Breaking barriers: The landscape of human and veterinary medical anatomy education and the potential for collaboration

Despite human (HUM) and veterinary (VET) medical institutions sharing the goal of educating future clinicians, there is little collaboration between them regarding curricular and pedagogical practices during the preclinical/basic science training years. This may be, at least in part, due to a lack of understanding of each type of curriculum. This study presents data about curricula, student populations, pedagogical methodologies applied, and anatomy educators' training at both HUM and VET institutions. Preclinical curricula, admissions criteria, and student demographics were analyzed for 21 institutions in the United States having both HUM and VET schools. This dataset was augmented by a questionnaire sent to anatomists internationally, detailing anatomy curricula, pedagogies applied, and anatomy educators' training. Many curricular similarities between both training programs were identified, including anatomy education experiences. However, VET programs were found to include more preclinical coursework than HUM programs. Students who matriculate to VET or HUM schools have similar academic records, including prerequisite coursework and grade point average. Median HUM class size was significantly larger, and the percentage of women enrolled in VET institutions was significantly higher. Training of anatomy educators was identical with one exception: VET educators are far more likely to hold a clinical degree. This study elucidates the substantial similarities between VET and HUM programs, particularly in anatomy education, underscoring the potential for collaboration between both types of programs in areas such as interprofessional education, bioethics, zoonotic disease management, and postgraduate training.     

Syntactic and discourse skills in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia: a profiling study

This study aims to investigate the relation of syntactic and discourse skills to morphological skills, rapid naming, and working memory in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and to examine their cognitive–linguistic profiles. Fifty-two dyslexic readers (mean age, 13;42) from grade 7 to 9 in Hong Kong high schools were compared with 52 typically developing readers of the same chronological age (mean age, 13;30) in the measures of word reading, 1-min word reading, reading comprehension, morpheme discrimination, morpheme production, morphosyntactic knowledge, sentence order knowledge, digit rapid naming, letter rapid naming, backward digit span, and non-word repetition. Results showed that dyslexic readers performed significantly worse than their peers on all the cognitive-linguistic tasks. Analyses of individual performance also revealed that over half of the dyslexic readers exhibited deficits in syntactic and discourse skills. Moreover, syntactic skills, morphological skills, and rapid naming best distinguished dyslexic from non-dyslexic readers. Findings underscore the significance of syntactic and discourse skills for understanding reading impairment in Chinese adolescent readers.     

Comfort drawing during investigative interviews: Evidence of the safety of a popular practice

Objective

This study evaluated the impact of comfort drawing (allowing children to draw during interviews) on the quality of children's eyewitness reports.

Methods

Children (N = 219, 5 to 12 years) who had participated in an earlier memory study returned 1 or 2 years later, experienced a new event, and described these events during phased, investigative-style interviews. Interviewers delivered the same prompts to children in the no drawing and drawing conditions but provided paper and markers in the drawing condition, invited these children to draw, and periodically asked if they would like to make another picture.

Results

Most children in the drawing condition were interested in using the materials, and measures of eyewitness performance were sensitive to differences in cognitive ability (i.e., age) and task difficulty (i.e., delay between the remote event and interview). Comfort drawing had no overall impact as evidenced by nonsignificant main effects of condition across 20 performance measures, although more of the younger children reported experienced touching in the drawing than no drawing condition.

Conclusions

The children successfully divided attention between voluntary drawing and conversations about past events. Importantly, comfort drawing did not impair the amount of information recalled, the accuracy of children's answers, or even the extent to which interviewers needed to prompt for answers. Due to the large number of analyses, the benefit of drawing for younger, touched children requires replication.

Practice Implications

Comfort drawing poses no documented risks for typically-developing school-aged children, but the practice remains untested for younger children and those with cognitive impairments.     

Cognitive maps and the structure of observed learning outcome assessment of physiotherapy students’ ethical reasoning knowledge

Assessment of student learning in complex areas is challenging, particularly when there is interest in students’ deeper understanding and connectivity of concepts. Assessment of ethics learning has been limited by lack of consensus regarding what is effective and an overfocus on quantification at the expense of clinical or ethical relevance. Cognitive maps provide one means to evaluate depth and personal meaning of students’ ethics knowledge. A pre-/post-test design using cognitive maps and the structure of observed learning outcome (SOLO) taxonomy was used to assess student learning on completion of a six-week intensive ethics course. Thirty-seven students completed the research. Student learning was supported by significant changes in component (content, labelling, relationships and structure/visual message), and total pre- and post-test cognitive map scores, and significant change in pre- and post-test SOLO scores. A strong relationship was found between cognitive map improvement and SOLO improvement. Student written commentaries describing their post-test cognitive map provided a richer, more elaborated account of their understanding that qualitatively enhanced their cognitive maps. Cognitive maps offer an alternative to traditional ethics assessment strategies.     

