The power of refutational text: changing intuitions about the interpretation of box plots

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Graphicacy is an important skill in today’s society; however, the interpretation of graphs proofs to be more difficult than it might seem. In...     

Self-reported symptoms and risk factors for digital ischaemia among international world-class beach volleyball players

The prevalence of ischaemia-related symptoms is remarkably high among elite indoor volleyball players. Since the exposure to sport-specific demands may be higher in beach volleyball compared to indoor volleyball, the aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of ischaemia-related symptoms and associated risk factors among world-class beach volleyball players. Therefore, a questionnaire survey was performed among beach volleyball players active during the 2013 Grand Slam Beach Volleyball in the Netherlands. In total, 60 of the 128 beach volleyball players (47%) participated: 26 males and 34 females from 17 countries. The self-reported prevalence of cold or blue or pale digits in the dominant hand during or immediately after practice or competition was 38% (n = 23). Two risk factors were independently associated with symptoms of blue or pale digits: more than 14 years playing volleyball (odds ratio (OR) 4.42, 90% confidence interval (90% CI) 1.30–15.07) and sex (female) (OR 4.62, 90% CI 1.15–18.57). In conclusion, the prevalence of symptoms associated with digital ischaemia is high among international world-class beach volleyball players. Female sex and the length of the volleyball career were independently associated with an increased risk of ischaemia-related symptoms. The high prevalence of these seemingly innocuous symptoms and possible associated risk factors warrant regular monitoring since early detection can potentially prevent thromboembolic complications and irreversible tissue damage.     

Provider documentation of patient education: a lean investigation

Purpose

The study evaluates how providers give patient education materials and identifies improvements to comply with Meaningful Use (MU) requirements.

Methods

Thirty-eight patient-provider interactions in two health care outpatient clinics were observed.

Results

Providers do not uniformly know MU patient education requirements. Providers have individual preferences and find gaps in what is available. Accessing and documenting patient education varies among providers. Embedded electronic health record (EHR) materials, while available, have technical access barriers.

Conclusions

Providers'' EHR skills and knowledge levels contribute to non-standardized patient education delivery.     

Maltreatment of children in The Netherlands: an update after ten years

Governmental consultation and advice on child abuse and neglect in the Netherlands started in 1972 as a two-year experiment with four offices for "confidential doctors" in four major cities of the country. After these two experimental years, a governmental institute for prevention of child abuse and neglect was organized. Over the ensuing decade the number of offices increased to ten, covering the whole country. The State Department of Welfare, Public Health, and Environment collected data from the confidential doctors and their coworkers every year. This study compares the data of the first year 1974 with those of 1983 in order to detect changing patterns over a 10-year period. The major changes are as follows: a threefold increase in cases, an extraordinary increase in cases of emotional maltreatment, an increase in detection of child fatalities but decrease in severity of physical abuse. Sexual abuse was hardly recognized in 1974 but gradually was recognized more frequently during the study decade and accounted for an alarming 7.2% of detected cases of maltreatment in 1983. No change was found in the social conditions of the family and the identity of the perpetrators--primarily fathers and/or mothers. A decrease was noted in the percentage of married parents. The increased percentage of single parents was primarily represented by mothers alone. An increase in the numbers of victims residing at home and a decrease in the need for children's homes as a temporary or permanent residence is attributed to aftercare. The discrepancy between the results of this voluntary notification system in the Netherlands and the results of a mandatory reporting system as used in the U.S.A. is still very high. The hope is that the government will decide to make reporting of maltreatment mandatory for everyone.     

Effects of writing instruction and assessment on functional composition performance

In this study the relationships between writing instruction and functional composition performance were analyzed. The data were obtained in a national assessment on the language proficiency of students in the third year of Dutch secondary education (age ±15). Multivariate multilevel analysis showed that 10 out of 36 instructional characteristics were related to functional composition performance. The effective instructional characteristics included: instruction and exercises in writing functional texts, writing for a specific purpose, tailoring to a particular audience, global rating of writing products by the teacher, and frequent evaluation of Dutch language proficiency through teacher-made tests and written assignments. No effects were found for the rather popular subskill exercises on idiom, syntax, spelling and punctuation, and for pre-writing activities, text revisions and peer-review. Furthermore, the effect of instructional characteristics was often different on one task than on another. Finally, there was little differential effectiveness for different groups of students. If one instructional characteristic was more effective than the other, this was generally true, to an equal degree, for boys and girls and for promoted and non-promoted students.     

Returns on vocational education over the life cycle: Between immediate labour market preparation and lifelong employability

An important issue in the design of secondary-level education is the balance between conveying general and occupation-specific (vocational) skills. On the one hand, vocationally oriented programmes, providing occupation-specific skills with immediate labour market relevance, have repeatedly been shown to secure safe pathways into employment. On the other hand, these programmes tend to put less emphasis on developing general knowledge, skills and competencies, including numeracy and literacy, which are foundational to lifelong learning. Hence, when the needs of the labour market change, employees who opted for a vocational track when they were at secondary school risk being less flexible in adapting to such changes later in their career. The authors of this article examine whether this results in a trade-off between short-term gains and long-term losses by considering differences in the labour market careers of vocationally and generally educated respondents in the 2012 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Their results suggest that early labour market benefits of vocational specialisation decrease over time; the authors relate this to its lower ability to equip secondary school students – future employees – with skills for lifelong learning.     

ADAPT<Superscript>IT</Superscript>: Tools for training design and evaluation

This article describes a set of computerized tools that support the design and evaluation of competency-based training programs. The training of complex skills such as air traffic control and process control requires a competency-based approach that focuses on the integration and coordination of constituent skills and transfer of learning. At the heart of the training are authentic whole-task practice situations. The instructional design tools are based on van Merriënboer's 4C/ID^* methodology (1997). The article describes a training design tool (Core) that supports the analysis and design for competency-based training programs and an evaluation tool (Eval) that supports the subsequent revision of this training design.