Between two Advisors: Interconnecting Academic and Workplace Settings in an Emerging Field

This article examines a new training design for continuing professional development that aims to support the learning of the novel knowledge and skills needed in emerging professional fields by interconnecting academic and workplace settings. The training design is based on using two advisors, one from working life and the other from an academic context. The article examined whether participants’ personal orientation to adaptive expertise predicts the success of a guidance process. The interconnection of workplace and academic contexts was expected to occur through guidance practices. In addition, the features underlying the most successful guidance relationships were analysed. Data were collected by conducting repeated semi-structured interviews with 18 course participants, eight academic advisors and eight workplace advisors in the context of a 1-year energy efficiency training programme. The results indicated that a trainee’s personal orientation towards adaptive expertise is a significant component in successful guidance processes. An interconnection of workplace and academic knowledge and practices was hardly found in the guidance provided by each participant’s academic and workplace advisors. The feature underlying the most successful guidance relationships are related at the personal, dyad and context levels. An excellent match between the expert profiles of the learner and the advisor appears to be especially critical for successful guidance and powerful knowledge exchange in emerging fields. However, finding matching advisors is often challenging. Many problems are presumably solved if these ‘right persons’ can be found and if the trainees are themselves oriented to utilise the novel resources provided to them by the advisors.     

Problems Associated with Multi-Media Data Bases

Education is intimately associated with communication, and so may utilize any technology that is able to support a process that enables information to be transferred from one location to another. This paper describes the meaning of the term multi-media data base and presents a model of its potential role in aiding message creation for the purposes of communicating educational material using many parallel channels. Some of the problems associated with the implementation of such systems are outlined.     

Media counseling: A new frontier for health professionals

The authors are co-hosts of a popular open line radio show in Western Canada. In this article the term media counseling is explored and strategies in bringing expertise from the fields of Psychology and Psychiatry to the public are outlined. The authors have been convinced of the value of their approach, and outline purposes, as well as providing data relevant to this radio show That's Living.     

Developing Research Skills for Civil Engineers: A Library Contribution

A cowse‐integrated programme of library instruction has been developed for the School of Civil Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia; library instruction being one of the means selected to improve the research efforts of fourth year project students. The programme has been developed through consultation between the Civil Engineering Research Project Coordinator and the Civil Engineering Reference Librarian. Its aims are derived from those established for the fourth year research projects. Attention is focussed on the nature of the programme and the impact of instruction on fourth year research project students. Students who had received extended library instruction were compared with students from the previous year. Evidence suggests that the instruction has improved the information seeking behaviour of the students and their literature reviews.     

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION OF INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED STUDENTS WHEN CONFRONTED WITH CHALLENGING AND UNCHALLENGING TASKS

Two groups of gifted adolescents solved two similar intelligence tests with differing levels of task difficulty in reverse order. Under both conditions the performance level on the less complex test was much lower, a result not observed in a control group of average intelligence. Behavioural observations revealed that the low performance of the gifted students was combined with lack of effort. This performance pattern is discussed with respect to recent postulates of achievement motivation theory, which empasize the impact not only of the achievement motive, but also of the informational value of a given task for evaluating own level of ability. It is argued that the perceived informational value of the easier test was not high enough to create an incentive for the gifted students to perform at the highest possible level