Search Results for
"Teaching"

Three junior high teachers and 12 senior high school teachers were introduced to online teaching strategies and tools in a three-day workshop. The teachers developed their basic online course shell on Moodle, an open-source online course management system. Following the workshop, teachers revised their course shells and created short teaching modules to meet the differentiated needs of their students. The modules were evaluated using a modified version of the Quality Online Course Initiative (QOCI) Rubric (Illinois Online Network, 2007). All teacher participants completed the workshop training and 14 successfully met all the QOCI criteria on their modules. This Moodle training was a capstone experience following three years of curricula, content, and pedagogical training through the ISAMS project. The project was funded as part of a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Teacher Improvement grant which provided professional development for math and science teachers. © 2009, IGI Global.

Background/Objective: As financial arrangements for vocational training (VT) in general practice/family medicine seemed to differ among European countries, the VT committee of EURACT compiled an overview to permit comparison. Methods: A questionnaire with open and closed questions wase-mailed in March 2006 to representatives of the 34 different countries on the EURACT Council. Results: Thirty completed questionnaires were returned (88% response rate). The salary of the GP trainee during clinical training in GP/FM is paid by the state on its own or with others in 19 countries (63%), and is the same during community and hospital rotations in 22 countries (73%). The GP trainer gets extra payment for supervision and teaching in only 14 countries (47%). Structured VT programmes are fully or partly financed by the state in 17 countries (57%), with trainees being paid for working hours spent in seminars/coursework in 19 countries (63%). Funding was cited as the commonest challenge and strength regarding VT programmes (cited 20 and 11 times, respectively). Conclusion: Recommendations made regarding the provision of vocational training across Europe include a structured curriculum supported by adequate funding, the professional recognition of GP trainers, which includes a fair and appropriate salary, and equity of salary for GP trainees.

Many studies have concentrated on investigating educational expenditure and pupil-teacher ratio to see how these two factors can influence the quality of education. This study chooses to examine these two educational factors from a different perspective. If educational expenditure and pupil-teacher ratio really have a significant impact on the quality of education as many studies have claimed, it is important to step back and understand why some regions choose to have high/low educational expenditure and high/low pupil-teacher ratios. This study found that culture has an important impact on these two educational factors. Hofstede's cultural dimensions, namely Power Distance and Individualism, were applied and results showed that these two cultural dimensions, when applied to 43 regions around the world, demonstrated a significant impact on educational expenditure and pupil-teacher ratio. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background: Portfolios, often described as collections of evidence, are discussed as a means of teaching or assessing the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education competencies. Yet, it is unclear how many residency programs utilize portfolios. The purpose of this article is to (a) review the literature on portfolio use in graduate medical education; (b) examine efficacy of portfolio use, based upon studies in the field; and (c) offer a discussion of considerations for implementing portfolios. Summary: Two searches of PubMed, OVID, JSTOR, SCOPUS, and FirstSearch Wilson Select were conducted between October 2006 and April 2007 to identify studies and articles related to portfolio usage. Thirty-nine articles met criteria and were reviewed. Conclusions: There is wide variation in how portfolios are utilized within U.S. residency programs. The challenge for graduate medical education is to create consensus on the definition and purpose of portfolios, such that best practices in portfolio implementation and assessment can be achieved. Copyright © 2008, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The present review focuses on the education needs and related pedagogical aspects of education in forensic psychiatry. RECENT FINDINGS: Physicians specializing in other fields generally deal with concepts that are thoroughly addressed in forensic psychiatry, such as the ability of patients to consent to treatment, confidentiality, victimization, and risk factors for auto and hetero-lesive behaviour. Present practices like the advance of e-health and patients? rights call for ethical and responsible attitudes. There are a variety of programs providing specific training for psychiatrists willing to work in the forensic area and renewed pedagogical trends are gradually being incorporated. Many articles point out the need to enforce the teaching of expert communication abilities while others warn of the poor economic incentive of forensic psychiatry as a career. SUMMARY: Forensic psychiatry teaching is undergoing a period of significant evolution and expansion. New didactic trends, specific pedagogical research and an increase in training needs in other fields of medicine are promising. It is important to ensure that the formal training provided in every country is comparable and that those who teach and learn this complex field are acknowledged. © 2008 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Exploring the unique challenges of vocational education, this book provides simple and straightforward advice on how to teach English Language Learners in today's Career and Technical Education programs. The authors' teaching framework and case studies draw from common settings in which career and technical educators find themselves working with ELLs-in the classroom, in the laboratory or workshop, and in work-based learning settings. By integrating CTE and academic instruction, and embedding career development activities across the curriculum, readers will gain a better understanding of the challenges of teaching occupationally-oriented content to a diverse group of learners in multiples settings. © 2009 Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved.

This article outlines an illuminative evaluation study of the work-based module in a vocational qualification in Animal Health offered for the paraveterinary industry by a distance education institution in South Africa. In illuminative evaluation, a programme is studied by qualitative methods to gain an in-depth understanding of its ‘instructional system’, its intended teaching arrangements, as well as its ‘learning milieu’, the actual sites of learning interaction. This results in a rich description of the programme that allows ‘matches’ and ‘mismatches’ between the instructional system and learning milieu to be uncovered. In this study, this approach provided useful information relevant to the quality assurance of the module, and also generated significant insights about the design and delivery of work-based learning in vocational qualifications in general. © 2008, © 2008 SAGE Publications.

The goal of all dental schools is to develop competent, knowledgeable dentists who have excellent communication skills and a sense of social responsibility. This paper describes the theoretical reasoning behind the design of an innovative dental curriculum constructed from first principles in the UK. The recognised theories of psychologists, educationalists and sociologists of the twentieth century have informed our educational decisions. In practice, this translates to a blended learning environment with problem-based learning (PBL) case scenarios at its heart. The learning of clinical and communication skills, which begins in year 1, week 1, is absolutely integral to the case scenarios, as are ethics and professionalism. PBL is supported by a comprehensive e-learning platform, plenary lectures, workshops, clinical and life science teaching delivered by core academic staff and guest speakers who are the experts in our 'community of practice' in which the students are the novices. We believe that the whole is best described as 'enquiry-based learning'. © 2008 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

The Challenges to Library Learning: Solutions for Librarians is an insightful volume that offers a practical philosophy of engagement that can be used to meet the growing challenges facing librarians, including staffing shortages, depleted or eliminated training budgets, longer hours, greater workloads, and rapidly-changing technology, hindering the ability-and willingness-of employees to continue job education in library sciences. With three decades of experience as a library administrator, author Bruce E. Massis details an effective plan for inspiring initiative in the learner to pursue a goal-oriented and individualized approach to learning - helping the library to become more efficient, productive, and user-centered. Topics discussed include overcoming staff disengagement, accepting e-learning as a routine learning model, teaching and measuring information literacy training, creating a flexible alternative staffing model, the Community of Learning Program (CLP) for library staff, and the details of creating and implementing a training program. The Challenges to Library Learning: Solutions for Librarians is a vital and practical resource for anyone actively involved or pursuing a career in library administration. © 2008 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people's behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way. © 2008 Roy Fisher, Ann Harris and Christine Jarvis. All rights reserved.