Educating Nontraditional Students Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

For over 30 years, researchers and practitioners have identified challenges unique to small, rural community colleges. The purpose of this study was to examine the distinctive problems facing rural community colleges today and the challenges those institutions must address to fulfill their mission in rural America. There are 5 current challenges commonly identified by 10 rural community college administrators in Kansas: technology use, grant writing, an evolving student population and corresponding changes to the mission, funding inequalities between institutions, and hiring qualified people. Identified challenges were compared with problems described in the literature from the last 30 years.     

SERVING AND LEARNING ATA UNIVERSITY LABORATORY SCHOOL: STUDENTS FROM BIRTH THOUGH ADULTHOOD BENEFIT WHEN SERVICE LEARNING IS INTEGRATED INTO THE PRESERVICE CURRICULUM

Service‐Learning (S‐L) pedagogy is attracting increased attention in teacher education. This article describes the implementation of S‐L in the preservice early childhood curriculum, which placed students in a birth‐5 years setting. It identifies a continuum of learning to care, which begins in infancy, as caring capacities emerge, through to adulthood, when preservice teachers learn from experienced mentors how caring characterizes their interactions with learners of all ages. Students’ journals indicate they believe S‐L experiences contribute to their personal, academic and professional development. Carefully implemented S‐L experiences validate students’ caring interactions, give them first‐hand experiences with young children during which they can apply theoretical constructs, provide experiences which help them clarify their own career goals, and make them feel better prepared to manage instructional and classroom management dimensions of working with young children.     

Greetings from the Editor

The eight early childhood educators who participated in this study were admitted into a 60-credit statewide distance-delivered Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree program at the University of Alaska. All eight educators were women of Alaska Native ancestry who lived and worked in remote and rural Native communities. Seven of these teachers were employed by Head Start programs and one taught preschool for a rural school district. A major goal of the statewide distance-delivered AAS program is that participants will become skilled observers of children and learn to use observation to make decisions that foster developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive services. All the course work in our AAS degree program involves actively doing and using observations of children. This study is based on a principle that intrinsic changes can occur in program management, curriculum development, and teacher practice when teachers learn how to use observation of children rather than external evaluation to make decisions about their programs.     

The problematic relationship between child development theory and teacher preparation

Abstract

This article addresses questions raised in the past decade regarding the role of child development knowledge for teaching and teacher preparation. Missing from the dialogue on this issue have been the voices of the students enrolled in teacher preparation programs. Accordingly, 77 preservice teachers were surveyed at the conclusion of a child development theory course. The results were examined for themes regarding how preservice teachers come to understand the changing nature of child development, the strengths and limitations of generalized theories of development, and the applicability of child development theory to their future practice.     

PREPARING PERSONNEL FOR INTEGRATION: NEEDS AND STRENGTHS OF EARLY INTERVENTION AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS

Abstract

One early childhood teacher preparation program includes “Aesthetics As Learning,” a course which emphasizes that aesthetics is another way of knowing—another domain of development. The course has a reading, writing, discussion and experiential component—and all are integrated, but the experiential component (weekly arts activities) is showcased in this article.

One significant and innovative component of the experiential approach is that the students do not react to the use of the arts from a child's perspective but respond as an adult. This provides for an authentic experience with the arts. The college classroom uses a constructivist approach in which students construct their own meaning from their experiences and a feminist pedagogical approach that develops a classroom community of learners. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

A Developmental Approach to Creative Drama

Teacher education criteria of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has included a multicultural education component since 1979. Recent revisions of these standards (NCATE, 1992a &; b) address multicultural education perspectives even more explicitly. NCATE standards also discuss the necessity of addressing Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP). DAP is defined as an important philosophical framework and related pedagogical guideline for early childhood education that emphasizes age appropriateness and individual appropriateness when planning programs for young children (Bredekamp, 1987).     

Supporting Professionalism,Diversity, and Context Within a Collaborative Approach to Gifted Education

Educators concerned about gifted learners are moving toward an evidence-based perspective focusing on children with exceptionally advanced learning needs who require flexibly responsive educational attention. This article describes two system-wide implementation experiences, one in a mixed urban/rural public school board and the other in an urban board of affiliated parochial schools, designed to meet the educational needs of diversely competent students. The authors discuss the intersecting roles of consultants, teachers, administrators, and parents, and some creative applications they have implemented that illustrate a respect for (a) teachers' professionalism, (b) individual developmental diversity, and (c) context-specific opportunities and constraints. The authors discuss ways that this flexible collaborative approach to integrating consultative processes into board-wide practices addresses the diverse educational needs of gifted learners, and also encourages high-level outcomes in learners not formally identified as gifted.     

Learning,Testing, and the Evaluation of Learning Environments in Medicine: Global Performance Assessment in Medical Education

Changes in the profession of medicine are creating the demand for a substantive reexamination of current practices in medical education. Many of the major issues in addressing this challenge are structural and political rather than scientific; here we address one critical scientific issue that will be important to (though not by itself adequate for) guiding such changes. The factor we address is the development of a global performance assessment: a standardized mechanism to assess individual skills and abilities that can be used to evaluate alternative educational interventions. We discuss the issues involved in developing such a system, and describe a set of principles for defining desired outcomes and developing assessment tools, including (a) wide clinical scope, (b) direct relationship to actual clinical performance, (c) reliability and repeatability, and (d) non-longitudinal measurement. We discuss the role of simulation, reflective practice, and portfolios of work in developing such a system, and argue that whatever form such metrics take, a system of global performance assessment will develop from close collaboration between clinicians and educators with innovative ways of thinking about performance and expertise.     

eHealth literacy and the motivators for HPV prevention among young adults in Kenya

ABSTRACT

The human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common but preventable sexually transmitted infections that affect males and females but knowledge about it and vaccine uptake remain low. As organizations adopt eHealth communication strategies to communicate about HPV, this study examines the association between eHealth literacy (and related elements) and the motivators for HPV prevention that are based on the protection motivation theory. A survey was conducted among 472 young adults in Kenya and results show moderate eHealth literacy (M = 3.21, SD = 1.03) and online information seeking (M = 3.57, SD = 1.08) but low HPV knowledge and risk perception. eHealth literacy was correlated with HPV knowledge, perceived risk, self-efficacy, and response efficacy whereas online health information seeking were correlated with perceived seriousness of HPV infection. This study suggests examining the discrepancy between online information seeking and knowledge and the disparities in eHealth literacy among young adults in HPV communication.