Library instruction for medical students during a curriculum elective

The University of Minnesota Medical School has an innovative curriculum, called Didactic/Selective, which provides third- and fourth-year medical students with multidisciplinary and multispecialty courses. Within this framework, the Bio-Medical Library planned a course to teach the knowledge and skills necessary for library research and information management. It included (1) searching case-related topics in print indexes, (2) formulating and processing MEDLINE searches on BRS Colleague, (3) building a personal file with PC-File or Notebook, and (4) exploring various methods for current awareness. Students' evaluations were positive, with the majority indicating that they found the course interesting and the knowledge gained substantial.     

Training and testing physical capacities for elite soccer players

Elite soccer players spend a substantial amount of time trying to improve physical capacities, including aerobic endurance and strength and the strength derivatives of speed and power. The average oxygen uptake for international soccer teams ranges from 55 to 68 ml.kg-1.min-1 and the half-squat maximal strength from 120 to 180 kg. These values are similar to those found in other team sports. Recently, it has been shown that the heart's stroke volume is the element in the oxygen chain that mainly limits aerobic endurance for athletes. These findings have given rise to more intensive training interventions to secure high stroke volumes, which, in turn, have proved positive in changing both maximal oxygen consumption and soccer performance in terms of distance covered, contacts with the ball and number of sprints in a game. The training employed has consisted of 4x4-min "intervals" running uphill at 90-95% of maximal heart rate interspersed with 3 min jogging at 70% of maximal heart rate to facilitate removal of lactate. Research has revealed that a soccer-specific training routine with the ball might be as effective as plain running. Strength training to produce neural adaptations has been effective in changing not only strength in terms of "one-repetition maximum", but also sprinting velocity and jumping height, in elite soccer players without any change in body mass. The same training has also improved running economy and thus aerobic endurance performance. The training regimen used for a European Champions League team was 4x4 repetitions of half-squats with the emphasis on maximal mobilization of force in the concentric action.     

Interaction between the teacher and the congenitally deafblind child

Empirical data on the development of interaction, communication, and language in deafblind children is very rare. To fill this gap, a case study was conducted in which the interaction between a teacher and a deafblind boy age 3 years 4 months was analyzed. Sequential analysis of their interaction confirmed some general clinical impressions about interaction with deafblind children, and provided the basis for suggestions on how the interaction pattern might be changed.     

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences electronic health record and medical informatics training for undergraduate health professionals

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is planning interprofessional training in electronic health records (EHRs) and medical informatics. Training will be integrated throughout the curricula and will include seminars on broad concepts supplemented with online modules, didactic lectures, and hands-on experiences. Training will prepare future health professionals to use EHRs, evidence-based medicine, medical decision support, and point-of-care tools to reduce errors, improve standards of care, address Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements and accreditation standards, and promote appropriate documentation to enable data retrieval for clinical research. UAMS will ensure that graduates are ready for the rapidly evolving practice environment created by the HITECH Act.     

Rivals for the crown: Reply to Opthof and Leydesdorff

We reply to the criticism of Opthof and Leydesdorff on the way in which our institute applies journal and field normalizations to citation counts. We point out why we believe most of the criticism is unjustified, but we also indicate where we think Opthof and Leydesdorff raise a valid point.     

Reconceptualising the curriculum: from commodification to transformation

This article inveighs against the prevalent commodified discourse in Higher Education especially as it impacts on curriculum planning, quality assurance and learner typologies. It expresses a concern that educational research, in offering models drawn, but now divorced from, practice, may contribute to this negative impact. As an example, a polarised model distinguishing features of ‘traditional’ from ‘emerging’ curricula is criticised as contributing to this commodification; as diminishing the status of university teachers, as offering an instrument to reductive quality assurance systems and as militating against the disciplines operating as communities of practice. In contradistinction to this dichotomizing model, but extrapolating from the same article, a ‘both/and’ model outlining elements of process- and discipline community-based ‘transformational curricula’ is offered. It is perhaps impossible to write about the evils of externalised models and reductively abstract discourse without contribut ing to that very effect. The article therefore ends with two voices which are not those of educational researchers.     

Student-centred and teacher-centred learning environments: what students think

This contribution explores the relationship between teacher-centred and student-centred learning environments from a student's perspective. Three different views with respect to this relationship can be retrieved. The balance view suggests that the more teacher-centred a learning environment is, the less student-centred it is and vice versa. The transactional view stresses the continuous renegotiation of teacher- and student-roles. The independent view argues that teacher- and student-centredness are independent features of learning environments. Results from three survey studies of higher education students’ conceptions of quality education are discussed. While the practice-oriented literature regularly seems to adopt a balance view, factor analyses did not reveal evidence for the balance view in any of these studies. In students’ minds student-centredness and teacher-centredness seem to be mutually reinforcing features of high quality education. From a curricular point of view, and especially with regard to teacher training, the results warrant to argue for the development of so-called powerful learning environments rather than for the transition from teacher-centred towards student-centred learning environments.     

Truly included? A literature study focusing on the social dimension of inclusion in education

Social participation of students with special educational needs (SEN) is a key issue in the inclusion debate. However, the meaning of concepts like social integration, social inclusion and social participation used in current literature is often unclear. Recently, these concepts were clarified based on preschool and primary school literature. The current study assesses the meaning of these concepts for secondary school samples and possible differences with preschool and primary school. A literature review on secondary school literature, including 19 articles, revealed large parallels, i.e. the three concepts can be used as synonyms and include the same key themes: relationships, interactions, perception of the pupil with SEN and acceptance by classmates. Although the subthemes within the key themes largely concurred, one subtheme (i.e. self-perception of social interaction) was added and three subthemes, mentioned in the scheme based on preschool and primary school, were not found.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.