Quantifying the information needs of doctors in the UK using clinical librarians

Background and objectives: The main objective of this paper is to determine the frequency of doctors’ clinical information needs using Clinical Librarians as data collectors, focusing on the UK acute sector. Additionally, the frequency of questions followed‐up by Clinical Librarians was determined. The information needs of doctors have been investigated in other countries, particularly the USA, but not in the UK. Clinical Librarians have not been utilized as data collectors in any previous studies. Method: Clinical Librarians counted clinical questions posed by doctors in clinical settings. Results: The Clinical Librarians counted 286 questions from 655 doctors discussing 1210 patient cases. This represents approximately one question for every four patients. Conclusion: Clinical Librarians can collect data to identify the number of information needs doctors have, but this was more successful when the Clinical Librarian was experienced and an established part of the clinical team.     

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.     

Story writing skills of adults with a history language-impairment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the story writing skills of adults with a history of oral language impairment. It was hypothesized that writing text would pose difficulty for adults with a history of language impairment (LI), and that this difficulty would manifest itself as reduced grammatical complexity and increased errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation. The story writing of 10 adults with a history of LI was compared to a group of 51 unimpaired individuals. Participants were asked to write the story of Cinderella. Stories were analysed for length, grammatical complexity and accuracy of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Data were analysed to determine group trends as well as individual profiles. As a group, the adults with LI showed no difference from the comparison group in the length of their stories as measured by total number of words. The LI group did, however, show reduced grammatical complexity in their writing, as measured by mean length of t-unit. The LI group made more errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation than the comparison group. Individual analyses indicated substantial variability within the LI group. It is concluded that LI in childhood is associated with writing difficulties in adulthood.     

Reading,learning and enacting: interpretation at visitor sites in the Wet Tropics rainforest of Australia

The northern Wet Tropics rainforest of Australia was declared a world heritage site in 1988 and now supports an extensive tourism industry that attracts an estimated 2.5 million local and international visits annually. As part of the visitor experience, many sites include both environmental and cultural interpretation experiences, which range from static displays to one‐on‐one guided tours. This paper identifies visitor demand and level of satisfaction with the static signage and displays used at rainforest sites throughout the Wet Tropics. The research involves visitor surveys conducted in 2007 and 2008 and observations at a number of rainforest sites. The results indicate that visitors consider the level of interpretation to be adequate, but appear to use it poorly. While higher at commercial sites, visitor interest in reading the interpretation is very low at public sites. Overall, this article seeks to address whether the aims of nature‐based interpretation, including education and the influencing of attitudes and site behaviour, are being achieved.     

Classroom Provocateurs and Ethical Classroom Practice

This article is based upon a larger study that considered three high school literature units in the US. Through a close analysis of one classroom discussion between a teacher and a provocative 8th grade student named Fish, I argue that it is not only ethically responsible to position the Fishes of this world as laudable, but that doing so is beneficial for critically focused English classes as a whole. Further, I argue that my reading of Fish as a provocateur can be productively transferred to other student‐provocateurs in our English classrooms who vex the smooth doing‐of‐school in different ways than Fish did.     

Implementing a play‐based and developmentally appropriate curriculum in Northern Ireland primary schools: what lessons have we learned?

In the United Kingdom tensions have existed for many years between the pedagogical traditions of pre‐school, which tend to adopt developmentally oriented practices, and the more formal or subject‐oriented curriculum framework of primary school. These tensions have been particularly acute in the context of Northern Ireland, which has the earliest school starting age throughout Europe. In response to international research evidence and practice, a play‐based and developmentally appropriate curriculum, known as the Enriched Curriculum (EC), was introduced as a pilot in Year 1 and 2 classes in over 100 primary schools in Northern Ireland between 2000 and 2002 and continued until the Foundation Stage became statutory for all primary schools in 2007. This paper outlines four key lessons that have been learned from the first four years of the evaluation of this experience. These include the value and the meaning of a play‐based curriculum; the importance of teachers’ confidence and knowledge; teaching reading in a play‐based curriculum; and easing transitions in a play‐based curriculum.     

Seeking support: researching first‐year students’ experiences of coping with academic life

Students’ transition to academia comes with a number of challenges which, if inadequately addressed, may negatively affect their academic performance and psychological well‐being. Hence, the question of support becomes critical and has been reflected in the variety of practical measures to provide support with learning and facilitate newcomers’ integration into higher education. However, while forms of institutional aid have increased and diversified in recent years, the kind of support the students actually need and prefer to use – from the pool of available resources – remains insufficiently understood in current research. To address this gap, this paper advocates a social network approach to first‐year students’ experiences of coping with academic life and suggests an agenda for further investigation, which would contrast support ‘from above’ and support ‘from below.’     

Toward multimodal inquiry: opportunities,challenges and implications of multimodality for research and scholarship

In this article, we suggest that we are witnessing a challenge to the hegemony of text-based knowledge in academic scholarship, brought about by newly available modes of expression, and a cultural shift in our notions of reading and writing, authorship, and networked knowledge production. The central question we address here concerns the implications of widening our ideas of acceptable forms of inquiry, analysis and representation in academic scholarship. As a collective of scholar-practitioners exploring new modes of expression and working both within and outside the formal structures of academia, we argue for the increasing significance of multimodal research in the contemporary context of academic inquiry. By more equitably valuing different ways of thinking, knowing and communicating, multimodal research can facilitate wider and more diverse participation in the production of knowledge, offer a more nuanced and ethical mode of inquiry, emphasize different ways of knowing and connecting, and make scholarship more broadly accessible beyond academic contexts. Here, we analyze the key opportunities facilitated by multimodal inquiry, as well as the obstacles that stand in the way of a wider adoption of this type of research in higher education.     

A preliminary exploration of uppercase letter-name knowledge among students with significant cognitive disabilities

There are several factors known to impact the alphabet knowledge of young children without disabilities. The impact of these factors on the alphabet knowledge of students with significant cognitive disabilities is unknown. The purpose of this preliminary investigation was to explore the impact of three factors that might influence uppercase alphabet knowledge among students with significant cognitive disabilities: own name, letter order in the alphabet string, and letter frequency. Archival data documenting identification of each of the 26 uppercase letters of the alphabet for 131 8- to 21-year-old students were analyzed using a multilevel logistic regression model. While the use of extant data has limitations, results indicated that own-name advantage gave students a 10% greater likelihood of knowing the first letter of their own first name/nickname than any other alphabet letter. Letter-order analysis showed there were differences between letters found earlier in the alphabet string versus those that were found later in the alphabet string; however, the results were not statistically significant. Letter-frequency analysis did not reveal a significant impact of frequency on letter name knowledge in this sample. The findings provide preliminary evidence that at least some of the factors that influence alphabet knowledge in young children without disabilities also impact students with significant cognitive disabilities and point to the need for more research in this area.