“When We Make Mistakes,People Die!”: Constructions of Responsibility for Medical Errors in Televised Medical Dramas, 1994–2007

Despite the publicity of medical mistakes in recent years, most people vastly underestimate the frequency of errors, likely because media stories focus on flawed individuals, not institutional problems. This research examined contemporary medical dramas for constructions of responsibility in treating patients. Findings indicate that medical mistakes were rare in the storylines, meaning that health professionals were almost always depicted as behaving responsibly—to the extent that they were considered heroes. Mistakes were suggested to be due to the health professional's inexperience, institutional flaws that led to errors, and temporary personal problems. Health professionals were shown learning from their mistakes, suggesting that they would not be repeated. For committing mistakes, health professionals faced a range of consequences, depending on disclosure of the errors and whether patients had friends or families to push for restitution. Errors occurred throughout the years studied, but were greatest in the years when the dramas featured inexperienced medical students or residents as the main characters. Problems with the fictional health care system were largely ignored, suggesting one explanation for the focus on individual responsibility in real-life discourse.     

Positioning adult educators in discourses of professional development

This article explores the discursive work done by different notions of professional development in adult education. In particular we outline the ways in which the discourses of technical expertise, competence and reflective practice are deployed to mobilise professional practices and identities in particular ways and position certain practices and dispositions as specifically professional. We suggest that these discourses help to shape the negotiations between economies of performance and ecologies of practice within which professionals operate. We argue that much of this work is implicit in the pedagogies and curriculum of programmes for adult educators and that there is a need for detailed empirical research on the pedagogies of professional development and practice in adult education. With moves in Europe to develop professional standards for adult educators we suggest that studying the rhetoric of professional development provides an opportunity to open some existing diverse practices to new forms of scrutiny.     

Approaching Parental Guilt,Shame, and Blame in a Helping Relationship: Multiple Methods for Teaching and Learning

ABSTRACT

Social workers often feel ill-prepared to effectively engage parents in conversations about guilt, shame, and blame related to their children’s mental health or substance use challenges. To address that problem, we suggest that specific content should be integrated into social work courses to teach students how to acknowledge and sensitively manage these issues in their practice with families across cultures and family forms. Content, activities, and assignments are offered, built around three learning strategies (enhanced lecture, case-based learning, and experiential learning) to help students build therapeutic relationships based on a deep appreciation of parents’ emotional experiences.     

Notes on authors

Faculty perceptions of the viability of candidates with online doctorates for a tenure-track assistant professor position in management were examined. Survey results of U.S. faculty members in management departments at institutions accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) indicated that most (90%) would not hire someone with an online degree for a tenure-track faculty position. Given comparable teaching and research records, all candidates with traditional doctorates were rated higher than those with online doctorates. Common reasons given by respondents as to why they would not consider someone with an online doctorate included poor quality of instruction, lack of credibility of an online degree, lack of face-to-face contact, lack of AACSB accreditation, lack of rigorous discourse, and lack of mentoring.     

“Mind the gap”: cultural revitalisation and educational change

The success or failure of a school reform can be measured by whether the reform has become an accepted, effective, and sustainable part of the school's culture. For example, as the National Middle School Association (2003 National Middle School Association. 2003. Research and resources in support of “This we Believe”, Westerville, OH: Author.  [Google Scholar]) argued, “new programs must become integral to the school culture” (p. 11) before a school can call itself a “middle” school. But how can a school monitor its progress, and at what point can a school claim that a new reform or new programme has become part of its culture? Wallace's revitalisation theory (1956), Hall and Hord's Processural Structure (1986) and Hall, Wallace, and Dossett's Concerns-Based Adoption Model (1973) are used to describe the cultural revitalisation taking place with the introduction of middle schooling into Australia and specifically within 3 Queensland middle schools. Results have highlighted gaps and tension points that need to be resolved before any widespread cultural transformation can be claimed.     

An Example of Large‐group Drama and Cross‐year Peer Assessment for Teaching Science in Higher Education

Undergraduate students pursuing a three‐year marine biology degree programme (n = 86) experienced a large‐group drama aimed at allowing them to explore how scientific research is funded and the associated links between science and society. In the drama, Year 1 students played the “general public” who decided which environmental research areas should be prioritised for funding, Year 2 students were the “scientists” who had to prepare research proposals which they hoped to get funded, and Year 3 students were the “research panel” who decided which proposals to fund with input from the priorities set by the “general public”. The drama, therefore, included an element of cross‐year peer assessment where Year 3 students evaluated the research proposals prepared by the Year 2 students. Questionnaires were distributed at the end of the activity to gather: (1) student perceptions on the cross‐year nature of the exercise, (2) the use of peer assessment, and (3) their overall views on the drama. The students valued the opportunity to interact with their peers from other years of the degree programme and most were comfortable with the use of cross‐year peer assessment. The majority of students felt that they had increased their knowledge of how research proposals are funded and the perceived benefits of the large‐group drama included increased critical thinking ability, confidence in presenting work to others, and enhanced communication skills. Only one student did not strongly advocate the use of this large‐group drama in subsequent years.     

