Designing effective written health education materials: Considerations for health professionals

Purpose: Written health education materials can only be effective if they can be read, understood, and remembered by patients. The purpose of this article was to review the literature about features that should be incorporated into written health education materials to maximize their effectiveness, identify where there is consensus and debate about which features should be incorporated, and develop recommendations that health professionals can use when reviewing their existing materials and designing new materials. Method: Literature review of published research and education articles. Results: There is a large number of features that need to be considered when designing written health education materials so that they are suitable for the target audience and effective. Although there is consensus about the majority of features that should be included, further research is needed to explore the contribution of certain features, such as illustrations, to the effectiveness of written materials and the effect of well-designed written materials on patient outcomes. Conclusions: Health professionals need to provide their patients with written health education materials that are patient-orientated and designed according to the best practice principles in written health education material design.

How adolescents cope with bullying

Bullying is a stressful event for adolescents at school and was the fourth most common reason for calls to Kids Help Line in 2002. This study sought to examine coping styles used by students affected by bullying in Years 8 and 10 attending three Queensland high schools. Eighty-eight students completed the Bully Survey containing questions about bullying experiences and the way they coped in those situations. No year level differences were found in terms of the type of bullying experienced or the way in which students coped with these experiences. A significant interaction was found between duration of bullying and perceived control for the proportional use of disengagement coping (i.e., denial, avoidance and wishful thinking strategies). A significant simple main effect was found between perceived stressfulness and proportional use of involuntary engagement coping (i.e., rumination, intrusive thoughts, emotional arousal, physiological arousal and impulsive actions). Implications of these findings for schools are discussed.

Major issues and solutions to applied climate education in Australia

In the past decade, Australian agriculture has evolved considerably. During this period, climate variability has been of considerable concern, compounded recently by the threat of climate change. Applied climate education has attempted to keep up-to-date with these developments. Understanding the issues and solutions to applied climate education is a challenge confronting agriculture in Australia. This paper reports on the major issues and solutions to applied climate education in Australia as identified in the literature.

Cautionary tales in the interpretation of systematic reviews of therapy trials

This is the second in a series of articles emphasizing the cautions in the interpretation of health-care studies. Systematic reviews are presented as comprehensive, unbiased summaries of evidence and are often referred to by clinicians, guideline developers and health policy-makers. Their strengths and limitations, and how their results can be subject to bias and misinterpretation, are discussed.

Situating Learning: (Re)examining the Notion of apprenticeship in Coach Education

The last two decades has seen a proliferation in the provision of and importance attached to coach education in many Western countries. Pivotal to many coach education programmes is the notion of apprenticeship. Increasingly, mentoring is being positioned as a possible tool for enhancing coach education and professional expertise. However, there is a paucity of empirical data on interventions in and evaluations of coach education programmes. In their recent evaluation of a coach education programme, Cassidy, Potrac & McKenzie conclude that the situated learning literature could provide coach educators with a generative platform for the (re)examination of apprenticeships and mentoring in a coach education context. This paper discusses the merits of using Situated Learning theory and the associated concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) to stimulate discussion on developing new understandings of the practices of apprenticeship and mentoring in coach education.

English language education in policy studies

Content-based instruction (CBI) is increasingly important in curriculum development for second-language acquisition (SLA), as language and non-language departments in universities are finding the integration of core-content as part of the second language curriculum to be beneficial. With this in mind, this paper describes the English program at Nanzan University’s Faculty of Policy Studies and examines the synergy presently being developed between core-content and English language instruction there. Specifically, this paper seeks to shed light on how instructors can reflect on the meaning of language instruction at higher education through an illustration of our activities.