Announcements

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance -     

Announcements

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance -     

What factors motivate male and female Generation Z students to become engaged as peer teachers? A mixed-method study among medical and dental students in the gross anatomy course

Peer-teaching is widely established in anatomy teaching and offers well-described advantages. Nevertheless, at Ulm University, Germany, a reduction in the number of peer teacher applicants for the dissection course was observed. This study examined factors related to the attractiveness of a position as a peer teacher for Generation Z students. Participants of the gross anatomy course were asked to evaluate factors influencing the attractiveness of a peer teacher position using a six-point Likert scale. Additionally, open-ended questions were analyzed qualitatively. Sex-specific subgroup analysis was performed comparing students of low and high motivation to apply for a tutorship. Of the 374 students who participated in this study (response rate 53%), 38% stated that they were intending to apply as peer teachers. Data indicated that students displayed intrinsic motivation to apply for a tutorship because of the opportunity to improve their anatomy knowledge and/or their pleasure in teaching. In contrast, extrinsic factors like remuneration of the tutorship and its relevance for their curriculum vitae were least important. Anatomy educators underestimated the demotivating factor of the workload associated with the tutorship and encouraged students less frequently to apply than peer teachers. Only minor sex-specific differences could be identified. Nevertheless, female students were encouraged less frequently to apply than their male peers. In summary, Generation Z students apply as peer teachers because they are enthusiastic about the task. To motivate students to commit to extracurricular activities like a tutorship, anatomy educators should actively encourage students—particularly females—more frequently to apply.     

Factors impacting the rapid transition of anatomy curricula to an online environment in response to Covid-19

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many academic institutions had to rapidly transition education to a remote online environment. While a hurdle for most educators, this transition posed an even greater challenge for anatomy educators, many of whom were forced to depart from the traditional cadaver-based laboratory to a virtual format. Recent publications have discussed the rapid transition to online formats necessitated by Covid-19 and the accompanying difficulties, but none have identified specific factors that influenced the difficulty of this transition. Anatomy educators were surveyed to examine how this transition was accomplished and perceived. Of the 165 educators who responded, the majority utilized cadaver-based laboratory instruction. Educators felt that transitioning the laboratory portion of their courses was significantly more difficult and required more time than converting lecture materials. Factors that impacted the difficulty of the transition included a number of pedagogical aspects of the pre-Covid-19 curricula, including the delivery format of prior content, availability of pre-existing electronic materials, and the laboratory technique previously used. Additionally, the length of time an educator had been teaching prior to Covid-19 impacted their perception of difficulty, with newer and more senior educators finding this much more challenging than mid-tenure educators. Ease of transition may be related to previous exposure to curricular reform, experience with multiple anatomy pedagogies, and educator adaptability. While not surprising that converting a cadaver-based laboratory to an online format was challenging, knowledge of the alignment of this difficulty with prior educator pedagogy can help guide future innovations to anatomy education.     

Conceptualising Intergenerational Lived Experience: Integrating Art–Moving–Well-Being across Disciplines,Communities and Cultures

Art and movement are motivating forces in, through, and beyond education. As populations age, there is an increasing need to support physical and social well-being. Yet, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a reported exponential increase in feelings of loneliness across generations. Complex challenges require trans-disciplinary solutions, and this paper represents a joint effort within and across disciplines, communities and cultures to find ways to ameliorate this silent epidemic. In this paper, we propose a cross-disciplinary conceptual framework where Aboriginal Artists and Knowledge Holders, Teacher Educators, and Physical and Occupational Therapists come together to explore theoretical and pedagogical insights that encompass intergenerational art–moving–well-being practices, reducing feelings of loneliness and improving social connections across generations. There are two main aims of this paper; first, to better understand current studies that report on integrating art–moving–well-being practices, and the effect this has on health and well-being of intergenerational participants (under 10-year-olds, 20+ year olds and 50+ year olds). Second, based on community needs, the long-term aim is to propose a flexible art–moving–well-being conceptual model that is scalable, sustainable and based on social and relational support systems. We propose a model that is flexible and adaptable within and across our local community and beyond. We argue that feelings of loneliness are unique to each individual, and there is a need to connect specific intergenerational programmes with art–moving–well-being practices that readily engage and integrate varied communities and cultures in sustainable ways and thus, contribute to thriving communities.     

“Listen louder”: Counselor trainee understanding of diversity in diagnosis

Using grounded theory methodology, authors utilized four online focus groups to explore counselor trainees’ understanding of diversity in a mental health diagnosis course. Four overarching themes, each embodied by two subthemes, emerged from the data. Implications for counselor educators teaching diversity in diagnosis to counselor trainees are provided.     

Revisiting Cross-document Structure Theory for multi-document discourse parsing

Multi-document discourse parsing aims to automatically identify the relations among textual spans from different texts on the same topic. Recently, with the growing amount of information and the emergence of new technologies that deal with many sources of information, more precise and efficient parsing techniques are required. The most relevant theory to multi-document relationship, Cross-document Structure Theory (CST), has been used for parsing purposes before, though the results had not been satisfactory. CST has received many critics because of its subjectivity, which may lead to low annotation agreement and, consequently, to poor parsing performance. In this work, we propose a refinement of the original CST, which consists in (i) formalizing the relationship definitions, (ii) pruning and combining some relations based on their meaning, and (iii) organizing the relations in a hierarchical structure. The hypothesis for this refinement is that it will lead to better agreement in the annotation and consequently to better parsing results. For this aim, it was built an annotated corpus according to this refinement and it was observed an improvement in the annotation agreement. Based on this corpus, a parser was developed using machine learning techniques and hand-crafted rules. Specifically, hierarchical techniques were used to capture the hierarchical organization of the relations according to the proposed refinement of CST. These two approaches were used to identify the relations among texts spans and to generate multi-document annotation structure. Results outperformed other CST parsers, showing the adequacy of the proposed refinement in the theory.     

Harmonization of pre-analytical quality indicators

Quality indicators (QIs) measure the extent to which set targets are attained and provide a quantitative basis for achieving improvement in care and, in particular, laboratory services. A body of evidence collected in recent years has demonstrated that most errors fall outside the analytical phase, while the pre- and post-analytical steps have been found to be more vulnerable to the risk of error. However, the current lack of attention to extra-laboratory factors and related QIs prevent clinical laboratories from effectively improving total quality and reducing errors. Errors in the pre-analytical phase, which account for 50% to 75% of all laboratory errors, have long been included in the ‘identification and sample problems’ category. However, according to the International Standard for medical laboratory accreditation and a patient-centered view, some additional QIs are needed. In particular, there is a need to measure the appropriateness of all test request and request forms, as well as the quality of sample transportation. The QIs model developed by a working group of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) is a valuable starting point for promoting the harmonization of available QIs, but further efforts should be made to achieve a consensus on the road map for harmonization.