The personal librarian program: an evaluation of a Cushing/Whitney Medical Library outreach initiative

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library (CWML) at the Yale School of Medicine has offered a "Personal Librarian" (PL) program to medical center students since 1996. This outreach program matches students to a professional librarian as they matriculate, a relationship that is maintained until the student graduates. PLs offer individualized assistance for almost anything-from interpreting library policies and procedures to helping locate materials to assisting with thesis research. The program requires nominal effort on the part of the librarians, making it possible to expand the program to include other student groups. A recent survey revealed that students are extremely satisfied with the program and would generally welcome more contact from their PL.     

EVALUATING AN INNOVATION

Investigations into EATE's particular style of development, and its effectiveness of approach in introducing and sustaining innovations, were thought to be important aspects in the identification of noteworthy strategies for bringing about change in issues relating to enterprise, economic and industrial awareness in institutions of initial teacher education. This article describes the composite thinking and support underpinning the eclectic evaluations of EATE‐funded initiatives. It discusses two essential, and sequential, steps — initial thinking about issues which need to be clarified before embarking on an evaluation, and the strategies for action, i.e. the practical activities which can then be carried out. The article is written with reference to the EATE initiative but ideas and considerations could, with ease, be applied to other innovations.     

Getting Ready to Learn—And Learning

Research Findings: The study examined children's recognition of emotion from faces and body poses, as well as gender differences in these recognition abilities. Preschool-aged children (N = 55) and their parents and teachers participated in the study. Preschool-aged children completed a web-based measure of emotion recognition skills that included 5 tasks (3 with faces and 2 with bodies). Parents and teachers reported on children's aggressive behaviors and social skills. Children's emotion accuracy on 2 of the 3 facial tasks and 1 of the body tasks was related to teacher reports of social skills. Some of these relations were moderated by child gender. In particular, the relationships between emotion recognition accuracy and reports of children's behavior were stronger for boys than girls. Practice or Policy: Identifying preschool-aged children's strengths and weaknesses in terms of the identification of emotion from faces and body poses may be helpful in guiding interventions with children who have problems with social and behavioral functioning that may be due in part to emotion knowledge deficits. Further developmental implications of these findings are discussed.     

From mountaintop to corporate ladder – what new professionals really really want in a capstone experience!

Capstone subjects are increasingly used in Universities worldwide to complete the undergraduate program experience and to transition graduates into the workplace. As such, capstones fulfil a large role consolidating one experience and traversing the gap to another. Yet, little is known or understood about their design, their implementation or evaluation. In this study we investigate the final-year experience from the student's perspective. We surveyed graduates from five Business Schools in Australia to identify perceptions of their final-year experience. Findings indicate that the transition experience of the student to professional is unique. In their liminal or intermediate state between student and professional they recognise the value of process skills, in particular the development of generic business skills related to application and the importance of opportunities for experiencing the application of theory in practice. The findings add a new understanding to the current literature which has not previously acknowledged the insight of the transitioning professional.     

Implementing a culturally attuned functional behavioural assessment to understand and address challenging behaviours demonstrated by students from diverse backgrounds

As the US student population continues to become increasingly diverse, educators have encountered difficulties in distinguishing between cultural differences and genuine disability indicators. This concern is clearly evident in assisting students from diverse backgrounds who demonstrate chronic challenging behaviours. Past practices (e.g. disciplinary office referrals, out-of-school suspensions, expulsion) have contributed to the likelihood of students from diverse backgrounds being misidentified as having an emotional or behavioural disorder. However, by tailoring the functional behavioural assessment (FBA), educators better differentiate cultural factors from disability characteristics and better understand the students’ needs. This paper will discuss the significance in meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population, provide an overview of the FBA process and present considerations in creating a culturally attuned FBA.     

Barriers to Interorganizational Information Sharing in e-Government: A Stakeholder Analysis

Government agencies often face trade-offs in developing initiatives that address a public good given competing concerns of various constituent groups. Efforts to construct data warehouses that enable data mining of citizens’ personal information obtained from other organizations (including sister agencies) create a complex challenge, since privacy concerns may vary across constituent groups whose priorities diverge from agencies’ e-government goals. In addition to privacy concerns, participating government agencies’ priorities related to the use of the information may also be in conflict. This article reports on a case study of the Integrated Non-Filer Compliance System used by the California Franchise Tax Board for which data are collected from federal, state, and municipal agencies and other organizations in a data mining application that aims to identify residents who under-report income or fail to file tax returns. This system pitted the public good (ensuring owed taxes are paid) against citizen concerns about privacy. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the authors propose a typology of four stakeholder groups (data controllers, data subjects, data providers, and secondary stakeholders) to address privacy concerns and argue that by ensuring procedural fairness for the data subjects, agencies can reduce some barriers that impede the successful adoption of e-government applications and policies. The article concludes that data controllers can reduce adoption and implementation barriers when e-government data mining applications rely on data shared across organizational boundaries: identify legitimate stakeholders and their concerns prior to implementation; enact procedures to ensure procedural fairness when data are captured, shared, and used; explain to each constituency how the data mining application helps to ensure distributive fairness; and continue to gauge stakeholders’ responses and ongoing concerns as long as the application is in use.     

Talent identification and deliberate programming in skeleton: Ice novice to Winter Olympian in 14 months

Abstract

The aims of this study were to talent transfer, rapidly develop, and qualify an Australian female athlete in the skeleton event at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games and quantify the volume of skeleton-specific training and competition that would enable this to be achieved. Initially, 26 athletes were recruited through a talent identification programme based on their 30-m sprint time. After attending a selection camp, 10 athletes were invited to undertake an intensified skeleton training programme. Four of these athletes were then selected to compete for Australia on the World Cup circuit. All completed runs and simulated push starts were documented over a 14-month period. The athlete who eventually represented Australia at the Torino Winter Olympic Games did so following approximately 300 start simulations and about 220 training/competition runs over a period of 14 months. Using a deliberate programming model, these findings provide a guide to the minimum exposure required for a novice skeleton athlete to reach Olympic representative standard following intensified sport-specific training. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of the deliberate practice theory and offer the term “deliberate programming” as an alternative way of incorporating all aspects of expert development.     

The association between preschool children's social functioning and their emergent academic skills

This study examined the relationship between social functioning and emergent academic development in a sample of 467 preschool children (M = 55.9 months old, SD = 3.8). Teachers reported on children's aggression, attention problems, and prosocial skills. Preliteracy, language, and early mathematics skills were assessed with standardized tests. Better social functioning was associated with stronger academic development. Attention problems were related to poorer academic development controlling for aggression and social skills, pointing to the importance of attention in these relations. Children's social skills were related to academic development controlling for attention and aggression problems, consistent with models suggesting that children's social strengths and difficulties are independently related to their academic development. Support was not found for the hypothesis that these relationships would be stronger in boys than in girls. Some relationships were stronger in African American than Caucasian children. Children's self-reported feelings about school moderated several relationships, consistent with the idea that positive feelings about school may be a protective factor against co-occurring academic and social problems.     

Educating Gerontologists for Cultural Proficiency in End-of-life Care Practice

An educational program was developed to train practitioners to provide care for patients and families that are responsive to cultural concerns. The aim was to increase knowledge and improve attitudes toward providing culturally proficient and culturally sensitive care for patients and families facing life-threatening illnesses. The program consisted of six half-day sessions on key areas in end-of-life care practice. The modules integrated and infused content related to ethnically and culturally diverse populations in a comprehensive training format. Evaluation results suggested that the program was successful in increasing participant knowledge and attitudes towards cross-cultural interdisciplinary practice of end-of-life care.