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.     

Attentional Load and the Reproduction of Physical Work

Abstract

The effect of attentional focus on the perception of physical work was examined by using a work reproduction design. Subjects performed a fixed interval of work at either 50 or 75% of their predicted VO₂ max, during which they were required either to solve a continuous flow of arithmetic problems or to perform in an unfilled control condition. On a subsequent trial, without a concomitant attention-demanding task, subjects were asked to reproduce the amount of work that they had previously performed. It was found that individuals in the control condition produced a significantly greater amount of work on the reproduction trial, while those in the attentional focus condition performed about the same amount as on the previous trial. No interaction was found between attentional focus and work load.     

A critical scholar’s journey in China: A brief Freirean analysis of insider–outsider tensions

As a full-time foreign faculty member in the Chinese Normal university system for the past five years, I analyze the contested terrain of being a critical, Freirean educator/researcher as an insider and outsider of Chinese and Western academic systems and societies overall. This autobiographical analysis is within the contexts of China’s academic focus on raising their global higher education rankings, along with self-reflectivity of my own multiple, often-conflicting identities and Western-centric Orientalism, theorized by Edward Said, in my legitimization of academic work. The following themes are analyzed through critical and Freirean frameworks: pursuit for top rankings coinciding and conflicting with scholarship breadth and depth, academic freedom, and politics of education; constructs of “harmony” that grounds teaching and research; and select pedagogical commonalities and differences between the East, the Global South, and the West. The article delves into preconceptions, including my own, on what is “worthy” academics from China, “the East”, “the West”, and the “Global South” with self-reflectivity of problematizing such terminology that covers such immense diversity in all aspects of contexts, including education which underscores the very problems with rankings, especially global rankings which are often Western-centric. All themes will be analyzed within my own, conflicting insider-ness and outsider-ness.     

蝎子与墨西哥文化

在墨西哥乡村地区,对人们形成威胁的繁殖是最最迅猛的动物非蝎子莫属。这些与蜘蛛、扁虱关系亲近的动物,每年造成许多人死亡,数千人受伤。但是,这种蜘蛛类节肢动物已经成为墨西哥当地文化和传统的一部分。在杜兰格市的主要市场中,蝎子比比皆是,随处可见。书本、装饰瓷片、钥匙链和灯上都装饰着死蝎子。T恤衫和帽子上印有蝎子图案,你甚至还能见到蝎子形状的糖果。整个市场仿佛就是一个令人毛骨悚然的蝎子世界。     

Pacific elementary school teachers and language policy critique: Context, text and consequences

This article explores the issue of language policy analysis for elementary school teachers in the Oceania region, that is Polynesian nations in the southern and eastern, Melanesian nations in the western and Micronesian nations in the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean region. It is grounded in an understanding that education policy work of any kind is contested and political but nevertheless an exercise that elementary school teachers need to engage in. The ideas examined in the article are timely given recent ‘re-thinking’ language policy work across the region initiated in early 2005 by the Institute of Education at the University of the South Pacific and the Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of [basic] Education (PRIDE), in Fiji. This article draws on a template for education policy analysis that enables teachers in particular to ask critical key questions around language policy context, text and consequences (Taylor et al., 1997). These questions offer teachers a language for examining language and language policy issues that concern them in their everyday work and thus a possible way of accessing and contributing to debates from which they are often excluded.