Using Knowledge Decrement to Compare Medical Students’ Long-term Retention of Self-study Reading and Lecture Materials

The purpose of the current study was to contrast the long-term retention of material acquired primarily through lectures and assigned self-study readings. Sixteen third-year female medical students took part in the study, and the material tested was from a six week Behavioural Sciences Module which incorporated social science, medical science and clinical information. A specially constructed examination paper was used to measure retention one year later. Knowledge decrement (the percentage of material lost) was one of the measures employed. The two study methods did not differ consistently in terms of knowledge decrement or class performance. The top students (in terms of module performance) remembered more than the weakest students, but not because they were less prone to knowledge decrement. Individuals differed substantially in terms of the relative percentages of lecture and reading material forgotten. Using knowledge decrement to identify which study approaches best suit an individual student is discussed.     

Mentors’ Roles in a Primary Articled Teachers’ Scheme

As school‐based initial teacher training is the preferred government route to teaching, even in primary education, research which examines the role of the teacher mentor is especially pertinent. This study is based on semi‐structured interviews with nine mentors about how they spend their time when mentoring. The findings revealed that a major part of their time is taken up as channels of communication between the various partners in the scheme and on the practicalities of working with their Articled Teachers (ATs). Functions requiring developing ATs’ curriculum knowledge and expertise and assessment of ATs’ teaching competence appear to be two important aspects on which they spend time but do not relish. Whether practising primary teachers are the most suitable people to deliver all aspects of ITT is questioned.     

Teachers' attitudes towards adolescent sexuality and life skills education in rural South Africa

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes towards young people's sexuality and pregnant students, and focused on girls' perceived irresponsible behaviour instead of strategies to minimise HIV risk. Despite general awareness of the HIV epidemic, few teachers perceived it as an immediate threat, and teachers' own HIV risk was infrequently acknowledged. Teachers perceived themselves to have higher personal standards and moral authority than members of the communities and schools they served. Male administrators' authority to determine school policies and teachers' attitudes towards sexuality fundamentally affect the content and delivery of school-based sexuality education and HIV prevention activities. Opportunities to create a supportive educational environment for students and for female teachers are frequently missed. Improving teachers' efficacy to deliver impartial, non-judgemental and accurate information about sex and HIV is essential, as are efforts to acknowledge and address their own HIV risks.     

Trainee teachers with dyslexia: personal narratives of resilience

This paper tells the stories of two trainee teachers and their personal experiences of dyslexia. Both informants were English and training to be primary school teachers in England. Through drawing on their own experiences of education, the stories illustrate how dyslexia has shaped the self‐concept, self‐esteem and resilience of each informant. The narratives presented in this paper illustrate powerfully the ways in which teachers can have a positive or negative impact on the self‐concepts of students with dyslexia. Both had been inspired by teachers they had met, and these positive role models had given them the confidence to pursue their own ambitions. However, both had encountered teachers who lacked empathy and patience, and these teachers had a detrimental impact on their self‐concepts. For both of these trainee teachers, personal experiences of dyslexia also shaped their professional identities as teachers. Both trainees described themselves as caring and empathic teachers, suggesting that personal experiences of dyslexia had a positive impact on teacher professional identity.     

The status of health librarianship and libraries in the Republic of Ireland (SHELLI): a mixed methods review to inform future strategy and sustainability

Background

This paper summarises the main points of a review of the Status of Health Librarianship & Libraries in Ireland (SHELLI). The review was commissioned to gain a broad understanding of what was happening in practice in Ireland; acquire knowledge about international best practice, and to inform strategic plans to develop and sustain health libraries and librarianship in Ireland.

Methods

A Mixed Methods approach was used: a literature review; an online survey distributed to health librarians; Semi structured interviews with key stakeholders; a focus group drawing participants from the survey. All evidence was triangulated.

Results

New roles for health librarians needed development and the changing educational needs of health librarians warranted attention. Increased collaboration across institutional boundaries needed more consideration, especially in relation to access to e‐resources. Marketing of library services was crucial. Irish health library standards, needed to be updated and enforced and a proper evidence base established. The literature provided a number of examples of potentially useful initiatives.

Conclusions

A strategic plan of action was drawn up in three areas: (i) to identify champions and promote visibility of health service libraries, (ii) to establish a body of evidence and (iii) to support service development and staff mentoring.     

Rethinking the Globalization Movement: Toward a Cultural Theory of Contemporary Democracy and Communication

How can we understand and evaluate the relationship between democracy and recent global protests in response to economic globalization? Criticisms of this type of activism understand democratic communication to be primarily a public process. I argue that instead, we need to develop a more fully cultural understanding of democracy and communication, one which would take into account important characteristics of contemporary democratic practice and experience. That is, as a resonant but unstable compound of meanings, democracy is integrated into individual subjectivities and collective identities through a whole variety of lived experiences, particularly in relation to mediated and symbolic practice.     

Developing a characterisation of citizenship education: issues arising from work undertaken in a higher education network

In order to understand better the way in which the emerging field of citizenship education is being characterised we reflect on work emerging from a higher education network (citizED) for citizenship education. Three of the four authors of this article are closely involved in that network. CitizED was established with funding from the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (now the Training and Development Agency for Schools, TDA) in order to establish a network and provide resources to support the initial training of citizenship teachers. We analysed download data from the network's website, a sample of the resources produced by the network, and interviewed a sample of users and developers. In this article we identify who is using the resources, how they are using them and what form of citizenship education is developing as a result. We argue that there is now a clear citizenship teacher education community that uses common resources for a variety of purposes. We suggest that there is some consensus in relation to the official characterisation of citizenship, but that ‘turf wars’ still exist in this contested field.     

Modelling the demand for higher education by local authority area in England using academic,economic and social data

Managing the demand for higher education has been a major concern of successive UK governments over the last 30 years. While initially they sought to increase demand, latterly the emphasis has been on widening participation to include demographic groups among which it has traditionally been low. There had long been an academic and policy interest in the drivers of demand, but an appreciation of the contrasting patterns between different geographical areas was relatively late to emerge. Little research has thus far focused on the extent to which demand within an area is a function of background factors with a spatial dimension. For example, while it is known that demand tends to be lower in deprived areas, it is not well understood what specific features of deprivation cause this. This paper reports the findings of a quantitative study using linear regression modelling to determine which localised factors played a significant role in the demand for higher education between 2004 and 2009 in English local authority areas. It concludes that attainment at 16, the proportion of working‐age graduates and the ethnic profile are major explanatory variables, but that the nature of the local employment market also plays a role in explaining changes over time. Coinciding with other significant changes in the education sector, the abolition of the Aimhigher initiative in July 2011 marked the return of demand management back to individual universities, so the importance of spatial patterns in higher education demand are likely to be of renewed importance in coming years.