Integrating Creative Thinking Skills Pedagogies into a Higher Education Visual Arts Course

Although there has been increasing international emphasis on creativity in education, many creativity training programmes have focused on enhancing students' creative thinking skills with few studies on how these skills can be integrated into the teaching of subject disciplines. As a member of a Community of Practice project that ran from spring 2021 to summer 2022 at my university, I worked with ten university teachers from multiple disciplines to develop and implement instructional strategies to foster students' creative thinking skills. The paper documented the development, implementation and evaluation of creative thinking skills teaching strategies for a higher education course in visual arts. Both the development of the teaching strategies and the measurement of the impact on student learning have undergone vigorous research procedures and made reference to the existing literature. The effectiveness of the activities was assessed using multiple methods including the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, a self-report inventory, and a focus group interview. The results indicated the new learning activities enhanced students' creative thinking skills. They also showed that creativity can be developed through teaching while revealing that playfulness, freedom and structure, group interactions, and problem-solving activities are beneficial for the development of creative thinking skills. Readers may better understand the different ways in which creative thinking skills instruction materials can be developed and incorporated into teaching of visual arts by making reference to the strategies suggested and the process of development in the paper.     

Gender Differences in Children's Normative Beliefs about Aggression: How Do I Hurt Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

This research was designed to assess whether children view relationally manipulative behaviors (i.e., those behaviors labeled relational aggression in past research) as "aggressive." 2 studies were conducted to evaluate whether children view relationally manipulative behaviors as associated with 2 defining features of aggression, anger (Study 1) and intent to harm (Study 2). Results of Study 1 ( n = 459, 9–12-year-olds) indicated that relational aggression was the most frequently cited angry behavior for girls' interactions whereas physical aggression was the most frequently cited angry behavior for boys' interactions. Results of Study 2 ( n = 60, 9–11-year-olds) demonstrated that relational aggression and verbal insults were the most frequently cited harmful behaviors for girls whereas physical aggression and verbal insults were the most frequently cited harmful behaviors for boys. These studies provide the first evidence that children view relationally manipulative acts (relational aggression) as angry, harmful behaviors (i.e., as "aggressive").     

Universities,the Information Technology Challenge,and Open and Distance Learning in Central and Eastern Europe

The educational needs of eastern and central Europe can be met by distance education methods. The need to reform and to expand open and distance education possibilities led in 1990 to the founding in Budapest of EDEN, the European Distance Education Network. After 1990, the proponents of open and distance education were able to expand the scope of their activities as the result of expanding possibilities provided by the rapidly developing information and communication technologies. The pedagogical possibilities offered by these technologies are described with an emphasis on their democratizing tendencies, their ultimate inexpensiveness in terms of the total costs of different types of higher education, and their commercial possibilities. The setting up of the Distance Education Centre of the Technical University of Budapest is presented as a case study. Governments and institutions must find the best ways to use the information and communication technologies to integrate traditional higher education with open and distance learning techniques so as to offer the best possibilities at regional, national, and institutional levels.     

Marketing British Higher Education Overseas: The Response to the Introduction of Full-Cost Fees

Since the introduction of full-cost fees for overseas students in 1980 there has been a marked increase in marketing activities in British universities, polytechnics and in some other institutions of higher education. A survey of 33 universities and public sector higher education institutions in 1985 showed that 90 per cent undertook some form of marketing to attract overseas students, and 70 per cent reported that they had intensified their recruitment and marketing efforts since 1980. The British Council's Education Counselling Service, established in 1984, is now extremely active in certain countries, such as Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. As well as increasing their publicity, many institutions have also strengthened their support services for overseas students and have developed new courses for the overseas market, particularly short courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Although there have been some instances of institutions adopting a 'hard sell' approach, most recognise the need for 'responsible recruitment' policies, and many are now developing comprehensive strategies covering admissions, financial support, the structure and content of courses for overseas students and academic and pastoral support services, as well as marketing. Partly as a result of increased marketing activities, the number of overseas students, which fell sharply after 1980, has been rising steadily since 1983, and the number in universities is higher now than before the introduction of full-cost fees. It is estimated that spending by overseas students now exceeds £1 billion.     

Costing the library services. Cairns Library: a casestudy

In the presentclimate libraries have to adopt a business approach to funding submissions; detailed managementinformation must be produced in support of expenditure and to ensure that the services are cost-effective. In addition to the grant from its parent body (the Faculty of Clinical Medicine,University of Oxford), the Cairns Library obtains funding from five other bodies, includingNational Health Service Hospital Trusts. The Cairns Library has introdu ies anduser education. The costs for each package have been apportioned to the funding bodies on thebasis of the number of registered users from each body.     

Neurocognitive predictors of reading outcomes for children with reading disabilities

This study reports on several specific neurocognitive process predictors of reading outcomes for a sample of 278 children with reading disabilities. Three categories of response (i.e., poor, average, and good) were formed via growth curve models of six reading outcomes. Two nested discriminant function analyses were conducted to evaluate the predictive capability of the following models: (a) an intervention and phonological processing model that included intervention group, phonological awareness, and rapid naming and (b) an additive cognitive neuropsychological model that included measures of memory, visual processes, and cognitive or intellectual functioning. Over and above the substantial explanatory power of the base model, the additive model improved classification of poor and good responders. Several of the cognitive and neuropsychological variables predicted degree of reading outcomes, even after controlling for type of intervention, phonological awareness, and rapid naming.     

Surgeons as medical school educators: an untapped resource

Despite extensive experience teaching residents, surgeons are an untapped resource for educating medical students. We hypothesized that by involving surgeons as teachers earlier in the medical school curriculum, medical students' interest in surgery will increase and their opinions of surgeons will improve. Five programs designed to involve surgeons as educators in the medical school curriculum were implemented. The first program, started in 2008, introduced surgical faculty into the first-year medical student anatomy dissection laboratories. Other programs initiated in 2008 included: Surgical Clinical Correlates in Anatomy, which involved faculty teaching through cadaver surgery; Clinical Pathologic Conferences in Anatomy, a surgeon-led conference based on clinical cases; and a women's faculty-student mentorship program. Table Rounds, a surgeon-led anatomy review that used clinical scenarios to quiz students was begun in 2009. All five programs were successfully integrated into the medical school curriculum. While student opinion of surgeons as educators improved, there were no significant changes in student interest in surgery as a career nor change in performance on written examinations over the Anatomy content covered by the surgeons. Surgical faculty and trainees can be integrated into the medical school curriculum. Involving surgeons as educators earlier in the medical school curriculum may have longer term effects than could be observed in this study. At a minimum, the experience improved student opinion of surgeons as educators.     

Major Survey Findings of Listening to MothersSM III: New Mothers Speak Out: Report of National Surveys of Women’s Childbearing Experiences ? Conducted October–December 2012 and January–April 2013

To understand the experiences and views of childbearing women in the United States and trends over time, Childbirth Connection carried out the third national Listening to Mothers survey among 2,400 women who gave birth in U.S. hospitals to a single baby from mid-2011 to mid-2012 and could participate in English. A follow-up survey directed to the same participants explored postpartum experiences, in depth and well into the second year after birth; views about maternity care; and some additional pregnancy and birth items. Harris Interactive conducted the surveys using a validated methodology that includes data weighting to ensure that results closely reflect the target population. The follow-up survey was reported in Listening to Mothers III: New Mothers Speak Out.