Education Should Research Articles

Does Mathematical Precision Ensure Valid Grades? What Every Veterinary Medical Educator Should Know.

Veterinary medical educators use a variety of methods for calculating student grades. Most educators assume grades will be valid as long as the mathematical calculations underpinning each grading method are correct. The purpose of this "teaching tip" is to demonstrate and discuss how mathematical precision does not necessarily equate to truthful scores that accurately reflect what students know or can do. We contend that this topic is of considerable importance to all veterinary educators who assign grades, and to academic deans who make decisions about grading policies.

Why Higher Education Should Have a Leftist Bias by Donald Lazere (review)

Why Higher Education Should Have a Leftist Bias by Donald Lazere (review)

Mentoring in Higher Education Should be the Norm to Assure Success: Lessons Learned from the Faculty Mentoring Program, West Chester University, 2008–2011

Despite a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data regarding the positive effects of higher education mentoring programs on faculty satisfaction, retention, tenure, and promotion, mentoring programs are not widespread. The authors examine evaluative data from the first four years of the Faculty Mentoring Program at West Chester University. Of the mentors and mentees who filled out evaluation surveys, 100% recommend the program to colleagues and the majority felt the program should become part of the culture and expectations at the university. Common themes emerged from content analysis of qualitative data: (a) centrality of relationship; (b) mentoring for planning and prioritizing career goals; (c) acquiring new skills; and (d) time and scheduling challenges.

Focus on Inclusive Education: The Educational and Social Challenges of Children With Celiac Disease: What Educators Should Know

Celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disease in which gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and contaminated oats, attacks the lining of the small intestine. Children with this disease m...

Why Medical Educators Should Continue to Focus on Clinical Outcomes

Why Medical Educators Should Continue to Focus on Clinical Outcomes To the Editor: In their recent Perspective, Cook and West argue that clinical outcomes should not be the sole focus of medical education research, and they offer excellent advice for designing research and selecting outcomes that will best inform medical education. Although we agree it is challenging to extend the end point of medical education research to the clinical environment, we believe such work is critical to improvements not only in education but also in patient safety and health care quality.

Double Testing: A Student Perspective

EVALUATION IN NURSING EDUCATION SHOULD BE USED NOT ONLY TO EVALUATE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, BUT TO SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING AS WELL (NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR NURSING, 2012). Double testing allows the instructor to evaluate student learning while reinforcing information, promoting collaboration, and decreasing student anxiety in testing situations. This study used a survey to examine how accelerated nursing students experienced double testing in a medical-surgical course. The study was designed to determine the stress level students experienced with double testing, their satisfaction with the method, and the advantages and disadvantages they perceived. Open-ended questions in the survey instrument provided more information as to the students' thoughts and feelings regarding double testing.With double testing, students take an examination as individuals and then retake the same examination as part of a group. This approach promotes active dialogue, allowing students to address complex care issues and problems regarding the nursing care of patients while in a testing situation. It offers an opportunity to use critical thinking, reinforce learning, and collaborate with peer professionals (Sandahl, 2009), an expectation in health care delivery, education, and research. Students have reported less anxiety when double testing is used as an opportunity for collaboration (Sandahl). This evaluation method provides assessment and evaluation data while fostering group communication skills (Michaelson & Sweet, 2011; Wotring, Alpers, Brown, & Jarrell, 2009).Method A convenience sample of 15 students in a medical-surgical course completed questionnaires after being told that their responses would remain anonymous. Permission was obtained from the university institutional review board prior to surveying the accelerated nursing students.The students (14 were women), completed a medical-surgical exam individually during a specified period of time. The exams and answer sheets were then collected and students were randomly assigned to a four-member group to retake the exam collaboratively. The students were able to discuss the questions and the rationales for their answers in their assigned groups. After the discussion period, the students decided whether to keep their original answers or to change some answers. The students then completed a second answer sheet, and the higher of the two scores was used for the grade calculation. This process was utilized for each unit exam.The survey was conducted on the last day of the course. Students completed five Likert-type scale questions and three open-ended questions regarding their opinions and perceptions of double testing. All students completed the survey.Results using a five-point Likert scale, with scores ranging from 5 (very likely) to 1 (definitely not), 93.3 percent of the students indicated they would recommend double testing for use in a course. They were very likely (66.7 percent) to see advantages when double testing was used. And most (66.7 percent) believed double testing very likely enhanced their learning. Overall, the students rated their acceptance and potential for recommendation of double testing at above average levels. No students were unlikely to recommend double testing.Students also used a Likert scale to estimate their stress level when testing individually and during double testing. With scores ranging from 5 (very high stress) to 1 (no stress), 40 percent rated their stress level as very high and 33.3 percent rated their stress level as high. With double testing, no students reporting having a very high stress level; 53.3 percent reported mild stress.Learning, communication, and collaboration were threads throughout the responses to the open-ended questions. Several students commented on reinforcing learning through discussion, and one student pointed to the opportunity to discuss rationales for selecting answers. Another student wrote, Since nursing is a collaborative profession double testing is more like real-life nursing. …

