To what extent does the Health Professions Admission Test-Ireland predict performance in early undergraduate tests of communication and clinical skills? – An observational cohort study

Background: Internationally, tests of general mental ability are used in the selection of medical students. Examples include the Medical College Admission Test, Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test and the UK Clinical Aptitude Test. The most widely used measure of their efficacy is predictive validity.A new tool, the Health Professions Admission Test- Ireland (HPAT-Ireland), was introduced in 2009. Traditionally, selection to Irish undergraduate medical schools relied on academic achievement. Since 2009, Irish and EU applicants are selected on a combination of their secondary school academic record (measured predominately by the Leaving Certificate Examination) and HPAT-Ireland score. This is the first study to report on the predictive validity of the HPAT-Ireland for early undergraduate assessments of communication and clinical skills. Method. Students enrolled at two Irish medical schools in 2009 were followed up for two years. Data collected were gender, HPAT-Ireland total and subsection scores; Leaving Certificate Examination plus HPAT-Ireland combined score, Year 1 Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) scores (Total score, communication and clinical subtest scores), Year 1 Multiple Choice Questions and Year 2 OSCE and subset scores. We report descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients and Multiple linear regression models. Results: Data were available for 312 students. In Year 1 none of the selection criteria were significantly related to student OSCE performance. The Leaving Certificate Examination and Leaving Certificate plus HPAT-Ireland combined scores correlated with MCQ marks.In Year 2 a series of significant correlations emerged between the HPAT-Ireland and subsections thereof with OSCE Communication Z-scores; OSCE Clinical Z-scores; and Total OSCE Z-scores. However on multiple regression only the relationship between Total OSCE Score and the Total HPAT-Ireland score remained significant; albeit the predictive power was modest. Conclusion: We found that none of our selection criteria strongly predict clinical and communication skills. The HPAT- Ireland appears to measures ability in domains different to those assessed by the Leaving Certificate Examination. While some significant associations did emerge in Year 2 between HPAT Ireland and total OSCE scores further evaluation is required to establish if this pattern continues during the senior years of the medical course.

The musical enculturation of Irish traditional musicians: An ethnographic study of learning processes

The enculturation of Irish traditional musicians involves informal, non-formal, and sometimes formal learning processes in a number of different settings, including traditional music sessions, workshops, festivals, and classes. Irish traditional musicians also learn directly from family, peers, and mentors and by using various forms of technology. Each experience contributes to the enculturation process in meaningful and complementary ways. The ethnographic research discussed in this dissertation suggests that within Irish traditional music culture, enculturation occurs most effectively when learners experience a multitude of learning practices. A variety of experiences insures that novices receive multiple opportunities for engagement and learning. If a learner finds one learning practice ineffective, there are other avenues of enculturation. This thesis explores the musical enculturation of Irish traditional musicians. It focuses on the process of becoming a musician by drawing on methodologies and theories from ethnomusicology, education, and Irish traditional music studies. Data was gathered through multiple ethnographic methodologies. Fieldwork based on participant-observation was carried out in a variety of learning contexts, including traditional music sessions, festivals, workshops, and weekly classes. Additionally, interviews with twenty accomplished Irish traditional musicians provide diverse narratives and firsthand insight into musical development and enculturation. These and other methodologies are discussed in Chapter 1. The three main chapters of the thesis explore various common learning experiences. Chapter 2 explores how Irish traditional musicians learn during social and musical interactions between peers, mentors, and family members, and focuses on live music-making which occurs in private homes, sessions, and concerts. These informal and non-formal learning experiences primarily take place outside of organizations and institutions. The interview data suggests these learning experiences are perhaps the most pervasive and influential in terms of musical enculturation. Chapter 3 discusses learning experience in more organized settings, such as traditional music classes, workshops, summer schools, and festivals. The role of organizations such as Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and pipers’ clubs are discussed from the point of view of the learner. Many of the learning experiences explored in this chapter are informal, non-formal, and sometimes formal in nature, depending on the philosophy of the organization, institution, and individual teacher. The interview data and field observations indicate that learning in these contexts is common and plays a significant role in enculturation, particularly for traditional musicians who were born during and after the 1970s. Chapter 4 explores the ways Irish traditional musicians use technology, including written sources, phonography, videography, websites, and emerging technologies, during the enculturation process. Each type of technology presents different educational implications, and traditional musicians use these technologies in diverse ways and some more than others. For this, and other reasons, technology plays a complex role during the process of musical enculturation. Drawing on themes which emerge during Chapter 2, 3, and 4, the final chapter of this dissertation explores overarching patterns of enculturation within Irish traditional music culture. This ethnographic work suggests that longevity of participation and engagement in multiple learning and performance opportunities foster the enculturation of Irish traditional musicians. Through numerous and prolonged participation in music-making, novices become accustomed to and learn musical, social, and cultural behaviours. The final chapter also explores interconnections between learning experiences and also proposes directions for future research.

