The Use of Clinical Reasoning Skills in the Setting of Uncertainty: A Case of Trial Femoral Head Migration

Clinical skills and medical knowledge enable physicians to overcome the uncertainty of emergent and rare clinical scenarios. Recently, a growing emphasis on evidence-based medicine (EBM) has flooded medical curricula of universities across the globe with guideline-based material, and while it has given teachers and students new tools to improve medical education, clinical reasoning must be reaffirmed in its capacity to provide physicians with the ability to solve unexpected clinical scenarios. Anatomical education in medical school should have two main objectives: to acquire anatomical knowledge and to develop the skill of applying that knowledge in clinical scenarios. The authors present a clinical scenario in which an unexpected and rare complication occurred during a routine elective hip replacement surgery. The general surgeon presiding over the case, also an anatomy professor, solved the problem using clinical reasoning and anatomical knowledge. It was a clear example of how clinical reasoning is key in approaching unprecedented, rare, or unknown complications. The intention of this scenario is to remind colleagues and medical schools that, although EBM is the standard, educators must uphold sound clinical reasoning to best prepare health care providers for their careers.     

Teacher Education in Hungary: system,process, perspectives

The author sees the Hungarian teacher education system as being in a state of transition and development and identifies a number of the planning issues to be faced.

There has existed, traditionally in Hungary, the two routes through teacher‐training familiar to many Western countries, characterised as the e'cole normale/university dichotomy. This has revealed a familiar problem: the older the age‐range for which the student is being trained, the less emphasis on pedagogy in the training.

Hungarian teacher education faces other problems. There is still a shortage of teachers, despite a high level of demand for training; demographic problems weigh heavily.

Attempts at finding solutions through mergers of institutions at different levels meet resistance, and the conflict of values from universities and teachers’ colleges echoes similar debates in, for example, France and Greece. The problems encountered raise a fundamental question: who should decide the nature of the teacher‐training programme: the specialist academics and pedagogues, or the employing community? In Hungary, the debate continues.     

Good and evil at school: Bullying and moral evaluation in early adolescence

We investigated how adolescents (sixth-graders, N = 357) morally evaluated hypothetical bullying and defending protagonists and whether these evaluations related to behavior in bullying as nominated by peers. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) resulted in four factors for the evaluation of the hypothetical bullies: Evil soul, Contempt, Cowardice, and Deviance, and five factors for the evaluation of the hypothetical defender: General admiration, Courage, Cool, Empathic care, and Fair justice. Corresponding scales were constructed. The findings showed that bullying positively correlated with evaluating the hypothetical bullies using Cowardice while victimization positively correlated with evaluating the hypothetical defender in terms of General admiration, Empathic care, and Fair justice. MANOVA for each of the two sets of the evaluative scales indicated that behavioral status (bully, victim, defender, or uninvolved) had a significant effect on the moral evaluation of hypothetical bullies, and no significant effect on the moral evaluation of the hypothetical defender.     

Learning about democracy at school: an action research project in early childhood education

This article examines part of an action research project carried out in a Spanish public school. We explain the complex reality of an early childhood education classroom. Focusing on early childhood education, the project was developed in collaboration with a teacher from one of the classrooms of four year olds. Several of the children in the class have serious behaviour problems. The teacher (Lucía) is very concerned because they take their anger and frustration out on objects, classmates and adults by hitting them. She has a lot of difficulty working with these problem children. This research work deals with transforming the practices of the researcher, the pupils and the teacher. One of the first critical challenges was to turn classroom discussions into opportunities for addressing the injustices that the children experience daily. Teaching should serve to empower children. Programmed classroom discussions can be a place where pupils are given the chance to speak out about conflicts, and where important decisions are made to address them.     

Relations among student attention behaviors, teacher practices, and beginning word reading skill

The role of student attention for predicting kindergarten word reading was investigated among 432 students. Using Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal Behavior Rating Scale behavior rating scores, the authors conducted an exploratory factor analysis, which yielded three distinct factors that reflected selective attention. In this study, the authors focused on the role of one of these factors, which they labeled attention-memory, for predicting reading performance. Teacher ratings of attention-memory predicted word reading above and beyond the contribution of phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. In addition, the relations between four teacher practices and attention ratings for predicting reading performance were examined. Using hierarchical linear modeling, the authors found significant interactions between student attention and teacher practices observed during literacy instruction. In general, as ratings of attention improved, better kindergarten word reading performance was associated with high levels of classroom behavior management. However, better word reading performance was not associated with high levels of teacher task orienting. A significant three-way interaction was also found among attention, individualized instruction, and teacher task redirections. The role of regulating kindergarten student attention to support beginning word reading skill development is discussed.     

Employers’ skill preferences across Europe: between cognitive and non-cognitive skills

This article analyses online job advertisements to identify skills that are demanded in selected low- and medium-skilled occupations. We explore data from the publicly administered cross-European EURES job search portal and quantify the different cognitive and non-cognitive skills requested by employers in small European economies. While we find that the service sector demands non-cognitive skills more than other types of occupation, the skill-mix demanded is very diverse across countries, implying that other domestic factors shape how demand is formulated. Our work shows that online portals can become a useful source for studying employers’ demand at the micro-level to inform employment, education and training policies.     

Service learning as a tool to enhance future teachers’ media competence / Aprendizaje-Servicio como estrategia favorecedora del desarrollo de la competencia mediática en futuros docentes

Abstract

This paper presents a study of service learning (SL) as a methodology to facilitate the development of media competence in future teachers. The SL methodology fulfils a training and service need for two different populations: in our case, a preschool/primary school and students from the Bachelor’s in Education degrees at the Universidad de Jaén. The study involved 193 university students who carried out 63 projects involving new technologies. The goal of these projects was to produce materials to be used on smartboards, advertising materials, picture-reading materials or multimedia resources, among others. These materials were designed and created in the university classes as a part of the practical sessions of a course and were then given away to be used at a preschool/primary school. At the end of the project, the university students filled out a questionnaire that required them to compare SL to traditional activities in terms of how well each type of practice helps them to achieve the 20 competences of the course. The results show that students recognize the value of the SL methodology more than traditional practice, which suggests the relevance of this methodology for university students.