Preparing for Practice: Strengthening Third-Year Medical Students’ Awareness of Point-of-Care Resources

This column describes the development and implementation of a responsive library course designed to train third-year medical students as they begin their clerkships. The course design consisted of a brief face-to-face introduction during third-year orientation and an online course developed in Canvas, an online learning management system. The objective of the course was to not only introduce students to the resources but also to teach them how to effectively use those resources at the point-of-care. Students evaluated the course to assess the overall effectiveness of the instruction. Course development and content, feedback provided by students, as well as suggestions for improvement are discussed.     

Training preservice teachers to use evidence-based practices: Effects of coaching with performance feedback on teacher and child outcomes

Three-term contingency trials (TCTs) involve planned/naturally occurring antecedents, child's demonstration of target behaviors, and planned/naturally occurring consequences. Positive relationships between teachers' frequent use of TCTs and children's learning were noted in literature. This study aimed to investigate impact of an intervention package including training and coaching with performance feedback on experienced and novice special education preservice teachers' use of TCTs and relationship between teachers' implementation and child outcomes through two single-case experiments using multiple baseline across participants design. Three special education preservice teachers and three children with disabilities participated in each study. Results indicated intervention package was effective in increasing preservice teachers' use of TCTs. Preservice teachers generalized their use and sustained it during maintenance sessions conducted after intervention ended. Furthermore, as frequency and accuracy of preservice teachers' implementation increased, percentage of children's correct responses in relation to target skills improved. Implications for future practice and research are discussed.     

Searching Medline on BRS

The MEDLINE database available on BRS provides searchers with flexible capabilities for efficient searching. Several new and unique features are highlighted and illustrated. The special sort and merge features are described for enhancing printouts. Several non-traditional uses of the MEDLINE database are suggested: interlibrary loan verification, table-of-contents service, and cross-file searching of companion BRS produced PRE-MED and PRE-PSYCH databases.     

基于实证的中小学生学业质量分析报告——以江苏连云港市为例

中小学生学业质量是教育教学质量的重要组成部分,连云港市义务教育阶段学生学业质量监测与问卷实证数据的分析,反映出中小学学业质量整体达标率、优分率较好,学生基础知识与基本技能较为扎实,教与学方式发生深刻变化,学校办学行为进一步规范。同时,该报告也反映出学生解决问题能力不高、区域内质量不均衡、教师教学策略与本体知识缺失、学业质量背景环境不理想等问题。为此,本文提出要发挥质量监测功能、引领教学行为跟进、研发学业质量标准、推进教育现代化创建和完善质量监测反馈系统等建议,以引导学生、教师、学校、社会树立正确的教育观、教学观、评价观和质量观。     

Let's talk evidence – The case for combining inquiry-based and direct instruction

Many studies investigating inquiry learning in science domains have appeared over the years. Throughout this period, inquiry learning has been regularly criticized by scholars who favor direct instruction over inquiry learning. In this vein, Zhang, Kirschner, Cobern, and Sweller (2022) recently asserted that direct instruction is overall superior to inquiry-based instruction and reproached policy makers for ignoring this fact. In the current article we reply to this assertion and the premises on which it is based. We review the evidence and argue that a more complete and correct interpretation of the literature demonstrates that inquiry-based instruction produces better overall results for acquiring conceptual knowledge than does direct instruction. We show that this conclusion holds for controlled, correlational, and program-based studies. We subsequently argue that inquiry-based and direct instruction each have their specific virtues and disadvantages and that the effectiveness of each approach depends on moderating factors such as the learning goal, the domain involved, and students' prior knowledge and other student characteristics. Furthermore, inquiry-based instruction is most effective when supplemented with guidance that can be personalized based on these moderating factors and can even involve providing direct instruction. Therefore, we posit that a combination of inquiry and direct instruction may often be the best approach to support student learning. We conclude that policy makers rightfully advocate inquiry-based instruction, particularly when students’ investigations are supplemented with direct instruction at appropriate junctures.     

Justifying an Automated Library Network

No abstract available for this article.     

Bridge over troubled water: using implementation science to facilitate effective services in child welfare

To maximize benefits to children and their families, effective practices need to be used competently in child welfare settings. Since the 1990s, researchers and policy makers have focused attention on empirically supported interventions (ESIs). Much less attention has been paid to what is needed to implement these in a range of real-world settings. Without proper implementation, which includes an evaluation strategy from feasibility to fidelity to on-going work on moderators and mediators of program effects, established effective programs can be rendered ineffective in practical application. The paper will touch on progress, to date, of implementation science, its application to child welfare programs and practices, and will highlight a set of practical strategies for implementing empirically supported interventions in child welfare.     

Bridging research and practice: challenges and successes in implementing evidence-based preventive intervention strategies for child maltreatment

Child maltreatment has been associated with a wide range of negative developmental outcomes for children and families as well as significant economic consequences. While efficacious intervention strategies have been demonstrated to reduce symptoms of trauma and to improve behavioral and emotional functioning, these models have not been widely adopted by clinicians. The challenges associated with exporting evidence-based interventions into community settings are discussed, along with an example of a preventive intervention program for young mothers, successfully implemented through a partnership of community agencies and funders.     

The impact of a statewide trauma-informed child welfare initiative on children’s permanency and maltreatment outcomes

This article presents findings of a state-wide trauma informed child-welfare initiative with the goal of improving well-being, permanency and maltreatment outcomes for traumatized children. The Massachuetts Child Trauma Project (MCTP), funded by the Administration of Children and Families, Children’s Bureau was a multi-year project implementing trauma-informed care into child welfare service delivery. The project’s implementation design included training and consultation for mental health providers in three evidence-based treatments and training of the child-welfare workforce in trauma-informed case work practice. The learning was integrated between child-welfare and mental health with Trauma Informed Leadership Teams which included leaders from both systems and the greater community. These teams developed incremental steps toward trauma-informed system improvement. This study evaluated whether MCTP was associated with reductions in child abuse and neglect, improvements in placement stability, and higher rates of permanency during the first year of implementation. Children in the intervention group had fewer total substantiated reports of maltreatment, including less physical abuse and neglect than the comparison group by the end of the intervention year. However, children in the intervention group had more maltreatment reports (substantiated or not) and total out-of-home placements than did their counterparts in the comparison group. Assignment to MCTP, however, was not associated with an increase in kinship care or adoption. Overall, the results are promising in reinforcing the importance of mobilizing communities toward improvements in child-welfare service delivery.     

Courting Apocalypse: Creating a Zombie-Themed Evidence-Based Medicine Game

In 2015, two librarians at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Iowa turned their dreams into a reality and secured funding to build a zombie-themed evidence-based medicine game. The game features a “choose your own adventure” style that takes students through a scenario where a disease outbreak is taking place and a resident is asked to use evidence-based medicine skills to select a screening and diagnostic tool to use on potentially infected patients. Feedback on the game has been positive, and future plans include building additional modules on therapy, harm, and prognosis.