Professions Education Research Research Articles

Fifty years of medical specialisation: from foundation to fragmentation.

The past 50 years of medicine have been dominated by revolutions in biological sciences and clinical therapeutics. No less dramatic have been changes in our healthcare systems, with medical specialisation playing a leading role. The middle of the century saw the rapid development of the teaching hospital as the centre of professional education, collegiate identity, medical specialisation and clinical research. By contrast, the past 20 years have seen dramatic shifts in response to the demands of a more diverse community.

Epistemic or Credal Standards for Teachers' Professional Learning and Educational Research - A Common Framework for Inquiry?

Three potential epistemic standards for teachers' professional learning are reviewed and criticised: foundationalist, Popperian, and decision-theoretic. Susan Haack's 'foundherentism' is outlined and proposed as supplying an adequate credal standard for the rigorous conduct of both teachers' professional learning and educational research. It is argued that foundherentism offers an alternative to radical relativism, which can also accommodate within a common framework, both the findings of rigorous research and the 'subjective', even 'tacit' beliefs of teachers. Sources of credal difference between teachers' professional learning and educational research, and what is involved in bringing these into a more rational and fruitful relation to each other, are finally considered.

Special article: Pediatric AIDS: Worlds apart

In the United States and in other developed countries, the number of children newly infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has decreased dramatically as a result of the availability of educational programs, counseling and testing services, and potent anti-HIV therapy. Children with HIV are living longer, healthier lives. However, the pediatric HIV pandemic continues virtually unabated across much of the developing world. The reasons for this difference are complicated and include lack of resources, lack of infrastructure, and lack of trained health professionals in many developing nations. The Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative is addressing these issues by developing comprehensive programs for health professional education and HIV clinical research in parts of the world hardest hit by the HIV acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic. Copyright © 2000 by W.B. Saunders Company

Meeting New Challenges in Educational Research Training: The Signposts for Educational Research CD-ROM

This article suggests that the professional educational research community is facing new challenges in the development of educational research training. In particular it argues that as the learning needs of the student population become more differentiated, there is a strong pressure to develop and evaluate the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to support research training in education. The article describes one response to this pressure: the development and evaluation of an interactive multimedia (IMM) resource, the Signposts for Educational Research CD-ROM. The CD-ROM is designed to be used by postgraduate students on a wide range of courses but is particularly aimed at those enrolled on part-time and distance education programmes. Typically, part-time students studying at a distance from their providing institution use print-based materials in combination with occasional attendance at residential study schools; such residential schools frequently represent the only occasions on which tutors and students come together. Many distance learners therefore have limited contact with their tutors and peers, and only limited access to site-based resources. At the same time, because of their different prior experiences of formal academic study, there is considerable diversity in the individual needs of students registered on part-time and distance education programmes. This distinctive student profile indicates highly differentiated training requirements and thus the need for personal and customised support for research training. One of the reasons for producing the Signposts CD-ROM was the perceived need to offer such students alternative modes of learning support. It is argued that the flexible structure of IMM materials may be effective in meeting the individual needs of students while the use of affective material (in the form of a ‘peer voice’) may help to build the confidence, and lessen the isolation, of the distance learner. The article concludes with a discussion of the impact on learning of IMM resources. In particular, it asks whether research students can ‘become critical’ in a multimedia environment, and attempts to assess some of the methodological difficulties involved in evaluating the use of IMM to support learning in this context.

Teacher talk: the role of story and anecdote in constructing professional knowledge for beginning teachers

This paper focusses on the stories and anecdotes which a small group of English teachers told in their efforts to describe the complexities of their first year of teaching, when they were invited by their former English Method lecturer to meet together as part of a larger research project investigating the challenges faced by beginning teachers. A distinctive feature of their discussion is the way they use narrative to organise and give meaning to their experiences, and thus explore the possibilities of narrative enquiry for professional development and educational research.

Grandparents as parents: research findings and policy recommendations.

This article presents an overview of research on grandparenthood in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Theories contributing to understanding of the grandparenting role are discussed, and significant factors affecting the grandparenting experience--including sex, age, retirement status, race, and ethnicity--are reviewed. The special case of grandparents raising grandchildren is explored through a review of demographics, outcomes for children in grandparent foster care, and the impact of raising grandchildren on grandparents. Interventions supporting custodial grandparents and the grandchildren in their care are examined. Drawing on the findings and implications of this overview, recommendations for policy, clinical practice, professional education, and future research are offered.

The case against more public education to promote organ donation.

