Complex Set Of Skills Research Articles

Theory of mind, directly and indirectly, facilitates kindergarten adjustment via verbal ability, executive function, and emotion knowledge

AbstractTheory of mind describes the ability to engage in perspective‐taking, understand intentions, and predict actions and emotions. Theory of mind typically achieves major developmental milestones around age of 5, coinciding with the transition to kindergarten, and is associated with a verbal ability (receptive and expressive vocabulary), executive function (inhibitory control and working memory), and emotion knowledge. Less is known about how the theory of mind operates in low‐income samples, where foundational skills (i.e., verbal ability, executive function, and emotion knowledge) tend to be delayed. Applied to classrooms, the theory of mind may support the transition to kindergarten by facilitating relationships, learning‐related behaviors, and socioemotional skills that require perspective‐taking. In a low‐income sample of 140 kindergarteners across 21 classrooms, the theory of mind was directly associated with teacher‐ratings of social and emotional skills, behavioral and academic adjustment, and closeness within the teacher–child relationship, beyond the contribution of foundational skills. Moreover, verbal ability, executive function, and emotion knowledge were indirectly associated with outcomes through the theory of mind. Findings suggest the theory of mind facilitates the transition to kindergarten and is built upon a complex set of foundational skills.

A Practical Approach to Lead Removal

Removal of cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIED) is an important and growing field when managing patients presenting with device infections, need for upgrades, and lead failure. The complex skillset of transvenous lead removal is in high demand along with increasing numbers of implanted CIEDs. A systematic and comprehensive approach to this field, including knowledge of all available tools and vascular access techniques is essential for successful outcomes. This article serves as a practical resource presenting tools and techniques of transvenous lead extraction to help refine and master one's skill.

КОМПЛЕКСНА ОСВІТНЯ ПЛАТФОРМА ПРОЕКТНОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ У СФЕРІ ЕНЕРГОЕФЕКТИВНОСТІ

Application of complex approach to the creation of holistic educational platform of project activities in the field of energy efficiency. The well-known personal-oriented methods of quality assurance of educational services are used as the basic factors of creating a complex set of skills, knowledge and competencies in the sphere of energy efficiency and an innovative process of obtaining them for students with different basic professional level. The realization of project-oriented educational platform involves the use of personalized learning technologies with the use of base of engineering and scientific projects to increase energy efficiency; allows forming elastically the content of the modules of multi-level training of students with a unique set of practical skills, knowledge and competences for each using the innovative process of obtaining them. The basic principles of educational platform for project activities in the field of energy efficiency creating are formed, the components of which have a multi-level structure for training and advanced training, implemented in the form of interconnected modules, courses, trainings that allowing to choose an individual educational trajectory for the hearer, taking into account the direction of specialization and professional interests.

Aligning rights-holders’ marketing assets with brand marketers’ needs

There is no simple answer to the challenge marketers, rights-holders and agencies face when considering the best approach to align properties or rights-holders’ assets with brand marketers’ needs. The following is intended to serve as both a philosophical and a tactical guide or process to approach this question. If the reader finds themselves nodding in agreement or questioning how new or revolutionary the points are, then perhaps, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, this paper has served its purpose. Is it not true that tackling a new challenge or more complex skill set always requires being grounded in the fundamentals? To use sports as an example, people often revere great performances, accomplishments or championship moments, but overlook the hours, years or even lifetime of practising the basics in the pursuit of that endeavour. This is not to say that the points and information to follow are elementary; rather, if the approach is deliberate and all necessary steps are followed, then Aristotle’s words continue to hold true and can be applied to the process described in this paper: ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ These words are often quoted by coaches all over the world when addressing their teams and seem an appropriate context, as sports is often the default sponsorship landscape many think of when discussing sponsorship and the rights-holder/brand marketer relationship dynamic. Admittedly, this topic may not be as glamorous as making a game-winning play or merit the attention of anyone outside the marketing profession, but at the same time, the author is confident that both cases share a common goal: to find success by becoming the best at what they do. If this sounds a bit too quintessential, the author would again offer that to reach the end game, one must first break down the process into many smaller steps, and as one starts the process (or revisits it, as will be most likely the case for many reading this), it is essential to place the highest value on the preparation for getting there. This paper discusses the process and steps that can be taken to align rights-holders’ assets and brand marketers’ needs.

