Laboratory medicine education in Lithuania

In Lithuania there are two types of specialists working in medical laboratories and having a university degree: laboratory medicine physicians and medical biologists. Both types of specialists are officially being recognized and regulated by the Ministry of Health of Lithuania. Laboratory medicine physicians become specialists in laboratory medicine after an accredited 4-year multidisciplinary residency study program in Laboratory Medicine. The residency program curriculum for laboratory medicine physicians is presented. On December 9, 2009 the Equivalence of Standards for medical specialists was accepted and Lithuanian medical specialists in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine can now apply for EC4 registration. Medical biologists become specialists in laboratory medicine after an accredited 2-year master degree multidisciplinary study program in Medical Biology, consisting of 80 credits. Various postgraduate advanced training courses for the continuous education of specialists in laboratory medicine were first introduced in 1966. Today it covers 1-2-week courses in different subspecialties of laboratory medicine. They are obligatory for laboratory medicine physicians for the renewal of their license. It is not compulsory for medical biologists to participate in these courses. The Centre of Laboratory Diagnostics represents a place for the synthesis and application of the basic sciences, the performance of research in various fields of laboratory medicine, as well as performance of thousands of procedures daily and provision of specific teaching programs.     

Movement patterns and physical strain during a novel, simulated cricket batting innings (BATEX)

A simulated cricket batting innings was developed to replicate the physical demands of scoring a century during One-Day International cricket. The simulated innings requires running-between-the-wickets across six 5-over stages, each of 21 min duration. To validate whether the simulated batting innings is reflective of One-Day International batting, movement patterns were collected using a global positioning system (GPS) and compared with previous research. In addition, indicators of physical strain were recorded (heart rate, jump heights, sweat loss, tympanic temperature). Nine club cricketers (mean ± s: age 20 ± 3 years; body mass 79.5 ± 7.9 kg) performed the simulated innings outdoors. There was a moderate trend for distance covered in the simulated innings to be less than that during One-Day batting (2171 ± 157 vs. 2476 ± 631 m · h?1; effect size = 0.78). This difference was largely explained by a strong trend for less distance covered walking in the simulated innings than in One-Day batting (1359 ± 157 vs. 1604 ± 438 m · h?1; effect size = 1.61). However, there was a marked trend for distance covered both striding and sprinting to be greater in the simulated innings than in One-Day batting (effect size > 1.2). Practically, the simulated batting innings may be used for match-realistic physical training and as a research protocol to assess the demands of prolonged, high-intensity cricket batting.     

Are governments complying with transparency? Findings from 15 years of evaluation

How well do governments comply with their own transparency statutes? Alarmingly, answers to this question are in short supply because of patchy comparative data. This study begins to address this gap by analyzing an exhaustive compilation of 265 transparency compliance evaluations (i.e. audits) authored by NGOs, academics, and government oversight authorities across Latin America between 2003 and 2018. Aggregating data on patterns of evaluation and public sector compliance with transparency statutes, we find modest increases in compliance over time, strikingly low compliance with passive transparency compliance (i.e. governmental responses to citizen requests) at the local versus national levels of government, and significantly higher compliance scores when government oversight agencies act as evaluators. Our data also reveal worrying gaps in evaluation efforts. Evaluators tend to focus far more on active transparency (i.e. website-based disclosure) than passive transparency, more on national level governments than subnational governments, and preponderantly on the executive as opposed to legislative or judicial branches of government. Textual analyses show that education is the most evaluated policy theme, with financial policies and social services close behind. In presenting the first large-scale cross-national assessment of transparency compliance, the current study brings to light trends in the effectiveness of transparency regimes and patterns of transparency evaluation across Latin America.     

Gendered study choice: a literature review. A review of theory and research into the unequal representation of male and female students in mathematics,science, and technology

This article presents an overview of the recent literature on gendered patterns of academic choice in mathematics, science, and technology. It distinguishes in this literature micro-level, macro-level, and institutional explanations. Micro-level explanations focus primarily on psychological constructs, that is, variables at the level of the individual students. Macro-level explanations focus primarily on socioeconomic conditions and cultural understandings of gender roles. Institutional explanations focus on design characteristics of (national) education systems. After a presentation of these perspectives and of recent research progress that has been made, the authors critically discuss the lacunae that still exist in explaining cross-national variety, and provide suggestions for designing future research in this field.     