The importance of interaction strength for food web dynamics and ecosystem functioning

Global biodiversity is eroding at an alarming rate, through a combination of anthropogenic disturbance and environmental change. Ecological communities are bewildering in their complexity. Experimental ecologists strive to understand the mechanisms that drive the stability and structure of these complex communities in a bid to inform nature conservation and management. Two fields of research have had high profile success at developing theories related to these stabilising structures and testing them through controlled experimentation. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has explored the likely consequences of biodiversity loss on the functioning of natural systems and the provision of important ecosystem services. Empirical tests of BEF theory often consist of simplified laboratory and field experiments, carried out on subsets of ecological communities. Such experiments often overlook key information relating to patterns of interactions, important relationships, and fundamental ecosystem properties. The study of multi-species predator-prey interactions has also contributed much to our understanding of how complex systems are structured, particularly through the importance of indirect effects and predator suppression of prey populations. A growing number of studies describe these complex interactions in detailed food webs, which encompass all the interactions in a community. This has led to recent calls for an integration of BEF research with the comprehensive study of food web properties and patterns, to help elucidate the mechanisms that allow complex communities to persist in nature. This thesis adopts such an approach, through experimentation at Lough Hyne marine reserve, in southwest Ireland. Complex communities were allowed to develop naturally in exclusion cages, with only the diversity of top trophic levels controlled. Species removals were carried out and the resulting changes to predator-prey interactions, ecosystem functioning, food web properties, and stability were studied in detail. The findings of these experiments contribute greatly to our understanding of the stability and structure of complex natural communities.

Towards a regional understanding of Irish traditional music

The geography of Irish traditional music is a complex, popular and largely unexplored element of the narrative of the tradition. Geographical concepts such as the region are recurrent in the discourse of Irish traditional music but regions and their processes are, for the most part, blurred or misunderstood. This thesis explores the geographical approach to the study of Irish traditional music focusing on the concept of the region and, in particular, the role of memory in the construction and diffusion of regional identities. This is a tripartite study considering people, place and music. Each of these elements impacts on our experience of the other. All societies have created music. Music is often associated with or derived from places. Some places construct or reinforce their identity through the music and musicians through which they are associated. The thesis challenges conventional discourse on regional styles that construct an imagined pattern of regions based on subtle musical differences that may, though are not always, shared by people in that region and focuses on the social networks through which the music is disseminated. The thesis also challenges the abandonment of regional styles and the concept of regions in understanding the complex geographies of Irish traditional music (Morton, 2001). It seeks to find a middle ground between discourse analysis, musical analysis, the experience of music and place, and the representation of music and place. The dissertation is divided into three parts. Part one considers the development of music geography, noting and critiquing the abandonment of useful paradigms in both geography and ethnomusicology in search of new ways of understanding. Of particular interest is the concept of the region but it also considers the study of landscape and the humanist approach in cultural geography. The second part focuses on the discourse and study of regions in Irish traditional music and the various agents and processes that shape the concept of the region in Irish traditional music. The final part presents a case study of the Sliabh Luachra region combining and applying the various perspectives and paradigms drawn from geographical, ethnomusicological and anthropological sources. It attempts to generate an understanding of Sliabh Luachra as a region in the Irish traditional music narrative that is based on a combination of musical, socio-cultural and locational/environmental factors.

Who pays and who plays? Mapping the discourse of publicly funded instrumental music education in Ireland

Instrumental music education is provided as an extra-curricular activity on a fee-paying basis by a small number of Education and Training Boards, formerly Vocational Education Committees (ETB/VECs) through specialist instrumental Music Services. Although all citizens’ taxes fund the public music provision, participation in instrumental music during school-going years is predominantly accessed by middle class families. A series of semistructured interviews sought to access the perceptions and beliefs of instrumental music education practitioners (N=14) in seven publicly-funded music services in Ireland. Canonical dispositions were interrogated and emergent themes were coded and analysed in a process of Grounded theory. The study draws on Foucault’s conception of discourse as a lens with which to map professional practices, and utilises Bourdieu’s analysis of the reproduction of social advantage to examine cultural assumptions, which may serve to privilege middle-class cultural choice to the exclusion of other social groups. Study findings show that within the Music Services, aesthetic and pedagogic discourses of the 19th century Conservatory system exert a hegemonic influence over policy and practice. An enduring ‘examination culture’ located within the Western art music tradition determines pedagogy, musical genre, and assessment procedures. Ideologies of musical taste and value reinforce the more tangible boundaries of fee-payment and restricted availability as barriers to access. Practitioners are aware of a status duality whereby instrumental teachers working as visiting specialists in primary schools experience a conflict between specialist and generalist educational aims. Nevertheless, study participants consistently advocated siting the point of access to instrumental music education in the primary schools as the most equitable means of access to instrumental music education. This study addresses a ‘knowledge gap’ in the sociology of music education in Ireland. It provides a framework for rethinking instrumental music education as equitable in-school musical participation. The conclusions of the study suggest starting-points for further educational research and may provide key ‘prompts’ for curriculum planning.