Len Barton,inclusion and critical disability studies: theorising disabled childhoods

Len Barton has pioneered the sociological study of education in the areas of disability studies and inclusive education. This paper addresses an argument developed by Len Barton that social exclusion, of which disablism is one element, (1) has many compounding forms of differing exclusions, (2) is not a natural but a socially constructed process, (3) has no single factor that can remove it and (4) is in constant need of conceptual analysis. Our paper aims to address each of these four challenging themes in relation to the contemporary societal position of disabled children, their families and key professionals that work around them, with a specific focus on schools. First, we explore the ways in which disabled childhoods are imbricated with other forms of exclusion. Second, we consider the ways in which ‘disability’, ‘impairment’ and ‘child’ are consistently being reproduced in particular and often contradictory ways by disability discourses. Third, we consider the need to work with numerous forms of educational intervention that address the exclusion of disabled children. Fourth, we conclude with an appeal to develop disability studies in ways that build on the shoulders of (social model) greats – such as Len Barton – whilst being receptive to other transformative perspectives from queer, feminist and postcolonial studies.     

Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis

INVENTION AS A SOCIAL ACT. By Karen Burke LeFevre. Foreword by Frank J. D'Angelo. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987; pp. xiv + 173. paper $8.50.

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON POETRY. By Gerald F. Else. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Peter Burian. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986; pp. xi‐221. $27.00.

HUMANIST POETICS: THOUGHT, RHETORIC, AND FICTION IN SIXTEENTH‐CENTURY ENGLAND. By Arthur F. Kinney. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986; pp. xiv + 529. $35.00.

ORATORS &; PHILOSOPHERS: A HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF LIBERAL EDUCATION. By Bruce A. Kimball. Foreword by Joseph L. Featherstone. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press, 1986; pp. xix + 293. $19.95.

THE AMERICAN NEWNESS: CULTURE AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF EMERSON. By Irving Howe. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1986; pp. 1 + 99. $12.50.

DE LA METAPHYSIQUE A LA RHETORIQUE. Edited by Michel Meyer. Brussels: University of Brussels Press, 1986; pp. 1 + 208. Paper 1100 FB ($30).

INTRODUCTION TO RHETORICAL THEORY. By Gerard A. Hauser. New York: Harper &; Row, 1986; pp. xi + 209. paper $10.95.

ICONOLOGY: IMAGE, TEXT, IDEOLOGY. By W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; pp. x + 226. $20.00.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES. By Thomas L. Tedford. Foreword by Franklyn S. Haiman. New York: Random House, 1985; pp. 416. paper $16.00. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985; xvii + 493. $29.95.

MURDER, COURTS, AND THE PRESS: ISSUES IN FREE PRESS/FAIR TRIAL. By Peter E. Kane. Foreword by Franklyn S. Haiman. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. pp. xiv + 96. $10.95; paper $6.95.

IMPACT: HOW THE PRESS AFFECTS FEDERAL POLICYMAKING. By Martin Linsky. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986; pp. xvii + 260. $19.95.

HOW THE PRESS AFFECTS FEDERAL POLICYMAKING: SIX CASE STUDIES. By Martin Linsky, Jonathan Moore, Wendy O'Donnell, and David Whitman. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986; pp. ix + 373. $25.00.

THE MEDIA ELITE. By S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter. Bethesda: Adler and Adler, 1986; pp. ix + 352. $19.95.

COMMUNICATIONS DEREGULATION: THE UNLEASHING OF AMERICA'S COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY. By Jeremy Tunstall. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986; pp. xi + 324. $24.95.

PROPAGANDA AND PERSUASION. By Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986; pp. 1 + 244. $25.00; paper $12.95.

MEANING AND MODERNITY: SOCIAL THEORY IN THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE. By Eugene Rochberg‐Halton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; pp. xiv + 299. $40.00; paper $14.95.     

Building Bridges for Those Under Bridges: A Lesson in Civility

Four questions are presented: What are the historical roots of motor development; How can motor development be characterized; How should motor development be conceptualized; and How should motor development be organized? A brief history presents the psychological roots of motor development and emphasizes the individual researchers who have created the area of motor development since the 1960s. Motor development is characterized as a composite of the researchers, knowledge, application of knowledge, systems for delivering knowledge, and graduate programs in motor development. Motor development should be a perspective rather than a structure or subdiscipline. All courses in human movement should be taught from a developmental perspective, research should be done within the appropriate subdiscipline, and some of that research should be developmental. Motor development will be best served if researchers align with scientists within the subdisciplines and share developmental information in cross-disciplinary groups.     

REALITIES,VISIONS, AND PROMISES OF A MULTICULTURAL FUTURE

Religious education has changed considerably over the 100 years of the Religious Education Association (REA); urgency has increased for human communities to honor diversity. The focus of this article is realities, visions, and promises of cultural diversity. The article includes an overview of REA's recent history, exemplifying its efforts and limitations in diversity. It then turns to five commentaries on a multicultural future, drawing on autobiographical analysis, religious and educational literature, and empirical study. Authors explicate and argue for: engaging in post-colonial analysis, de-centering assumptions, searching for a story to claim, taking time, and entering deep waters.