfordernissen einer effizienten und effektiven Behandlung der Studierendenanliegen entsprechen.     

‘We are the professionals’: a study of teachers’ views on parental involvement in school

The study examines teachers’ attitudes and experiences regarding home–school cooperation. Teachers constitute a powerful group in school compared with parents, and this relationship is interpreted through Bourdieu’s concept of social field, as a power relation. The empirical analyses are based on a mixed‐methods approach with survey and qualitative interviews among teachers in Norway. The results show that while teachers experience the interaction in a positive way, they try to limit parents’ influence through emphasising their own professionalism, thus leaving parents with the role as supporters. Teachers who relate to well‐educated parents are especially conscious of maintaining a distance towards the parents in order to keep them in their place.