Assessment of Students’ Understanding of Variation

Several tasks used in research studies are presented with assessment rubrics and examples of the development of student understanding. The tasks focus on students’ appreciation of variation in several contexts and illustrate the need to discuss variation in the classroom and to ask students specifically about it during assessment.     

Informing Culturally Competent Practice Through Cross-Racial Friendships

International and interdisciplinary literature on cross-racial friendships is critically reviewed as a source of relevant and provocative data for counselling professionals dedicated to multiculturalism. The authors discuss the dynamics of cross-racial friendships and implications for counsellors. Using practical examples grounded by interdisciplinary literature, the authors expand discussions about racism within the counselling profession.     

Enhancing curriculum and delivery: linking assessment to learning objectives

Typical university‐wide course evaluations do not provide instructors with sufficient information on the effectiveness of their courses. This article describes a course assessment and enhancement model where student feedback can be used to improve courses and/or programs. The model employs an assessment tool that measures student perceptions of importance and their current competence in course‐specific learning objectives both pre‐ and post‐course. Information gained from this assessment enables course improvement over time and also allows for modification in delivery and/or content of the current course. This model is intended to augment traditional course evaluation mechanisms based on specific and actionable feedback on learning objectives.     

Melancholic mothering: mothers,daughters and family violence

Through selected theories of melancholia, this paper seeks to shed some fresh interpretive light on the reproduction and disruption of gender, violence and family turmoil across generations of mothers and daughters. The originality of the paper lies in its exploratory deployment of theories of melancholia to consider issues of women, violence and generation. It addresses these matters through a discussion of the intergenerational emotional archives accumulated by two mother–daughter pairs in relation to their different experiences of sexual and other violence. It shares the mothers’ experiences of violence in their childhood and shows how these help to shape the ways in which they raise their daughters and address the troubles that their daughters experience. Different theories of melancholia assist us to explain the dissimilar emotional dynamics between these mother and daughter pairs. But equally their stories suggest the analytical potential of different theories of melancholia for understanding women’s and girls’ diverse responses to violence. Freud’s, Irigaray’s and Silverman’s constructions of melancholia, which are to some extent based on notions of emptiness, lack and insufficiency, are deployed alongside Eng and Kazanjian’s interpretation of a melancholic state of being which focuses on the creative potential of animating the remains of loss; an interpretation that invokes an agential relationship to the losses that violence provokes. The former help to explain what Eng and Kazanjian might see as the ‘hopeless politics’ associated with certain melancholic responses to violence and the latter help to explain what they might consider more ‘hopeful politics’ associated with responses that mobilise a more agential relationship to loss. Although not subscribing to such a stark binary interpretation, we nonetheless argue for an analysis that acknowledges the different ways that the remains of loss are animated. The paper arises from a wider cross‐generational study in Australia of the lives of educationally, economically and culturally marginalised young women and their mothers.     

Quality early childhood education for all and the Covid-19 crisis: A viewpoint

The purpose of this viewpoint is to consider the impact of the current Covid-19 crisis on the educational prospects of young children attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Studies show that health pandemics and environmental, political, and socio-economic crises jeopardize children’s development and education. It is likely that for the immediate future, young children will continue to experience emotional and psychological stress. A curriculum that does not take into consideration a pandemic of the scale we are witnessing today creates unnecessary pressure and anxiety not just on young children but also on the adults who care for and teach them. This article outlines actions to ensure quality education for all as suggested by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The response of ECEC curricula to the pandemic may potentially act as a catalyst for educational change.

     

Session - 3 December 19, 2007 Cardiovascular risk markers - II

Oral Cancer is one of the five leading sites of cancer in Indian population. The circulating immune complexes were investigated in 100 serum samples of 60 oral cancer patients having different grades of the disease and 40 patients with precancerous lesions obtained from Nair Hospital Dental collage, Mumbai. The results obtained were compared with those of group of 40 healthy blood donors. Elevated levels of Circulating Immune Complexes were observed in oral cancer patients and patients with oral precancerous lesions. 92% positive samples were observed in well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma whereas 100% positive samples were observed in both moderately and poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. Oral leukoplakia and oral submucous fibrosis showed 15% and 90% positivity respectively. Increased level of Circulating Immune complexes in high grade tumor suggest that Circulating Immune complexes is likely to contribute in evaluating the degree of malignancy, but follow up study is needed to draw any conclusion regarding it's prognostic role     

Best entry points for structured document retrieval—Part II: Types,usage and effectiveness

Structured document retrieval makes use of document components as the basis of the retrieval process, rather than complete documents. The inherent relationships between these components make it vital to support users’ natural browsing behaviour in order to offer effective and efficient access to structured documents. This paper examines the concept of best entry points, which are document components from which the user can browse to obtain optimal access to relevant document components. It investigates at the types of best entry points in structured document retrieval, and their usage and effectiveness in real information search tasks.     

Profiling Younger Adults’ Communication About Aging

According to the Communicative Ecology Model of Successful Aging (CEMSA), how people talk about age can have implications for how they cope with aging later in life. However, most research on communication and successful aging has focused on older adults. In this study, we use latent class analysis to profile how younger adults (age 18–39) communicate about aging and examine how these profiles relate to their attitudes toward aging (affect, efficacy, anxiety, and perceptions of successful aging). Consistent with past research on older adults, we found three distinct profiles of communication behavior (disengaged, engaged, and bantering). An engaged profile was clearly associated with the most positive attitudes toward aging, while a disengaged profile was associated with the least positive attitudes. These findings suggest that patterns of talk about aging may start early in life, underscoring the importance of studying communication about aging across the lifespan.     

Development and testing of a prenatal breastfeeding education intervention for Hispanic women

Many immigrant Hispanic women in the United States choose to bottle-feed rather than breastfeed. This article describes an intervention that was developed and tested in a two-step process. Two studies were undertaken. First, a qualitative inquiry explored the breastfeeding beliefs, attitudes, meanings, and practices of Hispanic women. Results informed the design of a culturally appropriate prenatal breastfeeding education intervention. Secondly, the researchers undertook a quantitative study of the intervention's success in increasing breastfeeding duration among Hispanic women. Methodology and findings of this study have implications for future interventions that promote breastfeeding.