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"Teaching"

Objective The aims of this survey were to evaluate the effectiveness of workplace based assessments (WPAs) in dental foundation training (formerly vocational training [VT]).Methods Two online questionnaire surveys were sent to 53 foundation dental practitioners (FDPs) and their 51 trainers in the Mersey Deanery at month four and month nine of the one year of dental foundation training. The questionnaires investigated the effectiveness of and trainers' and trainees' satisfaction with the WPAs used in foundation training, namely dental evaluation of performance (D-EPs), case-based discussions (DcBD) and patients' assessment questionnaires (PAQs). The questionnaires also investigated the perceived impact of reflection and feedback associated with WPAs on clinical practise and improving patient care.Results A total of 41 (7.4%) FDPs and 44 (86.3%) trainers responded. Of the 41 FDPs, the majority found that feedback from WPAs had a positive effect on their training, giving them insight into their development needs. Overall 84.1% of the FDPs felt the WPAs helped them improve patient care and 82.5% of trainers agreed with that outcome.Conclusions The findings from this study demonstrate the value of WPAs in dental foundation training by the use of feedback and reflection in directing the learning of foundation dental practitioners and that this can lead to improved clinical practise and patient care. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

The relationship between learning environment characteristics and academic engagement of 777 Grade 6 children located in 41 learning environments was explored. Questionnaires were used to tap learning environment perceptions of children, their academic engagement, and their ethnic-cultural background. The basis of the learning environment questionnaire was the International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback (ISTOF). Factor analysis indicated three factors: the teacher as a helpful and good instructor (having good instructional skills, clear instruction), the teacher as promoter of active learning and differentiation, and the teacher as manager and organizer of classroom activities. Multilevel analysis indicated that about 12% of the differences in engagement between children was related to the learning environment. All the mentioned learning environment characteristics mattered, but the teacher as a helpful, good instructor was most important followed by the teacher as promoter of active learning and differentiation. © Psychological Reports 2011.

Internationally there has been concern about the direction of technical education and how it is positioned in schools. This has also been the case in Malawi where the curriculum has had a strong focus on skills development. However, lately there has been a call for enhancing technological literacy of students, yet little support has been provided for teachers to achieve this goal. This paper reports from a wider study that looked at teachers' existing views and practices in technical education in Malawi. The article focuses on the findings from interviews that were conducted with six secondary school teachers to find out about their understanding of the meaning and rationale for technical education. It is also discussed how the teachers view technical education as involving skills development for making things and their thoughts on the benefits of such knowledge. It is argued that teachers' views about technical education were strongly linked to the goals of the curriculum vacationalization policies adopted at the dawn of political independence. Besides skills training they saw the potential to impart thinking skills related to design and problem solving, and the need for essential pedagogical techniques to support learning in technical education. Examination requirements, inadequate opportunities to conduct practical activities and a lack of supportive policy were seen as limiting factors. This article claims that teachers' views were shaped by their expectations and beliefs about the nature of technical education and what they perceived students may gain from such learning. Their views were also influenced by contextual factors which may have implications on reforms towards broader notions of technology education. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

This paper presents an updated statement on behalf of the Association for Dental Education in Europe (ADEE) in relation to proposals for undergraduate Curriculum Structure, Content, Learning, Assessment and Student / Staff Exchange for dental education in Europe. A task force was constituted to consider these issues and the two previous, related publications produced by the Association (Plasschaert et al 2006 and 2007) were revised. The broad European dental community was circulated and contributed to the revisions. The paper was approved at the General Assembly of ADEE, held in Amsterdam in August 2010 and will be updated again in 2015. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

The goal of this article is to contribute to the validation of a self-evaluation method, which can be used by schools to evaluate the quality of their Competence Assessment Program (CAP). The outcomes of the self-evaluations of two schools are systematically compared: a novice school with little experience in competence-based education and assessment, and an innovative school with extensive experience. The self-evaluation was based on 12 quality criteria for CAPs, including both validity and reliability, and criteria stressing the importance of the formative function of assessment, such as meaningfulness and educational consequences. In each school, teachers, management and examination board participated. Results show that the two schools use different approaches to assure assessment quality. The innovative school seems to be more aware of its own strengths and weaknesses, to have a more positive attitude towards teachers, students, and educational innovations, and to explicitly involve stakeholders (i.e., teachers, students, and the work field) in their assessments. This school also had a more explicit vision of the goal of competence-based education and could design its assessments in accordance with these goals. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

Due to increasing demand for education and training in the information age, online learning and teaching is becoming a necessity in our future. However, lack of research goals to understand impact of online learning environments on students is a problem in research on online learning environments. We identified four main research goals to pursue in online learning environments based on their impact on learner achievement, engagement, and retention (opposite of attrition). Those goals are (a) enhancing learner engagement & collaboration, (b) promoting effective facilitation, (c) developing assessment techniques, and (d) designing faculty development programs. Current promising work in those areas is presented. Four methods that are common in the instructional technology literature are recommended to pursue those goals. Formative research and developmental research are relevant for all four. Although appropriate for any of the goals, experimental research is a better fit for goals b and c, and activity theory is useful for goals a and b. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The purposes of this study include the following: (1) establishing professional development criteria for hospitality teachers in vocational schools; (2) developing a self-rating scale for hospitality teacher professional development; and (3) constructing a combined teaching observation checklist. Through analysis of the related literature, a draft of the criteria was established and approved by 6 scholars and experts and 117 teachers from food and beverage or tourism departments. Furthermore, the teacher evaluation criteria were developed into the standards and indicators of the self-rating and teaching observation checklists. Implications are made for improving hospitality teachers' performance and developing professional teacher evaluations. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Higher Learning Education fails to deliver undergraduates with employability skills. The objective of this research is to identify challenges in the current practice of teaching Software Engineering at the undergraduate level in Requirement Engineering. As a conclusion, the steps of Project-Based Learning (PjBL) are produced as well as mechanism for educators in their delivery to assist students in enhancing their skill. The skills will be enhanced from the elicitation process until the management of requirement which students can easily apply in their employability skills. Future work will discuss on the analysis of the weaknesses in the current Requirement Engineering practices.

Problem-based learning (PBL) emphasizes the student's individual needs, their ability to solve complex clinical problems, and a professional attitude that facilitates communication among colleagues. Thus, PBL appears to provide a perfectly suitable didactic format for postgraduate training of medical specialties. To date, it is only rarely used in this area though. In a pilot project, we implemented PBL into the curriculum of postgraduate training in psychiatry and psychotherapy, and evaluated the program over a period of 12 months, using structured questionnaires. A total of 41 PBL courses were held, with 447 residents participating. Participants as well as tutors assessed 19 of 21 aspects as good or very good (5-point Likert scale, mean value >4). Overall, PBL was rated as highly suitable for advanced training (participants: 4.5±0.8; tutors: 5.0±0.2). The results of this pilot project suggest that PBL might be a useful element of multifaceted advanced training programs, strengthening their practical component and the applicability of knowledge in the daily clinical routine. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

This research designed a learning and teaching model using the Project-Based Learning approach (PBL) on the Web to promote cooperative learning of technical college students. The learning and teaching model designed was based on the PBL principles using the Web as a tool for learning management and the PBL activities to increase motivation and cooperative learning. As a result, the designed teaching model is the learning and teaching method that can promote real participation of the students in the learning processes. The students will be assigned to work cooperatively to create projects on the Web and put the completed projects on the Web into real practice in classroom. The model helps improve the students' cooperative learning skills which are useful for their daily and work life after graduation.