Replacing Old Spatial Empires of the Mind

In this article we argue for the spatialization of research on educational transfer in the field of comparative education within a theoretical framework that focuses on networks, connections, and flows. We present what we call a "spatial empire of the mind," which is comprised of a set of taken-for-granted "truths" about space and place that have legitimized much research in the social sciences. We critique this spatial empire of the mind and present some of the core ideas associated with the spatial turn. The next part of the article reviews three possible ways that new spatial theorizing has been taken up in educational research. Here we make reference to existing educational studies that engage with new ways of rethinking space and place. The argument that we put forward is that the most promising approach, for research on educational transfer within the field of comparative education, is network spatiality. We argue that there is great value in rethinking space and place not simply as objects of study, but within a theoretical framework that focuses on networks, interconnections, and movements within and between them, as well as their productive capacity to produce and shape knowledge, identities, and human subjectivities.     

Envisioning Equitable Classrooms That Enhance All Students’ Wonderful Ideas: A Duckworth Perspective

This synopsis centers on Eleanor Duckworth’s ideas about the relationship between education and intellectual development. Specifically, Duckworth described the essence of intellectual development as the “having of wonderful ideas” and the essence of pedagogy as the creation of occasions to “have wonderful ideas.” As opposed to accepting the persistent, pernicious educational belief that there is a single, best way to understand and a single, best way of explaining this understanding, Duckworth determined that all children can come to comparable, equally satisfactory, wonderful understandings when provided occasions to do so.     

The effects of postseason break on stabilometric performance in female volleyball players

Ankle sprain is a common injury in volleyball. Poor stabilometric performance (SP) is associated with high risks of sustaining ankle sprain. Balance training can improve SP and reduce ankle sprain, but no research has studied the effects of detraining on SP in highly trained athletes. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of one-month postseason break on SP in female volleyball players. Eleven NCAA female volleyball players participated in two eye-closed single-leg stance tests before and after a one-month postseason break. Stance time, center of pressure (COP) area, COP standard deviation, and COP mean velocity were assessed during the tests. During the postseason break, subjects conducted self-selected exercise and the average training duration was 87% lower compared to the competition season. Subjects demonstrated significant increases in anterioposterior (A/P) COP standard deviation (1.6 ± 0.4 vs. 1.8 ± 0.4 cm, p = 0.05), mediolateral (M/L) COP velocity (6.5 ± 1.5 vs. 7.1 ± 1.3 cm/s, p = 0.05), and overall COP velocity (10.1 ± 2.0 vs. 11.6 ± 1.9 cm/s, p = 0.02) after postseason break. SP decreased in highly trained female volleyball players after one-month postseason break. The decrease in SP indicated a possible increased risk for ankle sprain injury.     

Upper extremity kinematic trends of fly-casting: Establishing the effects of line length

Fly-fishing is a popular form of recreation. Recent evidence has associated overhand fly-casting movements with upper extremity pain. However, little research exists on the motions and coordination common to fly-casting. The aim of this study was to establish upper extremity kinematic trends of fly-casting while casting greater line lengths. It was hypothesized that kinematic casting parameters would increase and time between peak angular velocities would decrease with greater line length. Eighteen males participated in the study. Three-dimensional motion capture was conducted to calculate shoulder, elbow, and wrist kinematics during casting conditions of 6.1, 12.2, 18.3, and 24.4 m of line. Multiple analyses of variance were used to assess the condition effect of line length on the kinematic variables (P = 0.05). Overall, total range of movement increased with increasing length of line cast. Peak angular velocity exhibited a proximal-to-distal trend: peak shoulder internal rotation followed by elbow extension, then wrist ulnar deviation. Time between peak shoulder and elbow angular velocities increased significantly as line length increased. Our findings indicate that specific changes in total range of movement accommodate the demands of casting greater lengths of line. Also, joint velocity coordination patterns of fly-casting appear to follow a proximal-to-distal pattern. These findings represent an initial foundation for connections between kinematics and upper extremity pain reported by fly-fisherman.