Three Misunderstandings of Plato's Theory of Moral Education

In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that there are three broadly held misconceptions of Plato's philosophy that work against his relevance for contemporary moral education. The first is that he is an intellectualist who is concerned only with the cognitive aspect of moral development and does not sufficiently emphasize the affective and conative aspects; the second is that he is an elitist who believes that only philosopher‐kings can attain true knowledge of virtue and it is they who should govern society; the third is that he affirms the realm of the Forms as a literal metaphysical reality and believes that for individuals to attain virtue they must access this realm through contemplation. The goal of this essay is to correct these misconceptions. The rehabilitation of Plato's reputation may enable future researchers in moral education to discover in his philosophy new avenues for exploring how best to cultivate virtues in students.     

Giving the invisible hand a helping hand: How ‘Grants Offices’ work to nourish neoliberal researchers

Neoliberalism has become a highly dominating and taken-for-granted way of organising the university sector around the world. In the critical educational literature, this market-based rationality has been scrutinised in detail over the past decades. However, rather scant attention has been directed to how university managers and administrators, apart from setting up quasi-markets, may intervene more directly to give the invisible hand of the market a helping hand. Aiming to address this lacuna, the purpose of the current article is to develop an empirically grounded taxonomy of different types of such interventions, and to theorise them in terms of the different facets of the neoliberal milieu that they reproduce and the various forms of subjectivising work among academics that they seek to engender. We do so by means of a qualitative study of so-called ‘Grants Offices’ at three Swedish universities. The findings arguably add to and problematise our understanding of how neoliberal markets work in academia in three different ways. First, while extant research has noted that university managers and administrators may intervene beyond the setting up of neoliberal markets per se, our study is to our knowledge the first one that identifies and systematises a broad array of such interventions. Second, it problematises the view of neoliberal markets as a form of monolithic entity that produces a uniform competitive pressure on academics. Third, and related, it furthers our understanding of the type of subjectivity that competitive milieus are assumed to bring about.     

Acceptance as a Normative Aspect of the Process of Coming to Understand Emotionally Charged Concepts: Upper-Secondary School Students Make Meaning of Gender

Previous research on how students’ acceptance of emotionally charged theories relates to their understanding is based on the measurement of acceptance and understanding as two separate variables. As an alternative, the present study takes a qualitative approach with the aim of exploring what 24 upper-secondary school students accept when they come to understand the concept of gender and how to justify gender-related statements. The results show how the students accept ideas about social structures, power, and emancipation, as well as ideas about essences, individual independence, and a natural order. As for their justifications, they accept ideals of equality and objectivity. By assuming that the ideas have positive connotations for the students, it becomes possible to understand them as engaged in negotiating norms that are brought to the fore in the interviews.     

Relational competence in teacher education. Concept analysis and report from a pilot study

A supportive relationship between teachers and students has been shown to have positive effects on students’ performance and social development. Preservice teachers’ relational competence is, however, an unexplored area. The purpose of this study is to contribute to educational research about relational competence in teacher education by introducing a Swedish project which focuses on interpersonal aspects. The study has three parts. In the theoretical part, a conceptualization of teachers’ relational competence using Thomas Scheff’s theory of interpersonal relationships is outlined. In the empirical (pilot) part, a methodology for prompting preservice teachers’ analyses of teacher–student relationships is described, as well as a thematic analysis of their responses. The theoretical conceptualization is then used together with the empirical data in the third part, in order to identify development needs of preservice teachers in terms of relational competence. According to the conceptualization, relational competence includes three sub-concepts: communicative, differentiation, and socio-emotional competence. From the analysis of preservice students’ texts, the article identifies development needs in relation to the three sub-concepts. The concluding discussion focuses on lessons learned from the study regarding how to promote teacher students’ relational competence.