Promoting better use of the PSA test in general practice: Randomized controlled trial of educational strategies based on outreach visits and mailout

Background. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing for prostate cancer is controversial. Demand for PSA testing is likely to rise in the UK, Australia and other western countries. Primary care needs to develop appropriate strategies to respond to this demand. Objectives. Our aim was to compare the effectiveness of educational outreach visits (EOVs) and mailout strategies targeting PSA testing in Australian primary care. Methods. A randomized controlled trial was conducted in general practices in southern Adelaide. The main outcome measures at baseline, 6 months and 12 months post-intervention were PSA testing rates and GP knowledge in key areas relating to prostate cancer and PSA testing. Results. The interventions were able to demonstrate a change in clinical practice. In the 6 months post-intervention, median PSA testing rate in the EOV group was significantly lower than in the postal group, which in turn was significantly lower than the control group (P < 0.001). Statistically significant differences were not, however, maintained in the 6-12 month post-intervention period. The EOV group, at 6 months follow-up, had a significantly greater proportion of 'correct' responses than the control group to questions about prostate cancer treatment effectiveness (P = 0.004) and endorsement of PSA screening by professional bodies (P = 0.041). Conclusions. Primary care has a central role in PSA testing for prostate cancer. Clinical practice in this area is receptive to evidence-based interventions.

Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department

This study reveals the school culture and the teachers' professional development activities in a Japanese high school learning environment. Furthermore, it documents the relationships among the context, teachers' beliefs, practices, and interactions. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and documents of teachers from an English department, this yearlong study revealed these English as a Foreign Language teachers lacked many teacher learning opportunities in their context. The study revealed that teacher collaboration only reinforced existing practices, eroding teachers' motivation to learn to teach in this specific context. The study provides evidence to teacher educators about inservice teachers and their learning environment and the significance of the relationships between the two entities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interrogating single-sex classes as a strategy for addressing boys' educational and social needs

This paper explores the policy of single-sex classes that is currently being adopted in some schools as a strategy for addressing boys' educational and social needs. It draws on research in one Australian government, coeducational primary school to examine teachers' and students' experiences of this strategy. Interviews with the principal, male and female teachers responsible for teaching the single-sex classes and the students involved in these classes are used to illustrate the impact and effect of the strategy on pedagogical practices in this particular school. The data are used to raise critical questions about the impact and effects of teachers' pedagogical practices in light of the current literature and research about single-sex classes. In this case study, it was found that teachers had a tendency to modify their pedagogical practices and the curriculum to suit stereotypical constructions about boys' and girls' supposed oppositional orientations to learning. It is concluded that teacher knowledges and assumptions about gender play an important role in the execution of their pedagogies in the single-sex classroom.

Ten Australian elementary teachers' discourse and reported pedagogical practices during cooperative learning

This article describes the types of discourse 10 Australian grade 4-6 teachers used after they had been trained to embed cooperative learning in their curriculum and to use communication skills to promote students' thinking and to scaffold their learning. One audiotaped classroom social science lesson involving cooperative learning was analyzed for each teacher. We provide vignettes from 2 teachers as they worked with groups and from 2 student groups. The data from the audiotapes showed that the teachers used a range of mediated-learning behaviors in their interactions with the children that included challenging their perspectives, asking more cognitive and metacognitive questions, and scaffolding their learning. In turn, in their interactions with each other, the children modelled many of the types of discourse they heard their teachers use. Follow-up interviews with the teachers revealed that they believed it was important to set expectations for children's group behaviors, teach the social skills students needed to deal with disagreement in groups, and establish group structures so children understood what was required both from each other and the task. The teachers reported that mixed ability and gender groups worked best and that groups should be no larger than 5 students. All teachers' programs were based on a child-centered philosophy that recognized the importance of constructivist approaches to learning and the key role interaction plays in promoting social reasoning and learning.

'Please Mr Hay, what are my poss(abilities)?': Legitimation of ability through physical education practices

This paper provides two vignettes that draw on data from projects that interrogate how a student can be positioned by practices within physical education (PE) and directed by the PE teacher in relation to their valued or legitimated ability. Through the use of Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual tools of field, habitus and capital we investigate the complex legitimation processes that shape student poss(abilities) and that are situated in the space of the PE class. The first vignette is from the perspective of a student and draws on data from interviews, a journal, questionnaires and photos of her PE experiences in upper primary and lower secondary school. The second vignette focuses on teacher practices and his constitution of the field of a PE class highlighting the significance of teacher perspectives of 'ability' in informing assessment in senior secondary PE. Using these examples we discuss the symbolic violence that works against each student by positioning them as 'less able' or 'unable' despite their participation in a learning context. We argue that by not attending to the possible abilities of students that could have been recognized, developed and legitimated, and through the misuse of capital assignment by teachers, PE may well be counterproductive to students' ongoing engagement with the subject area and the espoused potential upon which such a subject area justifies itself.

Doing educational development ambivalently: Applying post-colonial metaphors to educational development?

Post‐colonial theories about liminality, hybridity, unhomeliness, and identity form a novel lens through which to re‐theorise educational development work. Applying these conceptual frameworks allows practitioners and the academics they work with the opportunity to problematise some of educational development’s colonial underpinnings and assumptions. They also enable an exploration of the states of betweenness that form educational developers’ identities and impact implicitly and explicitly upon the nature of their changing practices. This paper seeks to read educational development and research supervisor development in particular “against the grain”. It also seeks to illustrate these concepts through some vignettes of my academic development practice.