Instrumental Skills Research Articles

Using Community Partnerships to Create Critical Service Learning: The Case of Mar Vista Gardens

This article discusses how community partnerships can be used to facilitate critical service-learning opportunities aimed at social change and political advocacy while creating reciprocal gains for all parties. First, a brief literature review discusses the growth of community-campus partnerships and service-learning activities within academic institutions. It summarizes the differences between the traditional charity service-learning approach and the critical service-learning approach. Then, the case of the Mar Vista housing development is introduced. The case involved local college students in a community development course partnering with high school students from a local housing project in Los Angeles. Working together, the two groups of students surveyed community residents in the housing development as part of joint learning activity. The case demonstrates how long-term relationships with community partners can promote service-learning opportunities that teach students important instrumental skills about social change while also helping them to reexamine their assumptions and increase their awareness of community issues.

Relational skill assets and anti-immigrant sentiments

This study introduces the role of relational skill assets in accounting for attitudes toward immigrants: relational skill assets. Drawing upon stratification researchers’ notion of “non-cognitive skills,” we build a theoretical framework highlighting the role of occupational skill requirements in explaining anti-immigrant sentiment. Then, utilizing two occupation-specific measures, interpersonal skill requirement and instrumental skill requirement, we construct an explanatory factor, relational skill specificity. We test its effect on anti-immigrant attitudes as well as on the concentration of foreign-born workers in occupations, using the 2004 national identity module of General Social Survey. The findings confirm our argument that workers with a higher possession of interpersonal skill assets relative to instrumental skill assets are exposed to less intense competitions with immigrants, and are therefore less likely to express anti-immigrant sentiments. Our findings suggest that occupational-level relational skill assets based on sociocultural differences play an important role in shaping native workers’ attitudes’ toward immigrants.

Construction and Evaluation of Scenarios as a Learning Strategy through Modelling-Simulation

From a systemic perspective and in the context of an increasing generalization in the use of new technologies and the change in the educational paradigm -which emphasizes guided and autonomous learning-, the learning strategy should be routed to join logical reasoning and instrumental skills (software). The inclusion of new computing and communication resources to the learning process turns them into teaching tools, which makes it possible to organize the teaching and learning process in a different way. The design of these new scenarios of study has important implications to the way information is processed, to the different levels of learning (descriptive, explanatory or analytical ones) and to the way knowledge is acquired and evaluated. In addition, that design takes into account the greater student-content, student-student and student-teacher interactivities, always emphasizing guided independent learning. Thus, the construction, analysis and evaluation of scenarios through models and simulation are the strategy that best suits the current learning style followed by students.

A View of Current Evaluative Practices in Instrumental Music Teacher Education

The purpose of this study was to examine how instrumental music educator skills are being evaluated in current undergraduate programs. While accrediting organizations mandate certain elements of these programs, they provide limited guidance on what evaluative approaches should be used. Instrumental music teacher educators in the College Music Society (n = 303) supplied data about their respective programs through an online survey. Participants reported using written and verbal feedback, self-evaluation, and rubrics most frequently. Similar evaluation processes used across program courses or experiences, such as rubrics and ePortfolios, were described by 35 percent of the music teacher educators. Most programs culminated in a semester-long student teaching period, during which preservice teachers were observed and evaluated by university supervisors three to four times. Weak correlations were indicated between some evaluative practices and music teacher educators’ expectations for program graduates’ music educator skills. Implications for music teacher education programs and suggestions for establishing evaluation policies are discussed.

Metaphysics and methods in moral enquiry and education: Some old philosophical wine for new theoretical bottles

If we reject sentimentalist accounts of the nature of moral motivation and education, then we may regard some form of reason as intrinsic to any genuine moral response. The large question for moral education is therefore that of the nature of such reason—perhaps more especially of its status as knowledge. In this regard, there is evidence of some recent drift in both ethics and theory of moral educational theory towards more instrumental pro-social skill acquisition conceptions of moral reason as more methodologically amenable to the empirical research methods of contemporary social science. This article sets out to show that the work of three great philosophers—all of whom have continued to exercise significant influence on modern and contemporary moral educational theorising and research—points in various ways to more epistemically robust conceptions of moral reason as meaningful personally formative knowledge that is not so readily amenable to natural or social scientific understanding and explanation.

Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Red-Light Emitting Au Nanoclusters with the Use of Egg White

We developed a simple, cost-effective, and eco-friendly method to synthesize gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) with red fluorescence. The experiment was performed using HAuCl4, egg white, Na2CO3 (known as soda ash or washing soda), and a microwave oven. In our experiment, fluorescent AuNCs were prepared within a reaction time of 10 min. The as-prepared AuNCs (4 to 8 nm diameter) exhibited an emission peak at 628 nm. The undergraduate students in the laboratory course synthesized fluorescent AuNCs via the proposed synthesis route. Furthermore, the students learned certain basic knowledge regarding nanomaterials and acquired useful instrumental skills.

Gender gaps in primary school achievement: A decomposition into endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender differences in endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors. This descriptive analysis is a thought experiment in which we show the consequences for school performance if girls and boys had similar resources and took similar advantage of these resources. Our findings indicate that gender differences in resources with respect to social and instrumental skills and need for achievement can explain part of the differences in performance. Boys seem to be better equipped with these resources. Additionally, boys and girls employ their skills differently. Girls take more advantage of their IQ than boys. Yet, the largest part of this parameter effect is left unexplained by IQ and non-cognitive factors.

Evaluating Clinical Dermatology Practice in Medical Undergraduates

The acquisition of competences (the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes required to perform a job to a professional level) is considered a fundamental part of medical training. Dermatology competences should include, in addition to effective clinical interviewing and detailed descriptions of skin lesions, appropriate management (diagnosis, differentiation, and treatment) of common skin disorders and tumors.Such competences can only be acquired during hospital clerkships. As a way of certifying these competences, we propose evaluating the different components as follows: knowledge, via clinical examinations or critical incident discussions; communication and certain instrumental skills, via structured workplace observation and scoring using a set of indicators; and attitudes, via joint evaluation by staff familiar with the student.

Use of the Vestibular Disorders Activities of Daily Living Scale to describe functional limitations in patients with vestibular disorders1

The Vestibular Disorders Activities of Daily Living Scale (VADL) is one of several self-rated scales in the literature that may be useful for determining level of functional limitation or disability in people with vestibular disorders. The VADL was designed by an occupational therapist for use in treatment planning during vestibular rehabilitation. Unlike many other scales the VADL is specifically focused on essential functional skills and important mobility and instrumental skills. This paper reviews the findings about the VADL, including the original research about its development and more recent papers using it. The scale is most useful for assessing the patient's perception about independence in personal, self care and basic mobility skills. It provides an outline for discussing instrumental activities of daily living.

Gender Gaps in Primary School Achievement: A Decomposition into Endowments and Returns to IQ and Non-Cognitive Factors

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender differences in endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors. This descriptive analysis is a thought experiment in which we show the consequences for school performance if girls and boys would have similar resources and take similar advantage of these resources. Our findings indicate that gender differences in resources with respect to social and instrumental skills and need for achievement can explain part of the differences in performance. Boys seem to be better equipped with these resources. Additionally, boys and girls employ their skills differently. Girls take more advantage of their IQ than boys. Yet, the largest part of this parameter effect is left unexplained by IQ and non-cognitive factors.

EPA-1386 – Cognitive-behavioral social skills training for outpatients with schizophrenia

A novel brief cognitive-behavioural SST addressing seven target behaviours proposed by Kopelowicz, Zarate, and Liberman (2006) was designed and tested in a sample of outpatients suffering from schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (Rus-Calafell et al., 2013). The proposed training was focused on the seven target behaviours: social perception, social information processing, responding and sending skills, affiliative skills, instrumental role skills, interactional skills, and behaviours governed by social norms. Furthermore, it was applied in a group format to provide the patients with opportunities to practice the newly learned skills with other subjects. Results at posttreatment showed an improvement in the self-statements during social interactions, negative symptomatology and psychopathology, and quality of life regarding mental health. Informants (most of them family) also reported a perceived positive change, in terms of social withdrawal and communication, for those patients who benefitted from SST. There was also a very positive effect of the treatment on the SST group regarding subjects’ emotional and social cognition. The authors assume that the treatment's content focused on social perception and social attribution resulted in a significant impact on these outcome measures, specifically in the emotional self-regulation statements during social interactions. In terms of subjective evaluation of the treatment, the qualitative assessment revealed a high treatment's acceptance and perceived benefit to subjects. Main application issues as well as clinical case examples will be discussed in the workshop.