The organ procurement community has always considered public education a primary challenge. According to conventional wisdom, greater awareness generated by public education will lead to more donated organs. This notion may be based on faulty assumptions about public education and about the relationship between awareness and behavior. Public education, as the primary focus for the organ procurement community, should be abandoned. Increased efforts in professional education and basic research are more appropriate endeavors for organ procurement organizations.

The Case against More Public Education to Promote Organ Donation

The organ procurement community has always considered public education a primary challenge. According to conventional wisdom, greater awareness generated by public education will lead to more donated organs. This notion may be based on faulty assumptions about public education and about the relationship between awareness and behavior. Public education, as the primary focus for the organ procurement community, should be abandoned. Increased efforts in professional education and basic research are more appropriate endeavors for organ procurement organizations.

The 5th practicum conferencepractical experiences in professional education research, reflection and action to be held at Macquarie University February 2 – 6, 1993

The 5th practicum conferencepractical experiences in professional education research, reflection and action to be held at Macquarie University February 2 – 6, 1993

Faculty practice plans

The contemporary academic medical center is a complex organization providing medical and other professional health education, biomedical and behavioral research, and a comprehensive range of patient care services. This paper presents data from the Association of American Medical Colleges' 1989 survey of 125 member faculty practice plans. The survey data showed that 62% of the 74 responding plans were units or associations within the medical school corporate structure. Plans were organized along a broad continuum from the autonomous, departmental model with decentralized governance and management to the group model with centralized governance and management. The growth of managed care, increased competition, and a greater reliance by the medical school on clinical practice income as a financing source are causing the practice plan to expand beyond billing of professional fees. The survey data showed that 75% of the practice plans operated satellite centers, and 61% planned to build new ambulatory care facilities in order to expand and improve services to patients. The practice plans also have adapted to changes in third-party reimbursement and are establishing mechanisms to negotiate managed care contracts involving multiple clinical departments to increase referrals and maintain patient shares; 86% of the plans participate in at least one managed-care organization. The role of the practice plan will continue to evolve in response to the needs of the academic medical center for a cooperative and supportive environment in which to conduct its traditional missions of teaching, research, and patient care.

The Development of Approaches to Curriculum Planning to Meet Academic and Professional Objectives

The importance of developing a curriculum which satisfies the broad objectives of professional education has been recognized widely. The balance between enhancing scholarship and developing vocational skills, the importance of relevant evaluation of the curriculum, students and teachers and the place of research in current professional education are all matters worthy of consideration by those responsible for professional education. This paper reflects upon the historic attitudes to education and traces the changes in approach which have been necessary to ensure the provision of appropriate learning experiences for students seeking a professional education today.

Teachers' Sense of Efficacy: An Important Factor in School Improvement

Teachers' Sense of Efficacy: An Important Factor in School Improvement

An Accelerated and Traditional MSW Program Compared

Abstract A traditional two-year and accelerated sixteen-month MSW program were evaluated by comparing the performance of students on cognitive, skill, and value measures at the midpoint and end of the program. A comparison of score changes and test results at graduation failed to show a meaningful pattern of significant differences between the two groups. The authors concluded that the accelerated program was as effective as the traditional program in producing the desired educational outcomes. Implications of findings are considered in the context of other research in social work education and professional education in other fields.

Education and Political Development

Eleven years ago, Easton (1957, p. 305) observed that regarding educational institutions has receded to a distinctly peripheral position in the discipline [of political science] as a whole. Although it is arguable whether political scientists, with a few notable exceptions, had ever regarded education as more than peripheral with regard to their discipline, Easton's statement was certainly correct at the time it was made. Today, educational systems and processes have assumed a significant place in political science research. American political science has become aware, so to speak, of the educational dimension of politics. At the same time, little evidence can be found to indicate that the educational profession, in a corresponding manner, has become as aware of the political dimensions of education. To be sure, a number of exceptions have to be acknowledged -most notably the work by Hess (Hess and Easton, 1960; Hess and Torney, 1967) on political attitudes of elementary school children-but by and large what modest insight we have at the present into the relationship between education and politics is overwhelmingly the result of theory building and research by political scientists, particularly in regard to the more specific developmental and comparative perspective implied by the notion of political development as one of the proposed correlates of education. On the whole, comparative education as a field of specialized research in professional education has failed to transcend its principal concern with what Coleman (1965), in using one of C. A. Anderson's terms, has called intra-educational analysis. At the present time, it remains to be seen whether new programs in international development education, promising as they appear to be in this respect, will indeed bridge the difference that separates professional educators from social scientists in their respective concerns with the economic, sociocultural, and political implications of education.