The Implementation of Hybrid Computer Mediated Collaborative Learning (HCMCL) for Promoting Students’ Critical Thinking at IAIN Salatiga, Indonesia

This article stresses on answering the questions on how HCMCL implemented for promoting students’ critical thinking, and how the students’ potentials of critical thinking in the aspects of communication, reasoning, and self-reflection promoted in the class. The ethnographic-case study was undertaken in writing skills. Descriptive- Qualitative is used to analyze the findings. The data gathered from in-depth interview, field notes, questionnaires and students’ documents. The finding reveals that the lecturer considered the four key dimensions of time, fidelity, space, and humanness in its implementation. The data also reveals that HCMCL can promote student’s potentials of critical thinking in communication, reasoning, and self-reflection. However, some points needed to be improved by the learners in the first aspect especially related with linguistics conventions. HCMCL provides the chances for the learners to communicate with their peers and other members of group to complete the tasks. This process demand the students to work in a group which requires another set of complex skills; students needed to manage interdependence with others and to reconcile differences for mutual benefit.

Primary Teacher Students’ Understanding of Fraction Representational Knowledge in Slovenia and Kosovo

The study of primary teacher students’ knowledge of fractions is very important because fractions present a principal and highly complex set of concepts and skills within mathematics. The present study examines primary teacher students’ knowledge of fraction representations in Slovenia and Kosovo. According to research, there are five subconstructs of fractions: the part-whole subconstruct, the measure subconstruct, the quotient subconstruct, the operator subconstruct and the ratio subconstruct. Our research focused on the part-whole and the measure subconstructs of fractions, creating nine tasks that were represented by different modes of representation: area/region, number line and sets of objects. The sample consisted of 76 primary teacher students in Slovenia and 93 primary teacher students in Kosovo. Both similarities and differences of the primary teacher students’ interpretations of the representations across the two countries were revealed and compared. The findings suggest that primary teacher students from both countries need to upgrade their understanding of fractions. The analysis confirms that the formal mathematical knowledge acquired by primary teacher students is not necessarily adequate for teaching elementary concepts in school.

Considerations on the Contributions of Judo to the Development and Improvement of Motor Qualities and Skills Pertaining to Close Combat

Abstract The growing complexity of the physical and mental demands of the modern battlefield imposes an intensive program of instruction and education of the military meant to improve their performances. Through its specific training methods and means, judo ensures a complex set of motor and utilitarian-applicative skills and abilities, as well as a wide capacity of focusing attention and will, necessary in the fighter’s adjustment to the rapid and unexpected changes which appear during the combat

The Impact of Health-Conscious Eating in Improving Physical Performance in Military Physical Training

Abstract Military conflicts throughout history, as well as in recent times have demanded fighters to possess a complex set of physical and mental skills meant to ensure the foundation of efficiency and functionality, an objective to be attained through a process of intensive training, which many times exerts the body to the extreme. In order to meet these requirements, the military have to adopt a proper sports lifestyle characterized by a health-conscious eating

On carrot cake and marketing education: A perspective on balancing skills for employability

The current climate for marketing education demands a complex set of skills for our graduates: critical and creative thinking, good communication skills, marketing knowledge, and specific technical skills. In addition, knowledge is far more readily available outside the formal university institution. In response, marketing educators need to address these demands. Based on existing literature, this paper proposes four categories of skills: thinking and learning skills, personal soft skills, marketing knowledge and technical skills. A metaphor is presented as a means through which the co-existence of these skills may be conceptualised. With this view, thinking and learning and personal soft skills are at the core, into which marketing knowledge is learned and applied. Technical skills are added but with caution, ensuring that they are placed in the context of marketing knowledge, and help to develop thinking and learning, and personal soft skills. Implications and suggestions are provided for educators as we plan programmes, courses and lectures. A challenge is also presented to the wider Academy to create a standardised designation which acknowledges these skills.

CLIPS (Communication Learning in Practice for Scientists): A New Online Resource Leverages Assessment to Help Students and Academics Improve Science Communication.

