Clickers in the nursing classroom.

Traditional teaching methods in the classroom also limit opportunities for student engagement due to large class sizes and the desire to ensure students receive all of the material required in a particular session. It has been documented that the use of Information Technolgy (IT); in particular «clickers», can increase student participation, improve knowledge retention and assist in stimulating critical thinking in a classroom setting. However, the introduction of IT, on top of normal teaching demands, can be probelmatic as it requires changes to course planners, IT training, support staff and additional funding, all of wich have been documented in research. Wolski and Jackson (1999) have postulated that success is a function of the usefulness and the ease of use of a particular technology for faculty members. Research has shown that classroom technology is simply a tool to be used by educators as one of many. Those who tend to use it well are already innovative and technically adept (Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon & Bryers, 2002).||Résumé : Les méthodes d'enseignement traditionnelles en cour magistral ont aussi tendance à limiter l'engagement et la participation des étudiants dû à la taille souvent excessive des classes, mais aussi à cause du désire de l'enseignant de vouloir s'assurer de la transmission du contenu pédagogique complet. Il est bien documenté que l'usage des nouvelles technologies, en particulier les télévoteurs («clickers», peut accroître la participation des étudiants, améliorer la rétention de l'information mais aussi de stimuler, dans le contexte académique, la pensée critique. Malheureusement, tel que démontré par la recherche, l'introduction de ces nouvelles technologies pose problème lorsqu'additionné aux contraintes normales d'enseignement puisque qu'elle nécessite des changements à la planification des cours, requiert une formation spécifique, un support additionnel ainsi que le financement nécessaire. Wolski and Jackson (1999) ont postulé de plus que le succès de l'implantation d'une nouvelle technologie était en fonction de son utilité et de sa facilité d'utilisation par les membres de la faculté. Il a aussi été démontré que la technologie de l'enseignement en classe n'était en fait qu'un outil de plus à la disposition des enseignants, et que ceux qui avaient tendance à bien l'utiliser étaient de fait inoovateurs, possédant des capacités techniques (Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon et Bryers, 2002).

A leitura no processo ensino aprendizagem em escolas da rede particular, na 4ª série do ensino fundamental em Belém do Pará: Uma busca para além decodificação

O presente estudo está baseado na Metodologia fenomenológica, com pesquisa bibliográfica e de campo. Apresenta como objetivo geral, analisar como se desenvolve o processo de ensino e aprendizagem de leitura, assim como, os estímulos e a prática do ato de ler em alunos de tenra idade em escolas particulares de Belém do Pará, em turmas da 4a Serie, do Ensino Fundamental. Tendo como objetivos específicos averiguar o ponto principal de indagação está centrado na questão se a leitura prática é apenas o desenvolvimento dos códigos linguísticos aprendidos, ou buscar não somente o processo de decodificar, sem considerar os aspectos mais abrangentes como a interpretação do texto, direcionado para o leitor ativo e atuante na compreensão das ideias do autor. Tal questionamento a respeito do processo de aprendizagem da leitura em nível fundamental das escolas particulares de Belém do Pará foi perguntado por meio de pesquisas de campo, a professores, alunos e para a coordenação, utilizando como instrumento de coleta de dados, questionário com perguntas abertas e fechadas de opinião entrevistas e grupos focais. No decorrer deste estudo, nota-se que para formar leitores mirins, serão exigidos alguns requisitos importantes, como a escolha de bons livros e atividades norteadoras de estimulação em classe e até mesmo fora dela. Afim de que principalmente o aluno em fase inicial de aprendizagem, seja e sinta-se preparado e ainda, conscientizado da importância da leitura para o seu questionamento crítico, como cidadão do futuro. Para tanto, fatores que interferem no processo de leitura, tais como: títulos variados, histórias que versem a respeito do imaginário cultural, textos direcionados ao público infantil, que despertem o interesse do alunado, além de apenas lei os códigos linguísticos na aquisição do texto, sem obtenção dos critérios interpretativos, que este possa evocar. A leitura é tida pela sociedade em geral, como um fator que pode levar o individuo a descobertas de novos patamares e horizontes sociais, mas somente indo além do mecanismo na apresentação dos textos cm sala de aula, é que o professor poderá atingir os níveis de compreensão integral do sistema escrito. Ensinando a ler, com elementos fundamentais para a iniciação de leitura interpretativa e proficiente no ensino fundamental. ABSTRACT: The present study is based upon the Phenomenological Methodology, with field and bibliographic research. It presents as a main objective the analysis on how the teaching and learning educational process develop upon the reading skills, as well as the encouragement and practice of reading in students of young ages in private schools in Belém, state of Pará (Brazil), in fourth grade groups, in elementary school. Having set specific goals, the search is centered in the practical reading ability matter, and if such ability is of linguistic code development solely learned or the search of not only the decoding process, without taking in consideration the broadening aspects, such as text comprehension, targeting the active reader especially when it comes to the author's ideas. Such discussion regarding the reading learning process in elementary levels in private schools in Belém, state of Para (Brazil) is questioned by field research, teachers, students and the coordination, using as data collecting instruments, questionnaires with open and closed questions, interviews and focal groups. Along the study, regarding the formation of young readers, it requires some aspects, such as, the choice of good titles and in-class stimulating activities or even outdoor ones, so the students - especially the ones in the initial phase of learning- are and feel prepared and even conscious of the importance of the reading for their critical thinking- as a future citizen. Therefore, the factors that may interfere in the reading process, for instance, varied titles, stories that verse towards the cultural imaginary, texts directed to the young public, that awaken the interest of the student body, beyond the linguistic codes acquired in the texts, not obtaining the interpreting criteria that it might evoke. The reading is, by the society, a fundamental factor that might lead the human being to discovering new standards and social horizons, but only going further the typical mechanisms in presenting the texts in class, is when the teacher may reach the whole levels of comprehension of the written system, teaching how to read, with fundamental elements to the initial reading in elementary school.

