A Review of: “Understanding Healthcare Information. Robinson,Lyn.”

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) as a health care practice is being incorporated into education programs across the spectrum of medical education to develop lifelong learning skills and to enhance the practice of evidence-based health care. Since improving the quality of patient care is the ultimate goal of EBM, EBM learning must be integrated with clinical application, and resulted outcomes must be reflected in learning transfer (or EBM practice) within the context of solving patient problems. Different factors may constitute the context or environment in which EBM is learned, practiced, and sustained. However, these contextual factors are seldom considered and examined in the development, implementation, and evaluation of EBM instruction for learners at different levels. This article will introduce several contextual factors as tips and strategies that affect EBM learning and transfer. Also included in the article are recommended practices for designing effective EBM instruction that would contribute to a sustainable change in learner behavior.     

Education for sustainability in primary schools in Hong Kong

This article is based on an investigation of the implementation of environmental education in Hong Kong primary schools using a questionnaire survey and case studies. It will be divided into three parts: one focusing on the gap between rhetoric and practice in environmental education in the questionnaire results; one highlighting curriculum organisation of environmental education through case studies; and one discussing the nature and content of environmental education in these case-study schools.     

States of Insecurity: Cold War memory, “global citizenship” and its discontents

This article situates the dominant discourses of “global citizenship” employed in North American universities to internationalize the curricula, drawing in part on evidence from one Pacific northwestern Canadian university in the post-September-11 context of recent restrictive immigration policies, anti-terrorist measures and evocative Cold War memories. Far from weakening the Canadian nation-state or jettisoning neoliberalism, it argues that authoritarian post-Fordism constitutes a supra-juridical state that offers fewer social services but governs with more entrepreneurship through its globalization, immigration and “national security” policies. The article shows how the post-September-11 changes to Canada's immigration and refugee legislation from 1978 to 2001, write evocative fears about “terrorists” and “invading immigrants” on the national body politic. These changes provide literal and metaphorical transnational, economic and socio-legal mobility with substantive and specific human rights to those prospective immigrants deemed “highly skilled global citizens”. Yet, such policy efforts and legislation also reproduce the exclusions and differential hierarchies of gendered, classed, ableist and racialized notions of skill, flexible work and vulnerable or unobtuinuble citizenship for those it deems “non-immigrants”, migrants or non-citizens. The conclusion asks: Is “global citizenship” an oxymoronic slogan; a well-meaning but naïve equation of transnational mobility or “belonging” with formal legal substantive citizenship and human rights; or an opportunity to claim democratic praxis through a decolonized curricular, pedagogical and educational policy?     

Best and worst dressed web courses: Strutting into the 21st century in comfort and style

Web courses are constructed as the answer to fiscal crises evoked by neo‐liberal restructuring. They are also touted as an anarchist exemplar of ‘de‐schooling’ as envisaged by Ivan IIlich. The trouble is, some courses are vastly under‐dressed and merely attempt to display a face‐to‐face course on‐line. At the other extreme are those laced with links, animation and more than enough glitter and glam to make Liberace wince. In this study the authors employed a 43‐item coding schedule to examine the accessibility, opportunities for interaction and attractiveness of 127 courses on the web. Interrelationships between the 43 variables and issues pertaining to accessibility, interaction and attractiveness were identified with the aid of SPSS. Exemplary web courses were then distinguished from mediocre web courses. In our view, Madonna exemplifies qualities that should be incorporated into web courses. After examining 127 sites the Madonna award for the ‘best‐dressed’ site went to a University of Wisconsin History course. The ‘worst‐dressed’ award went to a Social Foundations of Education course at a USA State University which exuded glitter but lacked substance. Reasons for these decisions are elaborated. (The word, course, used here, describes what some systems call a unit of study.)     

Parents' Management of Their Children's Education Within the Home,at School,and in the Community: An Examination of African-American Families Living in Poverty

Using parents' answers to open-ended questions, we examine variation in parents' management of their children's education within the home, at school, and in the community as a function of whether their children were experiencing academic success or academic problems. Within the home, parents of high achievers used more specific strategies to help their children with their schoolwork and had more supportive conversations with their children than parents of low achievers. At their children's school, parents of high achievers not only were more involved but had different reasons for their involvement than parents of low achievers. In the community, more parents of high achievers explicitly engaged their children in activities to support their achievement than parents of low achievers. Implications for parents, schools, and communities are discussed.