Learning environments preferred by university students: a shift toward informal and flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Universities are facing new challenges that pose various demands for developing learning environments. These challenges are related to different pedagogical...     

Quality assurance and school‐based mental health services

Clinicians affiliated with expanded school mental health (ESMH) programs provide a range of mental health services for youth in schools. ESMH services offer unique opportunities for collaboration between school psychologists and mental health clinicians from the community to increase the quality of care for youth receiving mental health services. The number of ESMH programs is increasing; therefore, developing quality assurance (QA) activities for these programs is important to document accountability and provide evidence for effectiveness. In this paper, suggestions for phases and objectives for QA programs in ESMH programs and examples of suggested activities are presented. Assessment of the program structure as well as treatment process and outcome are critical phases. Important QA activities include examining staff training activities, assessment of stakeholder perceptions of services, conducting satisfaction surveys, examining therapy process, and investigating treatment outcomes. Results of QA evaluations should inform policy.QA programs need to be developed and the impact of QA activities in enhancing the quality of care provided by clinicians in schools should be evaluated. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Providing real-time resources in support of LGBTQ+ and HIV+ populations as information experts on the ECHO hub team: a case report

Background:Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a telehealth initiative that aims to reduce disparities in delivery of health care by leveraging technology and local expertise to provide guidance on specialized subjects to health care providers across the world. In 2018, a new ECHO hub convened in Indianapolis with a focus on health care for individuals in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) populations. This ECHO iteration was one of the first of its kind and would soon be followed by a new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) ECHO as well.Case Presentation:In a novel approach, information professionals participated in the early planning stages of the formation of these ECHO teams, which enabled the provision of real-time medical evidence and resources at the point-of-need once the teams were launched. This case study demonstrates proof of concept for including health sciences librarians and/or information professionals in the ECHO as hub team members. In this case study, the authors describe and quantify the value added to the HIV and LGBTQ+ ECHO sessions by the medical librarians, as well as provide a template for how other telehealth initiatives can collaborate with their local health information professionals.Conclusions:Librarian involvement in Project ECHO over the past three years has been enthusiastically received. The librarians have contributed hundreds of resources to ECHO participants, helped build and curate resource repositories, and expanded the embedded librarian program to an additional two ECHO iterations. ECHO hub team members report high rates of satisfaction with the performance of embedded librarians and appreciate the provision of point-of-need evidence to ECHO participants.     

Of atoms, oaks, and cannibals; or, more things that talk

While literary works are often treated as museum pieces, an alternative Romantic/ Pragmatic aesthetic emphasizes instead the rootedness of all texts in lived experience. This suggests that both literary and scientific texts may be approached as performances that weave together discursive and material elements, giving language to matter, both making, and becoming, "things that talk." Three authors are contrasted: Emerson uses natural objects as metaphors to complete his thought; Thoreau uses natural objects as mediators who enroll him to speak for them in the name of a wider ecology; Humboldt attempts to enroll nonhumans, namely cannibals, into the global civil community by asking them to speak for themselves. The resulting quandary unsettles the Cartesian boundary between human and nonhuman, subject and object; as scholars divided by this boundary, we must multiply our own relations, the better to understand the ties that bind us into the common project of building the Cosmos.     

Formalist thinking and language arts instruction: teachers’ and students’ beliefs about truth and caring in the teaching conversation

Two studies illustrate the concern that the connection between teachers’ beliefs and their instructional practices can be a troublesome one if beliefs are informed by formalist thinking related to truth and caring in the teaching conversation. Twenty-seven middle school language arts teachers and 216 8th grade students were asked what they thought would constitute appropriate responses to a middle school student’s request for feedback about his poem. In spite of their training and experience, the instructional strategies of the teachers were guided by formalist beliefs about what they believed to be sound pedagogy. As a consequence, they minimized the importance of what the student actually said in his poem. Honest criticism and instruction were minimized. Teachers interpreted caring as helping the child to feel good about his work and about himself independent of the work’s merits. In contrast, students called out for honesty and for academic instruction and interpreted caring as receiving academic help. Few expressed formalist principles, and most argued that their teachers need not surrender truth, criticism, or instruction to express care and concern. They also revealed that they could, and would, see through their teachers’ efforts at impression management. Findings are interpreted within a framework provided by S. Cavell (1969)’s criteria for reciprocal conversation.     

Fitting Action Learning to Corporate Programs

The organization is like a tapestry with several variables woven through it, making it complex and unique. Action learning can be knitted into the organizational fabric, but it must be truly intertwined rather than loosely stitched for maximal effectiveness. Prerequisites for integrating action learning include achieving core competencies on individual, team, and organizational levels. Action learning can be applied individually or collectively, and it is important that competency building begin with the individual. Organizations may apply action learning on sporadic, integrating, or learning organization levels. Organizations that commit to action learning and create an infrastructure to support it will be most effective. Several examples and exercises of action learning application are highlighted.     

Children's and Adolescents’ Evaluations of Intergroup Exclusion in Interracial and Interwealth Peer Contexts

Children and adolescents (N = 153, ages 8–14 years, M_age = 11.46 years) predicted and evaluated peer exclusion in interwealth (high-wealth and low-wealth) and interracial (African American and European American) contexts. With age, participants increasingly expected high-wealth groups to be more exclusive than low-wealth groups, regardless of their depicted race. Furthermore, children evaluated interwealth exclusion less negatively than interracial exclusion, and children who identified as higher in wealth evaluated interwealth exclusion less negatively than did children who identified as lower in wealth. Children cited explicit negative stereotypes about high-wealth groups in their justifications, while rarely citing stereotypes about low-wealth groups or racial groups. Results revealed that both race and wealth are important factors that children consider when evaluating peer exclusion.