Quality Management

The purpose of this chapter is to enable registered health and social care prac - titioners to assume a clinical and/or a professional leadership role in quality management in the health and social care sectors. The contents in this chap - ter will strengthen the management competences of practitioners working in these sectors, including critical thinking, critical reflection, problem solving and decision -making, thus improving the quality in health and social care services.

Counseling and Diversity: Valuable Education for All

In a rapidly changing and complex society full of challenges in all areas, it is vital to introduce new educational paradigms to meet the needs of diverse populations. This paper analyzes the necessity to face this challenge with responsibility, on an ethical framework and through critical thinking on the social realities, bringing attention to Counseling, as a discipline.  It discusses the capacity to create inclusive opportunities for all, where inclusive education is seen as an emerging paradigm within a culture of diversity that can applied in our everyday activities.

International pre-service teachers' self-confidence in critical reflective thinking and writing through an intercultural Patches program

This paper describes part of an action research study that was designed to explore the outcomes of an ongoing program in which the participants, a group of domestic and international pre-service teachers and lecturers, worked together in reflective writing workshops. While the primary long-term goal of the program was to develop the intercultural competence and understanding of all of the participants through social activities, the development of social relationships was initiated and supported by involving the participants in weekly writing workshops that focused on shared salient skills of critical reflective thinking and writing. The focus of this paper is upon the outcomes for the international students, a cohort of second year pre-service teachers from Malaysia. Findings indicated that the program was successful in developing the Malaysian pre-service teachers’ self-confidence in perceiving themselves as writers and future teachers of writing, in shifting their focus from writing product to writing process and content, and in increasing the depth of their critical reflective thinking and writing

Thinking Critically in the Land of Princesses and Giants : The Affordances and Challenges of Critical Approaches in the Early Years

During the last four decades, educators have created a range of critical literacy approaches for different contexts, including compulsory schooling (Luke & Woods, 2009) and second language education (Luke & Dooley, 2011). Despite inspirational examples of critical work with young students (e.g., O’Brien, 1994; Vasquez, 1994), Comber (2012) laments the persistent myth that critical literacy is not viable in the early years. Assumptions about childhood innocence and the priorities of the back-to-basics movement seem to limit the possibilities for early years literacy teaching and learning. Yet, teachers of young students need not face an either/or choice between the basic and critical dimensions of literacy. Systematic ways of treating literacy in all its complexity exist. We argue that the integrative imperative is especially important in schools that are under pressure to improve technical literacy outcomes. In this chapter, we document how critical literacy was addressed in a fairytales unit taught to 4.5 - 5.5 year olds in a high diversity, high poverty Australian school. We analyze the affordances and challenges of different approaches to critical literacy, concluding they are complementary rather than competing sources of possibility. Furthermore, we make the case for turning familiar classroom activities to critical ends.