The ability to communicate is a crucial graduate outcome for science students; however, crowded curricula and large class sizes make it difficult to find time to explicitly teach foundational communication skills. In response to these challenges, we developed an online resource called Communication Learning in Practice for Scientists, or CLIPS. CLIPS provides a multi-point mentoring model that has allowed us to successfully integrate the teaching and learning of a complex set of tacitly-understood skills across multiple scientific disciplines. It also provides a flexible way for industry experts, academics, and students to learn from one another’s experiences of, and expertise in, science communication. CLIPS leverages the student focus on assessment; students access CLIPS for pragmatic, detailed, and consistent advice when undertaking assessment tasks. In creating CLIPS, our philosophy was that communication is the core business of any scientific practice, not an add-on after the event. Extensive, repeated use of CLIPS by both students and academics indicates that the resource and its delivery model are considered useful, respected, and impactful for, and by, the intended audiences. We have provided CLIPS to the science education community through www.clips.edu.au.

Democracy in Higher Education Courses: Transformative Strategies

<p><em>Teaching/Learning can be a mutual journey in higher education. It requires more than wanting to approach teaching and learning differently. Our schema about power and teaching must be addressed. It is not a simple thing to tease out what part of submission in learning is vital to gaining mastery and learning to think deeply and critically, and what part is inhumane. It also requires a complex skill set for ourselves and for students that must be experienced and embraced by us, then taught and practiced. It is a complex change full of excitement and cognitive as well as personal challenges. Can we allow teaching and learning to become inseparable parts of a greater whole? Constructive teaching in higher education is not just about our ability to transcend the moment but the mutual journey, all participants teaching and learning that is the miracle.</em></p>

Strengthening the Signature Pedagogy of Social Work: Conceptualizing Field Coordination as a Negotiated Social Work Pedagogy

ABSTRACTAlthough field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work, the work of field coordinators appear to remain peripheral to other aspects of social work education, such as coursework and research. In this article, we suggest that field coordination requires a far more complex set of knowledge and skills than merely matching students with placements based on availability and interest. Using critical and relational theories, this article conceptualizes field coordination as a negotiated pedagogy in which the coordinators navigate complex and often competing needs among students, field agencies, and social work practice. In making visible its nuances and intricacies, we suggest that field coordination is a critical relational pedagogy essential to advancing social work education.

The Implementation of Hybrid Computer Mediated Collaborative Learning (HCMCL) for Promoting Students’ Critical Thinking at IAIN Salatiga, Indonesia

This article stresses on answering the questions on how HCMCL implemented for promoting students’ critical thinking, and how the students’ potentials of critical thinking in the aspects of communication, reasoning, and self-reflection promoted in the class. The ethnographic-case study was undertaken in writing skills. Descriptive- Qualitative is used to analyze the findings. The data gathered from in-depth interview, field notes, questionnaires and students’ documents. The finding reveals that the lecturer considered the four key dimensions of time, fidelity, space, and humanness in its implementation. The data also reveals that HCMCL can promote student’s potentials of critical thinking in communication, reasoning, and self-reflection. However, some points needed to be improved by the learners in the first aspect especially related with linguistics conventions. HCMCL provides the chances for the learners to communicate with their peers and other members of group to complete the tasks. This process demand the students to work in a group which requires another set of complex skills; students needed to manage interdependence with others and to reconcile differences for mutual benefit.

Perspective: The Fundamental Value of Engineering Pedagogy for Realizing Personalized Medicine