The Tao: What Engineering Education Should Concern - Teachings from Tao Te Ching

Engineering education has been a very important branch of Chinese national education and an indispensable part of Chinese national strategy aiming at enforcing the comprehensive national strength. By referring to the Tao, we attempt to argue that engineering education should proceed by its own nature, evolve through establishing certain harmonious relationships and maintain dynamic sources for its development and prosperity. The Tao is mysterious but it provides us a particular angle to consider and evaluate the nature and significance of engineering education. It relates to society, university, engineering students, etc. and unconsciously has effects upon its associated “beings”. Thus, we should know that in the globalized world, engineering education ought to make an adjustment in knowledge absorbing so as to realize the “knowledge recombination” from only academic studies to multiple participations of all required engineering communications.

What Teachers in Pre-vocational Education Should Teach and What They Actually Teach: A Comparison of Curricula and Teaching in Germany and China

This article compares the pre-vocational education curriculum plans in lower-secondary schools in Germany and Mainland China, and their implementation. Choosing the curricula of certain school types in two selected regions in both countries, this research first carries out a content analysis of the curriculum plans, using the criteria developed from the curriculum development theory of Reetz. In the second step, based on the findings on the theoretical level, some semi-structured in-depth teacher interviews are conducted in both countries with the purpose of finding out the degree of curriculum implementation as well as influencing factors in the actual teaching practice. The investigation reveals that in both countries certain disparities exist between the curriculum plan on the one hand and the teaching reality on the other hand. The reasons for the disparity are largely different in the two countries and are closely related to the varied institutional settings, the financial situation, as well as teacher training, etc.

The Right ?Dose? of Activity: Health Educators Should Promote Mindful and Intuitive Exercise

The Right ?Dose? of Activity: Health Educators Should Promote Mindful and Intuitive Exercise

技術者教育に関する一考

技術者教育に関する一考

Consider the Way Publication Education Should Be: from Syllabus Investigation at Universities

Consider the Way Publication Education Should Be: from Syllabus Investigation at Universities

Why Natural Resources Educators Should Welcome Online Education

Abstract Online education (the use of online technologies for teaching and learning) will play an increasingly important role in natural resources education. Because it has entered the mainstream of higher education in recent years and is projected to grow in size and importance for the foreseeable future, there are many excellent reasons for natural resources educators to get involved with online education. Many natural resources educators already have an established track record of delivering online education effectively. There is substantial research that indicates its effectiveness and abundant evidence that getting involved in online education is rewarding for instructors and students. Although possible conflicts with research and scholarships as competing priorities need to be considered, on balance the ascendency of online education is a welcome development for natural resources educators.

Revisiting Pink Vanilla

Revisiting Pink Vanilla

Perspective: Medical Professionalism and Medical Education Should Not Involve Commitments to Political Advocacy

It is increasingly suggested that political advocacy is a core professional responsibility for physicians. The author argues that this is an error. Advocacy on behalf of societal goals, even those goals as unexceptionable as the betterment of human health, is inevitably political. Claims that political advocacy are a professional responsibility are mistaken, the author argues, because (1) civic virtues are outside the professional realm, (2) even if civic virtues were professionally obligatory, it is unclear that civic participation is necessary for such virtue, and (3) the profession of medicine ought not to require any particular political stance of its members. Claims that academic health centers should systematically foster advocacy are also deeply problematic. Although advocacy may coexist alongside the core university activities of research and education, insofar as it infects those activities, advocacy is likely to subvert them, as advocacy seeks change rather than knowledge. And official efforts on behalf of advocacy will undermine university aspirations to objectivity and neutrality.American society has conferred remarkable success and prosperity on its medical profession. Physicians are deserving of such success only insofar as they succeed in offering society excellence and dedication in professional work. Mandatory professional advocacy must displace such work but cannot substitute for it. The medical profession should steadfastly resist attempts to add advocacy to its essential professional commitments.

