The information requirements and information-seeking behaviours of health and social care professionals providing care to children with health care needs: a pilot study

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this work were to identify the sources of information currently received, information-seeking behaviours, information requirements and preferences for future information provision amongst health and social care professionals providing care to children with health care needs. METHODS: Data were collected using a cross-sectional postal questionnaire survey. RESULTS: A wide range of information resources was reported as being available to professionals. However, a large proportion of respondents found it necessary to perform additional searches for information, suggesting that current resources were not satisfying their needs. The majority of professionals reported a preference for electronic formats, whilst a smaller proportion preferred hard copy materials. Participants promoted the use of informal networks as a means of support and exchange of information. CONCLUSION: Supplementing the information that is provided in electronic and hard copy formats, by enhancing informal networks, may be the most effective way of meeting the information needs of this group of professionals.     

Intentional self‐embarrassment

This research explored how and why people intentionally embarrass themselves and how observers react to these embarrassments. Self‐reports prom 566 students at the University of Hawai'i and non‐students indicated that, first, they do intentionally and strategically employ behaviors that cause themselves embarrassment to achieve a variety of goals. Second, self‐embarrassors’ goals affected their tactic choices. Third, embarrassors’ goals were associated with their successful achievement of these goals. Last, the tactics embarrassors used and the goals they attempted affected observers’ responses. Suggestions for modifying existing typologies of embarrassment situations/tactics and goals, as well as limitations and directions for future research are presented.     

Peer review: still king in the digital age

The article presents one of the main findings of an international study of 4,000 academic researchers that examined how trustworthiness is determined in the digital environment when it comes to scholarly reading, citing, and publishing. The study shows that peer review is still the most trustworthy characteristic of all. There is, though, a common perception that open access journals are not peer reviewed or do not have proper peer‐review systems. Researchers appear to have moved inexorably from a print‐based system to a digital system, but it has not significantly changed the way they decide what to trust. They do not trust social media. Only a minority – although significantly mostly young and early career researchers – thought that social media are anything other than more appropriate to personal interactions and peripheral to their professional/academic lives. There are other significant differences, according to the age of the researcher. Thus, in regard to choosing an outlet for publication of their work, young researchers are much less concerned with the fact that it is peer reviewed.     

Consolidation of Black-dyed Māori Textile Artefacts: Evaluating the Efficacy of Sodium Alginate

Black-dyed artefacts are found in museums worldwide, many produced using an iron-tannate compound. Deterioration of iron-tannate dyed artefacts is an international preservation issue: in New Zealand the deterioration of paru (iron-tannate) dyed Māori textiles is widespread. This article reports experimental work testing the efficacy of sodium alginate, a consolidant developed for deteriorated paru-dyed muka (fibre from harakeke; Phormium tenax). The colour stability, strength retention, and acidity of paru-dyed muka consolidated with sodium alginate (0.25, 0.5, and 1% w/v in water) was tested pre- and post-artificial light ageing. This study found that sodium alginate had no negative effect on paru-dyed muka and in some cases provided benefit. Interestingly, the colour of paru-dyed muka is substantially more stable in UV-filtered light than previously recognised. Also microfading results were in agreement with visual assessments of colour change at 1 Mlux hour exposure, providing confidence in this relatively new technique to assess colour change.     

Out of the ordinary: recapturing the liberal traditions of a university education through field courses

This article aims to stimulate debate about the nature of field courses in higher education. We use a colloquium format that allows each of us to reflect on the philosophy of field course teaching and our writing endeavours to establish a dialogue between the authors and leave the reader with a sense of curiosity. It starts with a position paper that sets out a particular viewpoint on field courses to which responses were invited. Two of the respondents were experienced field-course teachers in disciplines traditionally associated with this type of curriculum, the other a lecturer in a non-field-course-oriented discipline.     

Assessment of the laboratory learning environment in an inquiry-oriented chemistry laboratory in Arab and Jewish high schools in Israel

An inquiry-oriented laboratory in chemistry was integrated into the chemistry curriculum in Jewish high schools in Israel, and after a short period was also implemented in Arab sector. In this study, we investigated the effect of culture on the perceptions of laboratory classroom learning environments by comparing the perceptions of Arab and Jewish high school students who learned the inquiry-oriented chemistry laboratory. The learning environment is influenced by student-teacher relationship and we thought that this relation is an important issue in the inquiry laboratory and is different between the Arab and Jewish populations. However, until recently, the Arab teachers have remained in the centre of the learning process and their students perceived them as the main source of knowledge and information. In this study, we used both quantitative and qualitative methods to determine whether the laboratory learning environment was different in Arab and Jewish classes that learned in the inquiry-oriented laboratory in chemistry. A statistical comparison of Arab and Jewish inquiry groups revealed significant differences in their actual and preferred perceptions. From the qualitative part of the study, we found that the teachers and students from the Arab and Jewish sectors were statistically similar in the categories that we measured during the inquiry phase, but they were statistically different during the pre-inquiry phase of the laboratory. From the interviews with the teachers and the students, we found that there were differences in the student-teacher relationship between the two sectors.     

Settler grammars and the Australian professional standards for teachers

In 2011, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership introduced new Professional Standards for Teachers, which require that graduate teachers possess knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students and cultures. The authors conducted interviews with 12 non-Indigenous teacher educators at one Australian university in order to understand how these Standards are interpreted and implemented. We adopt Calderon’s framework of settler grammars to interpret the dialectic of presence and absence that teacher educators in our study describe. Extending this frame to an analysis of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, we find that settler grammars function to simultaneously erase Indigenous claims to sovereignty and epistemological equality, whilst promoting a representation of Indigenous people that asserts the primacy of the settler colonial state.     

Making Professional Development Flexible: A case study

There seems to be a relentless pressure to move towards more flexible approaches to learning and teaching in higher education, as described by Latchem and Hanna (2002) elsewhere in this issue. To achieve this, academic staff need to have access to professional development opportunities in flexible learning. This case study describes the experience of trying to 'practice what we preach' in terms of offering professional development for learning and teaching in a flexible way. However, it was found that academic staff were less prepared to be flexible learners than they thought, and that it was necessary to reduce flexibility for the professional development to achieve its intended outcomes.     

The Interaction of Early Maternal Responsiveness and Children's Cognitive Abilities on Later Decoding and Reading Comprehension Skills

This longitudinal study evaluated the extent to which maternal responsiveness across early childhood and children's cognitive skills predicted children's 8-year decoding and reading comprehension skills for children who varied in biological risk (term, n = 83; preterm, n = 155). Patterns of maternal responsiveness during infancy (6, 12, and 24 months) and preschool (3 and 4 years) revealed 4 maternal clusters that varied in consistency and level of maternal responsiveness. Although not predictive of decoding skills, the interaction between children's 4-year cognitive ability and maternal responsiveness cluster predicted children's reading comprehension skills at 8 years of age, regardless of risk. Although consistently high levels of maternal responsive parenting across early childhood related to literacy outcomes for all children in the study, responsive parenting had a stronger relation to later reading comprehension skills for children with lower cognitive abilities, particularly when mothers demonstrated high responsiveness in children's infancy.