Putting Faith Into Action: A Model for the North American Middle Class

Pluralism presents faith communities with the challenge of continuity and discontinuity in relation to the community's tradition. The educational question becomes: How do we initiate persons into the tradition of the faith community so that they will function as agents who can extend the tradition in creative ways in changing contexts? Play is one area of human activity that is concerned with what is and what might be. This paper explores the nature of the pretend play of young children, especially its “as‐if'” and “what‐if” dimensions. It suggests possibilities for using play in the education of children and adults.     

CMA Infobase: Clinical Practice Guidelines

ABSTRACT

The CMA Infobase is a free Web-based resource that contains evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. The database is maintained by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and is available on its Web site. The CMA Infobase currently contains 1,200-plus clinical practice guidelines either developed or endorsed by an authoritative health care organization located in Canada. It is an alternative source of free clinical practice guidelines to the National Guideline Clearinghouse. This column will cover the basics of CMA Infobase, including searching, special features, and available resources which complement the database.     

WorldWideScience.org: The Global Science Gateway

WorldWideScience.org is a Web-based global gateway connecting users to both national and international scientific databases and portals. This column will provide background information on the resource as well as introduce basic searching practices for users.     

Talking Shape: Parental Language With Electronic Versus Traditional Shape Sorters

As the traditional toys of the past are quickly being replaced with electronically “enhanced” toys, it is important to understand how these changes impact parent–child interactions, especially in light of the evidence that the richness and variety of these interactions have long‐term effects on diverse areas of cognition (Hart & Risley, 1995). Here, we compared the quantity and quality of the language children hear during play with either a traditional (nonelectronic) or an electronic shape sorter designed to teach children about geometric shapes. Spatial toys and spatial language, in particular, were explored since recent work has established that parents' use of spatial language links to children's short‐ and long‐term performance on spatial tasks (Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011), and that spatial skills are relevant to success in learning mathematics and science (Newcombe, 2010). Traditional toys prompted more parental spatial language and more varied overall language than did electronic toys.     

Using an action learning set (ALS) to support the nurse and allied health professional consultant role

Advanced clinical practice roles are now an integral feature of many healthcare services and have been adopted in a diversity of areas. However, mentoring of these roles is not well documented in the literature and formal mechanisms of support are limited. An action learning set (ALS) was developed to provide support for consultants currently in post. The purpose was to facilitate clinicians in developing and meeting the demands of these posts by providing peer supervision, identifying strategies for leading service developments, providing a focus for problem solving and reflection. The ALS meets bi-monthly and is externally facilitated with the option to attend individual sessions with the facilitator. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring coping skills and stress, which were fed back in the individual sessions, providing opportunity for further opportunities for reflection. Initial evaluation was conducted formally using a structured questionnaire and reflective accounts, and provided evidence of the value of the ALS and an indication of how the criteria for success were being met, with greatest achievement reported in the area of work–life balance. The evaluation demonstrates the ongoing value of this ALS and the effectiveness of this method of supporting senior clinical staff.     

Language attitudes and social group memberships

This study examined the saliency of two independent dimensions of group identity—gender and ethnicity—for attitudes toward different languages in an Israeli context. The study is presented within the framework of social identity theory and treats the implications of multiple group memberships for the interpersonal/intergroup continuum of social behavior. The sample included 343 ninth grade Jewish and Arab students in Israel who responded to semantic differential scales for each of three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English. It was hypothesized that gender would be the relevant group category for attitudes toward English, which is considered to be “ethnically neutral”, but not for Hebrew and Arabic. For the latter two languages, the saliency of ethnic group membership was expected to override any gender-language link. The results basically supported the hypotheses with the exception that ethnic group membership was a relevant category for English in addition to gender.