Fundamental benefits suggest that biomedical engineering and medicine should form a more convergent alliance, especially for the training of tomorrow’s physicians and biomedical engineers. Herein, we review the rationale underlying these benefits. Biological discovery has advanced beyond the era of molecular biology into the new, still largely uncharted era of molecular systems biology. The concomitant shift in focus toward understanding the fundamental rules and principles governing the behavior of complex living systems has important medical implications. To realize cost-effective personalized medicine, it is necessary to propagate the emerging advances in molecular systems biology to higher levels of biological organization that focus on organs, organ system, and whole organisms, and then to develop new, individualized medical therapeutics based on medical informatics and targeted computer simulations. To accomplish these goals, higher education in the biological and medical sciences must adapt to new training objectives. This adaptation must involve a shifting away from reductionist problem solving toward more integrative, systemic, and predictive modeling approaches that traditionally have been more associated with education in engineering. Future biomedical engineers and MDs must be able to predict clinical responses to therapeutic interventions. This necessity mandates that medical training must become more like engineering education, wherein future physicians are taught fundamental rules governing complex system behaviors and skill sets for manipulating these systems to achieve practically feasible, desired clinical outcomes. Correspondingly, graduate biomedical engineering programs must increase the students’ practical exposure to pressing clinical problems. The fundamental goal of medical intervention is to accomplish a sustained beneficial change in the behavior of a complex feedback-controlled homeostatic system (i.e., the patient). The direct and indirect responses of such systems to any substantial interventions are notoriously difficult to fathom by the unaided human mind, thus begging the question how modern science and engineering may help. There appears to be great potential for medical students to gain benefits from learning and engaging in models of engineering control systems applied to medical practice. A particularly powerful target domain is regenerative medicine, which is already accustomed to translating engineering concepts into medical advances. Tissue engineering, organoid development, and regenerative medicine are prime examples of promising new technologies that will ultimately require a grasp of fundamental bioengineering control theory, not simply for understanding how biological systems work, but also for envisioning how we can exert steady-state control in these living, adaptive systems. Here, we propose that near-future medical education should shift toward integrative analysis of system function and malfunction and toward the development of therapies utilizing control concepts. Such a shift will eventually make personalized medicine feasible, practical, and affordable, but requires a significant rethinking of existing pedagogical tools.

An after-school intervention targeting executive function and visuospatial skills also improves classroom behavior

Executive function (EF) describes a complex set of skills, including flexible attention, inhibitory control, and working memory, that coordinate to achieve behavioral regulation. Visuospatial skills (VS) describe the capacity to visually perceive and understand spatial relationships among objects. Emerging research suggests VS skills are associated with classroom functioning, including behavioral adjustment. Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to enter school with EF and VS deficits, with consequences for classroom adjustment. In response, we developed and experimentally tested an after-school intervention that incorporates fine and gross motor activities targeting EF and VS skills in a sample of 87 kindergarten and first-grade students from low-income communities. The aim of the present study was to preliminarily explore whether EF and VS skills were bolstered by the intervention and subsequently whether EF and VS skills mediate or moderate intervention impacts on learning-related and problem behaviors in the classroom. Intent-to-treat analyses confirm intervention effects for EF and VS skills. Using full information maximum likelihood and bias-corrected bootstrapping, results indicate that improvements in EF mediated the impact of assignment to the treatment condition on improvements in learning-related behaviors and reductions in problem behavior. Taken together, findings suggest out-of-school contexts are a reasonable point of intervention for improving daytime classroom behavior.

Apollos Gift and Curse: Making Music as a model for Adaptive and Maladaptive Plasticity

Abstract Musicians with extensive training and playing experience provide an excellent model for studying plasticity of the human brain. The demands placed on the nervous system by music performance are very high and provide a uniquely rich multisensory and motor experience to the player. As confirmed by neuroimaging studies, playing music depends on a strong coupling of perception and action mediated by sensory, motor, and multimodal integration regions distributed throughout the brain. A pianist, for example, must draw on a whole set of complex skills, including translating visual analysis of musical notation into motor movements, coordinating multisensory information with bimanual motor activity, developing fine motor skills in both hands coupled with metric precision, and monitoring auditory feedback to fine-tune a performance as it progresses. This article summarizes research on the effects of musical training on brain function, brain connectivity and brain structure. First we address factors inducing and continuously driving brain plasticity in dedicated musicians, arguing that prolonged goal-directed practice, multi-sensory-motor integration, high arousal, and emotional and social rewards contribute to these plasticity-induced brain adaptations. Subsequently, we briefly review the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology underpinning musical activities. Here we focus on the perception of sound, integration of sound and movement, and the physiology of motor planning and motor control. We then review the literature on functional changes in brain activation and brain connectivity along with the acquisition of musical skills, be they auditory or sensory-motor. In the following section we focus on structural adaptions in the gray matter of the brain and in fiber-tract density associated with music learning. Here we critically discuss the findings that structural changes are mostly seen when starting musical training after age seven, whereas functional optimization is more effective before this age. We then address the phenomenon of de-expertise, reviewing studies which provide evidence that intensive music-making can induce dysfunctional changes which are accompanied by a degradation of skilled motor behavior, also termed “musician’s dystonia”. This condition, which is frequently highly disabling, mainly affects male classical musicians with a history of compulsive working behavior, anxiety disorder or chronic pain. Functional and structural brain changes in these musicians are suggestive of deficient inhibition and excess excitation in the central nervous system, which leads to co-activation of antagonistic pairs of muscles during performance, reducing movement speed and quality. We conclude with a concise summary of the role of brain plasticity, metaplasticity and maladaptive plasticity in the acquisition and loss of musicians’ expertise.