Competencias que configuran el perfil del docente de primaria. Análisis de la opinión del alumnado de Grado en Educación Primaria

The purpose of this study was to examine the opinion of pre-service Elementary School Teachers from the University of La Rioja (n=105) on the teacher competency profile, in order to compare it with the results from previous studies, and to outline proposals for the training of future teachers. To this end, a Likert response self-report questionnaire consisting of different attributes was designed and administered to the students. Two different scales were found: One, related to the ‘teacher being’ competencies, composed by the ‘knowing how to do something’ and the affective-emotional skills; and a second one, concerned the ‘teacher having’ competencies, that referred to the instrumental skills, as well as to the teachers’ spirit of learning and personality. A greater agreement with those skills related to the knowledge and management of different teaching practices was found among the students. This result highlights the importance given by students to those skills that, although not been initially held, can be acquired and improved through a training process.

Increasing the Quality and Enhancing Musical Auditory Notions through Professional Training in Piano

One of the areas of art, where specific abilities are combined and their maximal and balanced development is required, is the activity of piano performance. For this reason, at the first place among the responsible tasks of the piano pedagogue (who teaches the future interpreters) is the development of the musical abilities of the student – the mode sense, methro-rhythmic sense and musical auditory notions. Musical auditory notions allow for sound impressions of varied musical sequences to be stored in the individual’s memory pool. The musical auditory experience, containing the gathered musical auditory notions, facilitates each tonal perception through identification and differentiation of the familiar, common (already stored in the memory), from the new, different, which is to be imprinted in the mind and on its turn used as a basis for future perception. The richer, more detailed, well comprehend and easily activated the musical auditory notions of the student, the more facilitated and of more quality will be the process of comprehension, learning and artistic performance of the tonal art. The professional training in piano is aimed mainly at improving the instrumental skills, development of a repertoire and building a style and general musical culture. Among the reasons for the insufficient attention of piano pedagogues on the balanced development of the musical abilities of their students, is the limited time frame of the piano lesson, as well as the requirements for the pedagogue to sent the largest possible number of prominent students to as many as possible competitions for pianists, auditions, youth festivals and concerts. The pianist being held continuously in their everyday activities on the same and only concert or competition program for reasons of assuring the maximal quality of its performance on a specific forum, leads to the creations of a relatively sparse pool of musical auditory notions. From the supplementary activities in piano training, related to the process of creation and actualization of musical auditory notions are mainly the following: reading at first glance, playing by ear, recreation from memory of works that have not been performed recently. More connected to the accumulation of a pool of musical auditory notions is the schematic learning; to the particularization and comprehension of the musical memory image, introduced in the pool of musical auditory notions through its multiple actualizations, is related the analysis of the musical work of art with the purpose of memorization and clarification of the interpreter’s conception.

Evaluación de las prácticas clínicas de Dermatología en el grado de Medicina

The acquisition of competences (the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes required to perform a job to a professional level) is considered a fundamental part of medical training. Dermatology competences should include, in addition to effective clinical interviewing and detailed descriptions of skin lesions, appropriate management (diagnosis, differentiation, and treatment) of common skin disorders and tumors.Such competences can only be acquired during hospital clerkships. As a way of certifying these competences, we propose evaluating the different components as follows: knowledge, via clinical examinations or critical incident discussions; communication and certain instrumental skills, via structured workplace observation and scoring using a set of indicators; and attitudes, via joint evaluation by staff familiar with the student.

