COMMUNITY‐BASED SETTINGS FOR TRAINING IN GERIATRIC MEDICINE

Service‐learning clinical experiences in community‐based sites are an important approach to providing medical, nurse practitioner, allied health and other professional students with an opportunity to acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary for working effectively with the elderly. Such experiences provide a balance to the clinical experiences more traditionally provided to students in nursing homes and chronic care hospitals. In community‐based settings, students gain knowledge and skills in working with older people, develop a more balanced view about growing old, and learn about community resources and effective teamwork. The experiences of the George Washington University Medical School in providing these learning experiences has led to student enthusiasm for work with the elderly and has improved access to medical care for elderly persons who participate in programs in community‐based settings.     

Rethinking our underlying assumptions about what we do and why we do it: academic development as a case

In this paper, academic developers from universities in three countries explore underlying assumptions about what we as developers do and why we do it in relation to evaluating development programs. Through addressing three questions, key ideas emerge that highlight what is often overlooked in day-to-day practice: the fact that academic development has a ‘signature pedagogy’ defined by the ‘learning paradigm’; the potential role of different stakeholders in setting criteria for evaluation; and the inclusion of non-traditional academic development literatures (e.g., adult education, educational change, organizational development) to avoid perpetuating established practices. Our intent is to intellectually challenge ourselves and others to move beyond sharing program and evaluation activities to explore ideas and literature not often considered in our day-to-day work. While the context is academic development, we believe the questions and the answers that emerged are of value to all involved in staff and professional development.     

The scrumpled geography of literacies for learning

This paper draws upon the experience of the Literacies for Learning in Further Education research project in the UK. The project explored the literacy demands of a number of curriculum areas and the literacy practices of students in their everyday lives, in order to identify those ‘border literacies’ which may act as resources for learning and attainment within their college courses. Drawing on Literacy Studies and aspects of actor-network theory, this article outlines the conceptual innovations that we found necessary arising from our data analysis, extending existing work on situating practice and boundary crossing to posit a conceptual landscape that we term the scrumpled geography of literacies for learning. This landscape is one in which purification, naturalization and translation are key concepts, where literacy practices are enacted as network effects of a folding of a range of micro-practices into conglomerations.     

Fostering connectedness to nature in higher education

Environmental thinkers and educators have argued for the importance of celebrating our connectedness to nature, or the perception of being part of, rather than separate from, the natural world. Using pre-and post-test measurements of Nature Relatedness and supplemental interviews, this study addresses the question of whether a particular introductory college-level ecology course can increase learners’ connectedness to nature, both independently and in comparison to a similar course. The results show that the course significantly increased participants’ connectedness, particularly their identification with nature and nature-focused worldview. Other environmental courses studied demonstrated no such changes, suggesting that environmental education does not automatically lead to connectedness. However, if woven into the goals and approach of teaching, connectedness to nature can indeed be fostered in higher education. This is a promising result for educators and others working towards a sustainable future.     

Relationship of College Students' Current Attachment to Appraisals of Parental Conflict

This study assessed the relationship of parental attachment and gender to appraisals of conflict with parents in an effort to clarify the psychological mechanisms that mediate the relationship between attachment and psychological well-being. Appraisals of conflict with parents were found to be related to level of attachment and gender.     

Reflecting on three creative approaches to informed consent with children under six

In an era when children’s rights are paramount, there are still few practical examples to guide us when seeking informed consent from children. This article therefore makes a significant contribution to the field by examining three practical approaches to negotiating informed consent with young children under 6 years old. We draw on researcher field notes, images and observations from four research projects that employed creative methods for seeking informed consent from young children. We take a reflexive approach, considering how successful the three techniques have been in facilitating young children’s decision-making around research participation. Our findings suggest that innovative approaches to informed consent create spaces for children to engage in dialogue and questioning about the research project. However, in order for the approaches to be meaningful, they need to be pedagogically appropriate to the maturity and capabilities of the children. We also demonstrate that, irrespective of the approach devised, researchers have a responsibility to ensure consent is continuously negotiated throughout the project through reflexive questioning.