A multivariate analysis of personality, values and expectations as correlates of career aspirations of final year medical students

This study reports on the career intentions of 179 final year medical students who completed an online survey that included measures of personality, values, professional and lifestyle expectations, and well-being. Logistic regression analyses identified the determinants of preferred medical specialty, practice location and hours of work. Understanding the expectations and values of this generation of doctors will assist workforce planners to address expected shortages and mal-distribution of practitioners.     

Contextualising practice: Hallmarks of effective teachers of writing

This study identifies practices of effective teachers of writing. Three schools with significantly higher achievement in an area that underperforms nationally were identified and within them teachers whose students exhibited superior progress were selected. Multiple data collection methods included lesson observation, analysis of the classroom environment, teacher and student interviews and teacher documentation. Common was a commitment to formative assessment practices and classroom environments supportive of student literacy learning. Hallmarks of teachers whose students showed a greater awareness of their learning were a sense of purpose and meaningfulness; of coherence or connectedness and of being consistent and systematic. This paper argues that student achievement in writing is likely to be higher when teachers exhibit strength s in these hallmarks.     

Program Assessments: Success Strategies for Three Canadian Teaching Centers

Program assessments are an essential part of the ongoing survival of teaching centers performed by faculty development personnel at institutions of higher education. Little research is available to guide developers in performing these assessments. In this article we describe assessments conducted at three Canadian universities and highlight the theoretical models used to guide the process. Reflections on the strengths and challenges are discussed for each program assessment for the purpose of assisting faculty developers in performing similar program assessments of their faculty development offices.

The provision of higher education in regional areas: an integrative review of the literature

There is a great deal of literature surrounding the needs of regional Australia. This integrative review of the literature focuses on the experience of nursing academics teaching on a satellite campus, many of which are located in regional Australia. Four themes were identified: (1) challenges specific to regional satellite campuses, (2) student characteristics, (3) student experiences and (4) the academics’ experiences. These themes identified not only significant benefits but also considerable challenges to the provision of higher education on regional university campuses. The experience of nursing academics and indeed their students is remarkably different from the experience of their metropolitan counterparts, and therefore the local context needs to be considered in regional education provision. Australian regional nursing academics need to be multi-skilled to address the workload and social inequity in support service provision.     

Using the Joint Standards to Design Postsecondary Assessments With Evidence of Validity and Reliability: An Approach to CAEP Accreditation

Validity and reliability are a major focus in teacher education accreditation by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). CAEP requires the use of “accepted research standards,” but many faculty and administrators are unsure how to meet this requirement. The Standards of Educational and Psychological Testing abbreviated Joint Standards, are the implied accepted research standards. The purpose of this study was to test empirically the extent to which the Joint Standards could serve this purpose. The primary outcome of this study is a pragmatic set of implementation strategies organized into assessment specifications connecting CAEP requirements to the Joint Standards. An example set of assessment specifications is provided. Use of this process can improve assessments in any academic discipline for any accreditation agency, become a faculty professional development tool, raise assessment literacy, and potentially impact instruction of future educators.     

8大金点子 高效养成术

在职场上,你是否常常感觉,8小时上班一眨眼就过去了,但好多事情却做得还不够好!似乎一整天就是浏览和回复一些电邮,打了几个客户电话。如果这是一个你正在苦恼的问题,就要谨慎了,因为这说明低效的工作方式正在拉你的后腿。本期职场达人专门为大家收集了几个可以有效提高工作效率的妙招,看看高效率的职场都需要具备哪些工作守则。     

Mapping the core journals of the physical therapy literature

Objectives:

The purpose of this study was to identify (1) core journals in the literature of physical therapy, (2) currency of references cited in that literature, and (3) online databases providing the highest coverage rate of core journals.

Method:

Data for each cited reference in each article of four source journals for three years were recorded, including type of literature, year of publication, and journal title. The journal titles were ranked in descending order according to the frequency of citations and divided into three zones using Bradford''s Law of Scattering. Four databases were analyzed for coverage rates of articles published in the Zone 1 and Zone 2 journals in 2007.

Results:

Journal articles were the most frequently cited type of literature, with sixteen journals supplying one-third of the cited journal references. Physical Therapy was the most commonly cited title. There were more cited articles published from 2000 to 2007 than in any previous full decade. Of the databases analyzed, CINAHL provided the highest coverage rate for Zone 1 2007 publications.

Conclusions:

Results were similar to a previous study, except for changes in the order of Zone 1 journals. Results can help physical therapists and librarians determine important journals in this discipline.

Highlights

• More cited references were published in the last eight years studied than in any previous full decade.
• Physical Therapy, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (APMR), and Spine were the most frequently cited titles. Previous studies found APMR to be the most cited journal.
• CINAHL provided the highest coverage rate for the most commonly cited titles, with MEDLINE and EMBASE providing the best coverage for the next group of titles.

Implications

• Health sciences librarians and clinicians can use these results to identify important journals for developing collections and determining the need for access to back issues of journals.
• Multiple databases are needed for comprehensive coverage of the physical therapy discipline

Implications

• Health sciences librarians and clinicians can use these results to identify important journals for developing collections and determining the need for access to back issues of journals.
• Multiple databases are needed for comprehensive coverage of the physical therapy discipline

     

Digital Citizenship: You Can’t Go Home Again

In the July/August 2011 edition of TechTrends, a group of AECT members and academic professionals explored the state of digital citizenship for students in K-12 through an article entitled: Digital Citizenship in K-12: It Takes a Village. Identified was a significant need for digital citizenship awareness by parents, educators, and students through a series of interviews, exploration of resources, reports, and surveys. In this current article, the purpose is to provide an updated perspective of the state of digital citizenship in the K-12 academic and professional environments as gathered from re-administering the 2010 survey and interviewing experts quoted in the 2010 article. Results showed the need for teaching digital citizenship at an earlier age, improved digital citizenship awareness by both educators and administrators, and a continued focus on the misuse and abuse of technology.