Continuing Education Programs (CEP), an image of the professions: The case of social work

Although most social work continuing education units operate within stable academic institutions, this stability does not extend to the operation of these units. The greatest impediment is the demand by university administrators that the units operate on a pay as you go basis and turn any surplus revenues to the university for its discretionary use. In trying to meet university conditions while maintaining high standards of service, the units face several difficulties including competition from private providers, high costs, fewer sponsors, and indifferent faculty.In funding and budgeting the units for continuing education, universities tend to ignore two key arguments. The first is that CEP provide public services with spill over effects that add indirect demand to the demand expressed through registration. The second is that building quality into professional programs requires long term investments that forego immediate profits.Because continuing education programs are an image of their profession, social work programs need to correspond to the profession they serve, a profession that produces public goods (and services) while seeking to assure quality within non-profit environments. Unless universities assume a lead role in supporting these efforts through new approaches, continuing education programs will only be partially successful in fulfilling their mission.     

A “Toolkit” for developing critically reflective science teachers

The purpose of this paper is to describe various “tools” we use to facilitate critical reflection as we teach prospective science teachers. The notion of “tools” refers to materials and experiences used to facilitate prospective teachers’ critical reflection on science teaching and learning. Reflective tools are not intrusive devices used by instructors to analyse mechanically what prospective teachers are learning; rather, these tools are intended to provide prospective teachers with the means to generate and critique their own views of science teaching and learning. Each tool is described herein with respect to its potential use and the way in which it is introduced to prospective science teachers. We conclude with discussion of the potential for reflective tools to contribute to research on reform of science teacher education, with particular attention to primary teacher preparation.     

Factors Influencing Nursing Students’ Intention to Practice Sexuality Education in their Professional Work

Abstract

Sexuality has an essential part in human lives and can be affected by changes in one’s health status. Since the nursing profession delivers holistic care for patients, nurses must have the knowledge and skills to deliver care concerning sexuality. Evidence from the professional literature demonstrates that nurses do not address sexuality care consistently, mainly due to different factors such as lack of knowledge, skills, and cultural attitudes. This study’s purpose was to learn about the factors that affect nursing students’ willingness to grasp the nurse’s role as a sexuality educator in practice prior to establishing a specified course in sexual education for BSN students. A quantitative study was conducted in a college at the center of Israel, with a convenience sample of nursing students in a BSN program (n?=?214). The research tool was a questionnaire designed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and willingness of nursing students to practice sexuality education in the future. The study’s approach was based on Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior. Results indicated that self-efficacy is the main mediator between attitudes and intentions. There is a need to reinforce nursing student’s self-efficacy on the subject to increase their intention to practice it in the future.     

Achieving Academic Literacy: Disciplined Discourse

Concerns that students increasingly come to tertiary studies ill‐prepared for academic pursuit in the disciplines have generated a broad range of supplementary tuition in Australian Universities during the past decade. Many researchers and tertiary teachers have from experience realized that tertiary learning skills are very much context‐, or discipline‐specific. This paper is concerned with making context‐specific expectations known to students through a process of ‘showing how’, rather than ‘telling what’. Two highly specialized teaching structures were used to generate appropriate questions for students, thereby providing parameters for their search and research and ultimately, their writing in the discipline.     

Teaching with ignorance: Questions of social justice,empathy, and responsible community

This paper explores the limitations of empathy for the formation of community, particularly within social justice education. I begin with a discussion of the major tension within the idea of community — that it is founded at once on commonality and difference. Building in particular upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the paper articulates an understanding of community as a signifying encounter with difference that is not founded upon knowledge about the other, but upon a being-for and feeling-for the other. Focusing upon the explicitly educational commitment to working out forms of relationality conducive to establishing community and social justice across social differences, I ask how might teaching with ignorance, as opposed to teaching for empathy, bring us closer to the being-for others that marks our ethical engagement with other people and engenders our responsibility to the collective?     

The “Four Commonplaces of Teaching”: Prospective Teachers' Beliefs About Teaching in Urban Schools

The Urban Review - Preservice students in teacher education programs in both rural and urban teacher preparation institutions described their beliefs and knowledge about the teachers, students,...