Art Education: Thing or Device

Many of the articles in this issue focus on ways of increasing student engagement with art. Several are particularly interested in how to encourage students to initilate their own learning, creative discovery, and self-transformation. Art education, they seem to be saying, can flourish when students become involved in the world around them, using art as a vehicle for interpreting that world and understanding their relationship to it. This is all the more true when the student's own point of view is taken seriously as a starting point for those explorations.This notion that art is a form of engagement with our social, political, environmental, and cultural contexts is one that has been central to much of my own thinking over the years. However, the openended nature of art education when seen from this perspective runs up against current demands for an economic assessment of education. Is education a good investment? That is the question on the cover of the current Newsweek (201 2). Without denying that the economic costs of education are a serious matter, it is problematic to approach education in this reductive way. The transformation of the student that takes place during the educational process cannot be measured solely in terms of job preparedness and employability. Perhaps more important is the educator's success at cultivating the students' capacity to engage with their world in all the ways that the richness of that world demands.When our students leave school and university, we hope that they have more than a purely utilitarian or instrumental relationship to the arts. We are in trouble, I think, if students, their parents, school administrators, and taxpayers in general approach the value of art by asking only is it for?That question asks for the instrumental relevance of art knowledge and skills. Of course, art knowledge and skills have instrumental uses and increase employability for some students in some job markets. However, reducing art education to this purpose alone misses the full range of engagement that a successful art education would have instilled in students.It is the task of art education to introduce students to and bring them into the world of artmaking. Within this world we can face inward, focusing on the bodily skills of art production, the empathetic and cognitive processes of expression, and the critical skills of assessing and appreciating works of art. However, we can also face outward, focusing on how the broader social context provides the materials, ideas, and problems to which artworks respond. Also, we can focus on how art has an impact on that broader context as well. This world of artmaking is multi-dimensional - there is no one thing that it is for. What is learned through becoming part of this world is a way of seeing, thinking, and engaging that is more complex and important to a democratic society than mere instrumental skill and knowledge.My distinction between the instrumental approach to art education and this more complex world of artmaking echoes a distinction made by philosopher Albert Borgmann between things and devices. Writing about the philosophy of technology. Borgmann notes how modern technological development often replaces technological things with devices resulting in a gradual reduction of the engagement of individuals with the technological objects upon which they rely. Things require engagement, both physical and cognitive. Devices usually resist our engagement by virtue of their design or the specialized expertise they require. Borgmann's example is the replacement of the wood stove or hearth with the furnace. The former required physical skills such as chopping wood or laying a fire and it was the central pivot of a set of social relations and ways of being. The furnace, on the other hand, is simply a device we turn on or off. Contrast making photographs with a film camera rather than a digital camera; or compare being your own car mechanic in the 1950s as opposed to working on today's computerized cars; or contrast making your own paint and ink with buying them at the store. …

Instrumentation of hollow fiber flow field flow fractionation for selective cell elution

Hollow fiber flow field flow fractionation (HF5) columns can be built with minimized cost and instrumental skills by incorporation of commercial hollow fibers into holders made of classical chromatographic tubing and connectors. The proposed design leads to differential elution of human cells of different origin. Suspensions of red blood cells (RBC) and adherent human colorectal cancer (CRC) cell lines were used. These CRC nucleated population have been linked to cell-to-cell and cell to instrument interactions that are limiting factors in terms of recovery and viability. These interactions can be limited depending on injection/elution conditions. By using RBC we observed that the focalization/relaxation step played a major role in the elution process. However, HF5 opens a large potential, which completes the diversity shown by SdFFF in cell sorting methodologies and technologies.

Music Therapy Pedagogy: Teaching Functional Percussion Skills

The most recent version of the Professional Competencies established by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) denotes a separate section devoted to (AMTA, 2010). This increased specificity demands a deeper discussion in the literature about how to teach in general and how to impart the documented AMTA competencies to music therapy students. While not defined strictly in the previous or current competencies, in this paper will focus primary attention on instruments that appear to be the most commonly used in clinical practice, and most commonly discussed within music therapy literature (Matney, 2004). The term skills will refer to those that allow a music therapist to facilitate clinical music experiences. There is a critical need to clearly articulate the competencies for music therapy students so faculty and supervisors may better learn how to teach them.Percussion competenciesThe AMTA uses the Professional Competencies to detail specific objectives that entry-level professionals should have obtained during preclinical or clinical training. The three main areas are (a) music foundations, (b) clinical foundations, and (c) music therapy. Bruscia, Hesser, and Boxhill (1981) provided the first list of competencies to the American Association of Music Therapy (AAMT), and a second document for the National Association of Music Therapy was approved in 1996 (McGuire, et al., 1996). The AMTA Assembly of Delegates voted to adopt a change in this document that emphasizes percussion skills in the fall 2008 revision. In a prior version of the Professional Competencies, two were listed under the subheading of nonsymphonic instrumental skills and the other under the subheading of improvisation. Three competencies in the 2005 revision stated:7.1 - Play instruments alone or in ensemble7.5 - Demonstrate basic (i.e., rudiments) on several standard instruments sufficient to facilitate rhythmbased experiences for groups and individuals8.1 - on instruments.The current version includes a subheading entirely devoted to called Skills. Under this subheading, the competencies are listed as:7. Percussion Skills7.1 Accompany self and ensembles proficiently7.2 Utilize basic techniques on several standard and ethnic instruments7.3 Lead rhythm-based ensembles proficiently.Item 9.1 Improvise on instruments, will also be referenced in this paper.While becomes more prevalent in health care literature, both inside and outside of the field of music therapy, pedagogy is absent within the literature of our own field (Matney, 2004). The primary purpose of this paper is to put forward a pedagogical framework that addresses functional skill development for music therapy students. The secondary purpose of this paper is to offer competency-relevant resources and guides that may assist academic faculty to communicate student needs with university educators. Rationales for both purposes are offered below.Rationale #1 : Music Therapy-Centered FocusPercussion is likely the most utilized interactive instrumentation in the field of music therapy (Matney, 2004). Clinicians likely use across theoretical orientations, within most clinical settings, with most populations, and goal areas. The four sets of instruments most commonly identified in therapy, according to Matney (2004), are drums (hand, frame, bass, drum set, snares & toms, most commonly), shakers and rattles (maracas, egg shakers, caxixi, ganza, axatse, gourd shakers), unspecified rhythm instruments, and Orff xylophones and metallophones. The field may benefit from further inquiry regarding instrumentation choice within the body of literature and within clinical practice. …

