Creation Of Learning Opportunities Research Articles

Developing professional identity among undergraduate medical students in a competency-based curriculum: Educators' perspective

Professional identity formation (PIF) refers to the possession and exhibition of the conduct of a medical professional. It's an external representation of a medical personnel's feelings, beliefs, experiences, and values that influence the provision of holistic patient care. Apart from training medical students to be competent and skilled physicians, one of the goals of today's medical education must be to encourage them to achieve professional identity formation. Many medical schools across the globe have made this explicit during the clinical years of study, but we believe that professional identity formation starts as early as day one of medical school. So, for educators, apart from delivering basic science subject content during early years of study, the creation of learning opportunities and pedagogic space in the curriculum to enhance competencies of PIF becomes mandatory. This competency-based educational approach will help medical students transform and reconsider their own values and beliefs by relating to the behaviors that are expected by the profession, colleagues, and patients when they graduate as medical doctors. In this paper, we discuss how a competency-based curriculum should provide opportunities for students to interact and communicate effectively with patients and colleagues, to self-reflect on their own personal identity before creating a professional identity that is unique to the profession, to make the right judgment and confidently practice medicine in a business-based healthcare system.

Public-Private Partnerships for Information Sharing in the Security Sector: What’s in It for Me?

There is little research on public-private information sharing partnerships within the security sector and the benefits it may bring to both sectors. This contribution uses insights from previous research on the benefits of public-private partnerships from organisational science, information management, innovation economics, and technology studies to examine whether they are also valid within the security sector. In a first phase, this analytical framework is used to screen insights from partners involved in triple-helix collaboration in the field of innovation, technology and security. In a second phase, in-depth interviews are conducted with public and private actors involved in setting up a pilot project where information exchange is central. The research results show that traditional benefits such as increased effectiveness, efficiency, improved relationships, creation of learning opportunities and obtaining a strategic, operational, and/or economic advantage that were found in other contexts are also confirmed in the security sector. In addition, Belgian security actors saw improved decision-making and service delivery, increased personnel safety and a more integrated security chain as potential benefits. Understanding these benefits may facilitate the design of future public-private partnerships in the security sector.

Cognitive Apprenticeship in STEM Graduate Education: A Qualitative Review of the Literature

The future is dependent on the STEM graduate education system, emphasizing the importance of STEM graduate programs in producing highly trained expert researchers. The cognitive apprenticeship (CA) framework provides guidance to experts (i.e., faculty) on how to explicate their knowledge through the creation of learning opportunities that foster and support students in developing expertise in a particular discipline. This review examines the current landscape of research focused on the use of the CA framework in STEM graduate education. The research suggests the CA framework is a useful and effective model for supporting faculty in cultivating rich learning opportunities for STEM graduate students.

Cumulative knowledge-building for inclusive education in initial teacher education

ABSTRACTInitial teacher education must respond to the demand that newly qualified teachers are able to teach inclusively. This response has been the creation of opportunities for learning in coursework and field experiences. Research has identified the impact of these initiatives and also revealed challenges. One such challenge is the lack of a coherent conceptual framework that leads to a disconnection between coursework and field experiences. We frame this challenge as the need for cumulative knowledge-building as part of developing inclusive teaching as a knowledge-based practice. Drawing on the conceptual repertoire of Legitimation Code Theory, we argue for programme design that systematically develops pre-service teachers’ conceptual and contextual understandings of inclusive teaching through a structured interplay between coursework and field experiences. Assessment plays an important role in showing students what is important in a curriculum, so we suggest approaches to assessment of inclusive teaching competence that supports knowledge-building.

