The issue at a glance

The issue at a glance     

Seeing History: Malaika Favorite's Furious Flower Poetry Quilt Painting and Pan‐African Memory

Malaika Favorite's Furious Flower Poetry Quilt (2004) is an acrylic painting that depicts 24 portraits of leading poets of the African Diaspora. Commissioned by Dr Joanne Gabbin, English professor and director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, the painting is part of a larger programme of poetry education. The painting's interweaving of the portraits with fragments from the poets’ writing functions to create an interactive visual‐textual body of poets and poetry, a collection which has been taught at all levels of education from primary school to university. Its quilt structure pays homage to the historic role of women in preserving history and memory. The painting also serves to construct a pan‐African identity and collective memory about slavery, African American history and empowerment.     

CD-ROM use by rural physicians

A survey of 131 eastern Washington rural family physicians showed that 59.5% owned a personal computer with a CD-ROM drive. There was an inverse correlation between the physicians' years in practice and computer ownership: 10 years or less (80.6%), 11 to 20 years (72.2%), 21 to 30 years (55.6%), and more than 30 years (32.4%). Those physicians who owned a computer used their CD-ROM for entertainment (52.6%), medical textbooks (44.9%), literature searching software (25.6%), drug information (17.9%), continuing medical education (15.4%), and journals on CD-ROM (11.5%). Many rural doctors who owned computers felt that CD-ROM software helped them provide better patient care (46.8%) and kept them current on new information and techniques (48.4%). Indications for medical education, libraries and CD-ROM publishers are noted.     

An Evaluation of an EDY Course in Behavioural Techniques for Classroom Assistants in a School for Children with Severe Learning Difficulties

This study is an evaluation of a behavioural skills training course (known as the Education of the Developmentally Young‐‐EDY) which was run for eight classroom assistants (all trained nursery nurses) at an ESN (S) school in Manchester. It arose out of a previous study (Farrell, 1982) which suggested that while teachers improved their practical skills following EDY training, classroom assistants did not. In this study the classroom assistants were filmed working with an individual child on four occasions; twice prior to their training, once immediately following it and once more ten weeks later. The video tapes were randomly arranged and shown to two independent and trained raters. The raters rated the classroom assistants on four aspects of behavioural teaching, all of which are integral parts of the EDY course. The results showed that taking all the teaching techniques together, the classroom assistants made significant gains following training but that these gains were only evident on two of the behavioural techniques when they were analysed separately. When comparing the findings of this work with other studies, the main conclusion is that, although classroom assistants do benefit from EDY training, their progress may not be so marked as that of classroom teachers.     

Undergraduate Research Mentoring: Obstacles and Opportunities

Researchers and policy-makers in higher education increasingly espouse the view that undergraduate students should have the opportunity to learn about scholarship and research in the context of faculty-mentored research experiences. There is mounting consensus that mentored undergraduate research should be standard pedagogical practice in all undergraduate disciplines. Although high-impact, mentored undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative work (URSCW) requires significant resources, with faculty time and energy foremost among them. This article addresses the current gap between aspiration and effective execution of well-mentored URSCW, including the most prevalent obstacles (e.g. institutional, departmental, individual) to undergraduate mentoring. This article is written for academic leaders and institutional officers. It concludes with several specific recommendations for increasing the frequency of mentored URSCW experiences for undergraduates.     

Listening to Mothers II: Report of the Second National U.S. Survey of Women's Childbearing Experiences: Conducted January–February 2006 for Childbirth Connection by Harris Interactive? in partnership with Lamaze International*

With permission from Childbirth Connection, the “Executive Summary” for the Listening to Mothers II survey is reprinted, here. The landmark Listening to Mothers I report, published in 2002, described the first national U.S. survey of women''s maternity experiences. It offered an unprecedented opportunity to understand attitudes, feelings, knowledge, use of obstetric practices, outcomes, and other dimensions of the maternity experience. Listening to Mothers II, a national survey of U.S. women who gave birth in 2005 that was published in 2006, continues to break new ground. Although continuing to document many core items measured in the first survey, the second survey includes much new content, exploring earlier topics in greater depth, as well as some new and timely topics.     

Ageing and learning: What do they mean to elders themselves?

This paper is about a quantitative study which has examined and elucidated the conceptualizations of ageing and learning by a group of elders in Hong Kong. In more specific terms, the study has investigated how this group of older people understood the meaning of successful ageing and elder learning in the context of their later lives. Based on the ‘Learning and Ageing Survey 2013’ with a sample of 519 older adults in Hong Kong, the study aimed, first, to describe and conceptualize the meaning of ageing and learning as elders experienced it in later life; second, to investigate why and how elders engaged or did not engage, in organized learning, by comparing the differences between the ‘learning’ and ‘non-learning’ groups in terms of their personal characteristics, conceptualizations of learning, and the barriers to participation; third, to identify important learning issues for older learners, including their interests, needs, motivations, and learning preferences; and finally, to investigate the relationship between learning and successful ageing, and between learning and the overall well-being and satisfaction of elders in their later lives. The research findings and outcomes of the study provide insights into the experience and views of elders concerning ageing and learning, which contribute to the global understanding and knowledge base for elder learning and successful ageing; and which serve to inform the development of policy and practice geared to the planning and provision of programmes for learning in older age.