March music and the German radio audience

Liking for military bands and march music is sometimes asserted as an indication of nationalist or militaristic feeling. In a postwar, demilitarized German, some researchers have become interested in current attitudes toward march music and to what extent liking for such music is affected by the militaristic connotation it may have for listeners.

This study presents a penetrating insight into the conflict of emotional and rational behavior on the part of German audiences.     

Glycoscience: Integrating a Key Macromolecule More Fully into the Curriculum

The recent report from the National Research Council, Transforming Glycoscience: A Roadmap for the Future, explores an important area of the life sciences. Glycoscience examples are suitable additions to many areas of the curriculum, and their inclusion will help ensure that students have an understanding of the diverse functions played by this key class of macromolecules.     

Clinico-histologic conferences: histology and disease

Providing a context for learning information and requiring learners to teach specific content has been demonstrated to enhance knowledge retention. To enhance students' appreciation of the role of science and specifically histology in clinical reasoning, disease diagnosis, and treatment, a new teaching format was created to provide clinical context, promote integration and application of science knowledge, and to foster peer teaching and learning: the Clinico-Histologic Conference (CHC) for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Histology course. Teams of six students were each assigned specific disease processes and were charged with creating oral presentations and handouts that taught their classmates about the clinical manifestations, etiopathogeneses, diagnoses, and treatments of the assigned processes, along with comparisons of normal histology to the pathology of the disease. Each team also created four questions, some of which were used on Histology written examinations. The physician facilitator evaluated the presentation and handouts. About two-thirds of students agreed the CHC enhanced appreciation of the importance of histology, provided a context for integration and application of basic science to patient care and enhanced their ability to teach their peers. Student feedback demonstrated that the CHCs were successful in promoting teamwork, peer teaching, and the application of histology to diagnose diseases. The authors believe that teaching basic science content in this new format enhanced student learning and application of medical knowledge, and that this new teaching format can be adopted by other medical school courses.     

The role of mentoring in the CPD programmes of professional associations

This paper seeks to position the current role of mentoring within the continuing professional development (CPD) programmes of UK professional associations and to examine its potential for developing reflective practice. Following a review of mentoring and CPD in terms of their relationship to the ethos of lifelong learning, it indicthes the extent to which mentoring has been embraced by professional associations. Here, reference is made to a wider research project that set out to map the CPD policies and programmes of UK professional associations by analysing the documentation of over 100 associations. The paper puts forward the idea that mentoring could form an important support for reflective practice, particularly where participation in CPD is compulsory. In conclusion, it argues that the wider introduction of mentoring could help forge new relationships between professionals and their clients, and overcome some of the tensions inherent within CPD itself.     

Planning in Middle Childhood: Early Predictors and Later Outcomes

Data from 1,364 children and families who participated in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were analyzed to track the early correlates and later academic outcomes of planning during middle childhood. Maternal education, through its effect on parenting quality when children were 54 months old, predicts their concurrent performance on sustained attention, inhibition, and short‐term verbal memory tests. This performance predicts planning in first grade, which predicts third‐grade reading and mathematics attainment, but not the rate of growth in academic skills from first to fifth grades. This path was also found when the same parenting, cognitive, and academic constructs were measured at later time points.