Electricity Education Should Emphasize Particularly on Disquisitive Teaching

Electricity Education Should Emphasize Particularly on Disquisitive Teaching

The Ethics and Legality of Beta Blockers for Performance Anxiety: What Every Educator Should Know

The Ethics and Legality of Beta Blockers for Performance Anxiety: What Every Educator Should Know

Patient Safety Education Should Start in the Preclinical Years

Patient Safety Education Should Start in the Preclinical Years

Patient Safety Education Should Start in the Preclinical Years

Patient Safety Education Should Start in the Preclinical Years

Giftedness Is Not What It Used to Be, School Is Not What It Used to Be, Their Future, and Why Psychologists in Education Should Care

For some three decades psychologists and educators have been working with incomplete or outdated ideas of what constitutes giftedness. Conceptual leadership in the field has moved from a definition based on IQ to expertise- and cognitive science-based definitions. Practice lags behind. Similarly, curriculum concepts are changing to foci based on thinking processes and cognitive apprenticeships, communities of learners, teachers and students as coconstructors of curriculum, and inquiry skills and knowledge as explicit parts of the objectives. Practice there also lags behind, but the shift is underway. This discussion elaborates on these two evolving phenomena, illustrated especially by studies completed and underway in the author’s laboratory group at McGill. It juxtaposes central ideas in gifted education, expertise, and inquiry-driven teaching and learning, and illustrates how these strands can come together for the benefit of all students—albeit sometimes in different ways.

What Middle School Educators Should Know about Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning

In the new millennium, the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) (2004) ask educators to maximize opportunities for students with disabilities to succeed in inclusive classrooms. To make autonomy and integration seamless, many students with special needs will need to make use of assistive technology. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (1990) established the working definition of assistive technology as Any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired or commercially off the shelf, modified or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of children with disabilities. (20 U.S.C. 1401 25, Sec. 300.5) Since a technology decision is part of every Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for every student with a disability (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendment, 1997), students who have sensory disabilities, such a hearing or vision, arrive at the middle school comfortable with their use of assistive technology devices. For the students with a specific learning disability who may not have needed technology at the elementary level, facing the increased demands of middle school can make a big difference. According to Gargiulo (2006), a majority of students with specific learning disabilities have reading and writing delays. Whereas, in the elementary years, students may not have needed the additional support, in middle school, technologies such as word prediction, spell check, graphic organizers, or books on tape may be necessary to facilitate successful adjustment. Most middle school general educators are familiar with computer-enhanced instruction and the use of technology for research projects, presentations, and interactive learning software. As we restructure to meet the demand for equitable education for all students (No Child Left Behind, 2001), Universal Design for Learning becomes an important tool. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is research-based model for curricular design that ensures participation in the general educational program of all students, including those with disabilities (Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), 2007). UDL emerged from the original work of Ron Mace, a renowned architect, whose work changed the blueprint of American architectural design. He designed buildings based on the needs of the intended users of the space (CAST, 2007). Mace's overarching principle was to accommodate the widest spectrum of users, including those with disabilities, without the need for subsequent adaptation or special design. In the early 1990s the staff at CAST began to expand Mace's principle to incorporate the concept of Universal Design to adapt curricula that met the needs of all learners. The goal was information accessibility for all learners. UDL supports learners by providing teachers with varying methodology options for presenting information and content. The incorporation of technology has been one way to make this happen. In the inclusive middle school, the principles of UDL, a form of differentiated instruction, allow all students access to the methods, materials, and technology that will maximize their learning. The framework of a UDL classroom begins with curricula designed to maintain high expectations for all types of learners. In this manner, UDL uses technology to supplement and enhance individualized assessment and instruction (CAST, 2007). Overview of assistive technology The 1997 amendments to IDEA assigned the final responsibility for the decisions on assistive technology services provided to students and their families to the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) team. Since 1997, we no longer confine evaluation for assistive technology to disability issues of such a severe nature that assistive technology becomes an easily recognizable need. Technology access is now an entitlement for all students protected by IDEA (i. …