Expert–Novice Negotiation within Learning Opportunities in Online Intercultural Interactions

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and e-communication tools have introduced new pedagogical tools and activities that contribute to the development of language learners’ academic, multilingual, and intercultural skills and competences. Moreover, CMC has reinforced communication and collaboration between individuals and educational institutions through projects of intercultural language exchanges (ILE). Most of these exchanges idealise ‘nativeness’, and assert the L1 speaker as an expert ‘by default’. These models of ILE believe that the incorporation of a L1S is key to the creation of learning opportunities. This paper contests this belief. The one-to-one online video conversations took place on Skype between language learners of English and/or French over a period of four months. The dyads comprise the following speakers’ constellations: a L1S of French with a L1S of English, and a L1S of English with an Algerian (L2/LF of French and English). To assure equity in the use of languages, I scheduled two sessions every week, one in English and the second in French. This paper investigates the expert/novice dichotomy and how it is negotiated in the learning opportunities they have created. It also casts light on the speakers’ communicative strategies and linguaculture(s) included in overcoming intercultural misunderstanding and miscommunication when using or not using their L1, French and/or English. These intercultural interactions have uncovered that the novice–expert roles alternate between the speakers despite the language of communication and their L1s. The interactants used several strategies and channels, namely pragmatic strategies such as repetition, nonverbal cues to ask for clarification and signal intercultural misunderstandings, translanguaging and their multilingual repertoires in order to construct meaning, achieve their communicative goals or in case of the lack of linguistic resources.

Characteristics and perceptions of twice-weekly webinars for primary care physicians in Japan: a qualitative study.

ObjectivesTo explore the characteristic features and perceived value of free twice-weekly webinars predominantly focusing on the continuing professional development of primary care physicians in Japan. MethodsIn this qualitative study, we conducted a focus group of the webinars’ participants (n=6, a purposive sample). The discussion was recorded, with the recording subsequently transcribed, separated into meaningful segments and then open-coded until thematic saturation was reached. Concepts were generated through selective coding. Finally, the extracted concepts were grouped into categories. ResultsExtracted concepts were grouped into five categories: technological breakthroughs, the creation of learning opportunities, external interaction, stimulation of internal interaction, and the advantages and disadvantages of nationwide expansion. The webinars were perceived to provide a comfortable learning climate, enabling physicians to teach one another, share their experiences and become virtual colleagues. The chat system stimulated real-time interaction between both a main speaker and participants and the participants. Participants were able to ask questions or give comments in a stress-free atmosphere. The webinars were found to elicit real-time, internal interaction within participating sites without interrupting the sessions. Participants also highly valued the absence of commercial sponsorship. The expansion of the webinars raised two concerns: the possibility of speakers becoming nervous and the increased burden on the organizers. ConclusionsThe webinars have successfully allowed sharing of unbiased information and experiences in a comfortable, multifaceted interactive learning environment, enabling participants to feel connected. The chat system permitted interaction not feasible in face-to-face learning opportunities and has shown great promise as a means of online medical education.

The Children's Delphi: considerations for developing a programme for promoting children's self‐concept and well‐being

AbstractThis study is premised on the notion that intervention programmes aimed at improving children's well‐being should be inclusive of activities which promote children's self‐concept. Using a child participation framework, this study aimed to explore children's perceptions of the nature and content of intervention programmes aimed at improving children's self‐concept within two impoverished communities of the Western Cape, South Africa. The Delphi technique was followed with a group of 10 children between the ages of 10 and 12 years who were considered to be knowledgeable experts and authorities on matters affecting their lives and well‐being of children. They suggested that intervention programmes include a focus on safety, the provision of social support, the creation of opportunities for learning and for play and the provision of basic material needs.

Interactive and Interdisciplinary Student Work: A Facilitative Methodology to Encourage Lifelong Learning

In order to support and facilitate continuous learning and a growth mindset, it is essential that students be exposed to learning opportunities that explicitly allow them to apply and practice what they have learned. (Dweck, 2007)This paper focuses on one such approach, taken in the My Learning Essentials skills support programme developed at the University of Manchester. This programme rests on a constructivist and collectivist approach that requires student engagement in the creation of learning opportunities and thus encourages students to apply what they have learned to a wide variety of opportunities and assessments, pushing the response to feedback or to an identified skills gap from specific assignments to skill progression and personal development. In addition, the facilitators of such sessions are also freed from the role of “expert” and instead act as knowledge builders with the rest of the group. This change removes the possibility of one “correct” answer and the assumption of eventual perfection and instead encourages the entire group to focus on understanding the process and progressing both within the session and beyond. Although there are still a number of questions to be answered, initial feedback and investigations support the assertions that students engagement in the creation of such opportunities leads to a clearer understanding of the efficacy of the skills involved and the power of the prior knowledge of the community.