The desired moral attitude of the physician: (I) empathy

In professional medical ethics, the physician traditionally is obliged to fulfil specific duties as well as to embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired underlying attitude of physicians. In this article, one of them--empathy--is presented in an interpretation that is meant to depicture (together with the two additional concepts compassion and care) this attitude. Therefore empathy in the clinical context is defined as the adequate understanding of the inner processes of the patient concerning his health-related problems. Adequacy is scrutinized on behalf of the emotional and subjective involvement of he physician, and on the necessary dependence on medical-moral-goals. In the present interpretation, empathy alone is no guarantee of the right moral attitude, but a necessary instrumental skill in order to perceive and treat a patient as an individual person. The concepts of compassion and care that will be discussed in two forthcoming articles are necessary parts to describe the desired moral attitude of the physician more completely.

From Neglect to Nexus: Examining the Place of Educational History in Teacher Education

In faculties of education across North America, the so-called foundations of education are in crisis. Pressure to shorten teacher education programs and to focus on developing the instrumental skills of new teachers has resulted in courses in philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology being moved from the core of teacher education to the periphery. This paper describes the decline of history in teacher education using the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University as a case study. We contend this decline occurred more by systematic neglect of history’s value in professional education than by overt attack on its position as one of “the foundations” of the field. We go on to argue that history, properly taught, has the potential to provide a powerful nexus to teacher education programs helping new teachers locate themselves and individualize their personal beliefs in relation to the vast body of professional knowledge that is circulated and recycled about policy and practice.

Políticas educativas y empleabilidad: ¿cuáles son las competencias más influyentes?

Resumen: En el presente estudio se analizan las competencias profesionales genéricas más valoradas, tanto por las empresas, como por los graduados universitarios. Esta investigación es un estudio cualitativo y cuantitativo en el que se usan datos sobre competencias de dos fuentes principales: los graduados de la universidad de La Coruña y los empresarios de esta provincia. En este trabajo se efectúa una aplicación del modelo Logit y se contrasta empíricamente si determinadas variables relativas a las competencias afectan a la probabilidad de tener un empleo. Los resultados confirman la opinión manifestada por varios investigadores de que en la actualidad las competencias más valorando en el mercado laboral son del tipo sistémicas, es decir competencias personales y transferibles, en detrimento de las competencias instrumentales más relacionadas con las capacidades y la formación del graduado. Education policy and employability: what are the most influential competencies? Abstract: This paper analyzes the generic professional skills most valued by employers and university graduates. This research is a qualitative and quantitative study that uses data from two main sources: graduates of the University of A Coruña and employers of this province. The analysis herein, applies the Logit model, and it empirically contrasts the influence of certain variables related with skills on the probability of being employed. The results underpin the opinion stated by experts; currently the most highly regarded skills in the labour market are those that belong to the systematic type, therefore, personal and non-transferable, in detriment of instrumental skills closer related with graduates’ capacity and education.