Performance on the Frontline of Tourist Decision Making

There have been recent calls to reconceptualize tourist decision-making models. This study presents evidence for a model that depicts on-site tourist decision making as a socially embedded (discursive) performance in which frontline tourism staff members play key roles. Such performances aim to achieve tourism experiences that serve the multiple interests of participants in the decision-making process. Interviews with frontline staff in Canterbury, New Zealand, revealed a “performance” in which a complex set of discursive skills, interpersonal strategies, and service attributes were displayed. Together these generate—via conversation—socially embedded environments of trust that, in turn, lead to outcomes optimized for decision-making effort, decision justifiability, and the avoidance of negative emotions. Findings are discussed within the framework of the “discursive action model,” which highlights a process that has appropriate tourist experience, deemed authentic, as its goal.

Global Performance of Executive Function Is Predictor of Risk of Frailty and Disability in Older Adults.

The executive function is a complex set of skills affected during the aging process and translate into subclinical cerebrovascular disease. Postural instability or motor slowness are some clinical manifestations, being consubstantial with the frailty phenotype, genuine expression of aging. Executive dysfunction is also considered a predictor of adverse health events in the elderly. To study whether the executive dysfunction can be used as an early marker for frailty and the viability of use as a predictor of mortality, hospitalization and/or disability in a Mediterranean population. A population-based cohort study using data from the Toledo Study for Healthy Aging (TSHA). 1690 Spanish elders aged ≥65 years underwent a neuropsychological evaluation in order to measure executive function. To assess whether the accumulation of dysfunctions (in severity and amplitude) could increase the predictive value of adverse health events in relation to each dimension separately an executive dysfunction cumulative index was constructed. Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine mortality and hospitalization over 5.02 and 3.1 years of follow-up, respectively. Executive dysfunction is a powerful predictor of mortality, frailty and disability. Cumulative differences in executive function are associated with high risk of frailty and disability, thus, for each one point increment in the executive function index, the risk of death increased by 7 %, frailty by 13% and disability by 11% (P<0.05). Moreover, the executive impairment exhibits a strong positive tendency with age, comorbidity and mortality. Cumulative differences in four executive dimensions widely used in clinical practice improves the ability to predict frailty and disability compared to each dimension separately.

Designs for Operationalizing Collaborative Problem Solving for Automated Assessment

Collaborative problem solving is a complex skill set that draws on social and cognitive factors. The construct remains in its infancy due to lack of empirical evidence that can be drawn upon for validation. The differences and similarities between two large‐scale initiatives that reflect this state of the art, in terms of underlying assumptions about the construct and approach to task development, are outlined. The goal is to clarify how definitions of the nature of the construct impact the approach to design of assessment tasks. Illustrations of two different approaches to the development of a task designed to elicit behaviors that manifest the construct are presented. The method highlights the degree to which these approaches might constrain a comprehensive assessment of the construct.

Visualising and examining sequential actions as behavioural paths that can be interpreted as markers of complex behaviours

Visualisation of pathways taken by students through problem solving environments provides the potential to identify patterns of exploratory behaviour that may relate to different levels of proficiency or different cognitive approaches. This is particularly the case when problems are situated in complex online environments and are programmed to generate large scale data for analysis.Using process data from an online collaborative problem solving task, we visualised behavioural paths of 607 pairs of students as directed graphs. The empirical paths were then examined using exploratory network analysis based on four main aspects of exploration (prominence, branches, clusters, and shortest paths).The primary purpose of such analysis is to detect sequences that are potentially relevant for establishing particular paths as meaningful markers of complex behaviours. This visualisation approach enabled us to capture all actual (as opposed to possible) pathways from the data. Although there may be an optimal pathway through a complex task according to criteria such as efficiency or correct solution, the added human factors bring a dynamic to the activity that provides a richer environment for understanding students’ collaborative processes, both cognitive and social. The method adopted in this study provides a prototype for exploration of other complex skillsets.