La Cultura de la Participación

La cultura de la participación implica modelos de comunicación horizontales donde las relaciones de poder proporcionan a cada individuo la posibilidad de intercambiar puntos de vista, expresar ideas, comentarios, experiencias así como trabajar colaborativamente. Esta cultura de la participación implica pensar y desarrollar una cultura de la comunicación que supere los modelos heredados de las teorías funcionalistas. La Web 2.0, en general, y las redes sociales, en particular, son los escenarios adecuados para la participación que ponen en juego los principios de la inteligencia colectiva, la intercreatividad y la arquitectura de la participación. En este escenario de la Web 2.0 se construye un ecosistema infocomunicativo que modifica todas las reglas tradicionales sobre audiencias. ¿Qué tipo de público son los públicos de la participación? ¿Qué tipo de interacciones establecen entre sí? ¿Cómo se participa y qué calidad de participación se establece?. La ciudadanía, para Manuel Castells (1998) es una gran mente interactuante o una webactora en términos de Pisani y Piotet (2009) con capacidad para crear dentro del espacio digital su propia información y su propio estilo comunicativo. Esta ciudadanía digital participa en los escenarios virtuales dejando su huella y su rastro a modo de identidad digital. La cultura de la participación implica relaciones que permiten compartir, resolver problemas, desarrollar tareas, construir conjuntamente conocimiento y desarrollar canales de comunicación dinámicos. Esta cultura de la participación aplicada a contextos educativos permite crear oportunidades de aprendizaje y diversificar en los social media un mayor poder de la ciudadanía como usuaria digital.

Strategic classrooms: Learning communities which nurture the development of learner strategies

This article explores the role which the social context of learning plays in the development of learner strategies. It is based on longitudinal foreign language classroom research in state comprehensive schools in the UK. It is built on the premise that the development of learner strategies is linked to the type of learning context in which they are situated. If one accepts that learning contexts are co-constructed by students and teachers themselves, then ‘classroom culture’ can be seen as pivotal in determining the effectiveness of learner strategies. This study highlights three components of classrooms where the context for learning impacts on the development of learner strategies: classroom culture, scaffolded learning, and the creation of learning opportunities. In this study, it is the collaborative action research process itself, mediated by technology, which contributes to the classroom becoming a learning community. It encourages the teacher to develop and articulate her own theory of practice, which in turn helps to clarify strategic development in learners. The findings suggest that an alternative starting point for exploring learner strategy development is to focus on the macro-level: a learning environment which enables teachers and learners to be more aware of the context-embedded strategies that will inform and support individual learner strategies. Evidence is presented which suggests that learner strategies can be conceptualized as ‘by-products’ of mediation and social activity in a learning community. The conclusion drawn is not one of ‘cause and effect’ but rather that a combined approach to learner strategies at both macro- (learning context) and micro- (individual) levels has powerful potential which merits further research.

The semiotics and ecologyof language learning - perception, voice, identity and democracy

This presentation will outline the principles of a semiotic and ecological approach to language learning, and the practical consequences for classroom teaching and learning that follow from taking such an approach. A semiotic and ecological view of language and of learning entails that the context – physical, social and symbolic – is a central element in teaching and learning, and that issues such as embodiment of language and spatio-temporal structures are instrumental in the creation of learning opportunities. The approach emphasizes the development of the learner’s social self and identity within the context of a democratic community of learning. At the practical level the presentation will discuss project-based learning and the roles of modeling, scaffolding and collaborative learning.