European Dissertation Summaries

Over the past decade, Donald Schön's conceptualization of professional practice as reflection‐in‐action has gained wide currency. This paper reports on a seminar, based on Schon's ideas, to assist elementary teachers in making Science a more significant part of their instructional programmes. A detailed analysis of the efforts of two of the experienced teachers involved points to problems related to: (i) the efficacy of reflection‐on‐action in facilitating reflecting‐in‐action; (ii) disjunctions between conceptual and action components of teachers' frames; and (iii) the role of substantive teacher intervention in assisting children in learning to use non‐common‐sense ways of knowing such as Science.     

Universities after postmodernism

Universities have a contribution to make towards the creation of a more just society. To do so, not only must the new language from industry be challenged, there needs too to be a break from the postmodernist mindset which still defines much academic debate. Drawing on ideas from political economy, critical social science and feminist theory and practice this paper urges a re-positioning of higher education which requires moving on from the ‘linguistic turn’ towards a more ‘practical turn’. It proposes that mass university higher education has a future if it actively engages with adults from a much wider social spectrum than at present and if it re-engages with notions of the public nature of truth and values through working to articulate urgent problems with people other than academics.     

相关概念和影响因素

为在普通教育和职业教育问建立创新性的关系,欧盟采取了包括从课程开发到教育体系改革等多种方法.作为西方工业界的一部分,欧洲国家在提升职业教育与培训的吸引力和质量方面面临一些相似的挑战.     

The Health Information Literacy Research Project

Objectives:

This research studied hospital administrators'' and hospital-based health care providers'' (collectively, the target group) perceived value of consumer health information resources and of librarians'' roles in promoting health information literacy in their institutions.

Methods:

A web-based needs survey was developed and administered to hospital administrators and health care providers. Multiple health information literacy curricula were developed. One was pilot-tested by nine hospital libraries in the United States and Canada. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to evaluate the curriculum and its impact on the target group.

Results:

A majority of survey respondents believed that providing consumer health information resources was critically important to fulfilling their institutions'' missions and that their hospitals could improve health information literacy by increasing awareness of its impact on patient care and by training staff to become more knowledgeable about health literacy barriers. The study showed that a librarian-taught health information literacy curriculum did raise awareness about the issue among the target group and increased both the use of National Library of Medicine consumer health resources and referrals to librarians for health information literacy support.

Conclusions:

It is hoped that many hospital administrators and health care providers will take the health information literacy curricula and recognize that librarians can educate about the topic and that providers will use related consumer health services and resources.

Highlights

• Health care providers responded positively to a health information literacy curriculum offered by librarians and to related resources and services, namely MedlinePlus and the information referral system known as Information Rx.
• Participation in a curriculum increased health care providers'' knowledge of health information literacy, awareness of available consumer health information, and referral of patients to the library for additional assistance.
• Librarian involvement in health information literacy increased the profession''s visibility and perceived value.

Implications

• Consumer health information services and resources offered by librarians can improve the health information literacy skills of health care providers and their patients.
• Training by librarians can increase knowledge of the importance of health information literacy and usage of MedlinePlus and Information Rxs.
• Hospital-based administrators and health care providers can be champions in support of health information literacy and consumer health information services offered by libraries.

     

Will Undergraduate Students Play Games to Learn How to Conduct Library Research?

This exploratory study examines whether undergraduate students will play games to learn how to conduct library research. Results indicate that students will play games that are an integral component of the course curriculum and enable them to accomplish overall course goals at the same time they learn about library research.     

How do parenting concepts vary within and between the families?

How do parenting concepts vary within and between the families? The present study regards parenting as a complex family process by considering three concepts of parenting: styles, differential treatment and coparenting consistency. A main question was addressed: whether and how these parenting concepts vary within the families towards siblings or between the two parents, and between the families according to the child's, the parent's and the family's characteristics? The parenting concepts were computed from the EPEP questionnaire (Meunier &; Roskam, 2007) in a sample of 101 non-divorced families: 101 mothers and 101 fathers of two siblings from 6- to 12-years-old. The parenting concepts were found to vary within the families towards two siblings and between the mother and the father. They were also found to vary between the families according to the child's age and personality traits as well as a function of the parent's educational level and the number of siblings.     

The effects of mood,cognitive style,and cognitive ability on implicit learning

In an experiment with 109 undergraduates, we examined the effect of mood, cognitive style, and cognitive ability on implicit learning in the Artificial Grammar (AG) and Serial Reaction Time (SRT) tasks. Negative mood facilitated AG learning, but had no significant effect on SRT learning. Rational cognitive style predicted greater learning on both tasks, but this effect on SRT was mediated by cognitive ability. SRT, but not AG learning was significantly correlated with Math and English scores on the ACT. These findings confirm and contradict previous research. The association of negative mood and rational cognitive style with AG confirms that AG learning is facilitated by systematic, bottom-up processing. However, the lack of converging evidence for the SRT task suggests that the tasks involve different aspects of implicit processing. Theoretical explanations and suggestions for future research are discussed.