Design thinking - a critical analysis.

The latest buzz phrase to enter the world of design research is “Design Thinking”. But is this anything new and does it really have any practical or theoretical relevance to the design world? Many sceptics believe the term has more to do with business strategy and little to do with the complex process of designing products, services and systems. Moreover, many view the term as misleading and a cheap attempt to piggyback the world of business management onto design. This paper seeks to ask is design thinking anything new? Several authors have explicitly or implicitly articulated the term “Design Thinking” before, such as Peter Rowe’s seminal book “Design Thinking” [1] first published in 1987 and Herbert Simon’s “The Sciences of the Artificial” [2] first published in 1969. In Tim Brown’s “Change by Design” [3], design thinking is thought of as a system of three overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps namely inspiration – the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation – the process of generating, developing and testing ideas; and implementation – the path that leads from the design studio, lab and factory to the market. This paper seeks to examine and critically analyse the tenets of this new design thinking manifesto set against three case studies of modern design practice. As such, the paper will compare design thinking theory with the reality of design in practice.

Not thinking straight? A critical discourse analysis of the 2006 Irish High Court ruling in Zappone and Gilligan v. Revenue Commissioners and Attorney General

The recognition and protection of constitutional rights is a fundamental precept. In Ireland, the right to marry is provided for in the equality provisions of Article 40 of the Irish Constitution (1937). However, lesbians and gay men are denied the right to marry in Ireland. The ‘last word’ on this issue came into being in the High Court in 2006, when Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan sought, but failed, to have their Canadian marriage recognised in Ireland. My thesis centres on this constitutional court ruling. So as to contextualise the pursuit of marriage equality in Ireland, I provide details of the Irish trajectory vis-à-vis relationship and family recognition for same-sex couples. In Chapter One, I discuss the methodological orientation of my research, which derives from a critical perspective. Chapter Two denotes my theorisation of the principle of equality and the concept of difference. In Chapter Three, I discuss the history of the institution of marriage in the West with its legislative underpinning. Marriage also has a constitutional underpinning in Ireland, which derives from Article 41 of our Constitution. In Chapter Four, I discuss ways in which marriage and family were conceptualised in Ireland, by looking at historical controversies surrounding the legalisation of contraception and divorce. Chapter Five denotes a Critical Discourse Analysis of the High Court ruling in Zappone and Gilligan. In Chapter Six, I critique text from three genres of discourse, i.e. ‘Letters to the Editor’ regarding same-sex marriage in Ireland, communication from legislators vis-à-vis the 2004 legislative impediment to same-sex marriage in Ireland, and parliamentary debates surrounding the 2010 enactment of civil partnership legislation in Ireland. I conclude my research by reflecting on my methodological and theoretical considerations with a view to answering my research questions. Author’s Update: Following the outcome of the 2015 constitutional referendum vis-à-vis Article 41, marriage equality has been realised in Ireland.

Re-thinking Teaching About Atrocity: Human Rights Comparative History and Critical Pedagogy

This paper will explore re-framing historic atrocity and its relationship to Holocaust and Genocide education. The origins of genocide studies and its links to Holocaust studies will be traced to discuss the impact of new scholarship and framings on genocide education in the classroom.

Do untrustworthy faces facilitate the recognition of antonyms? A critical analysis of thinking the opposite under distrust

Distrust should automatically activate a "thinking the opposite". Thus, according to Schul, Mayo and Burnstein (2004), subjects detect antonyms of adjectives faster when confronted with untrustworthy rather than trustworthy faces. We conducted four experiments within their paradigm to test whether the response latency of detecting antonyms remains stable. We introduced the following changes: the paradigm was applied with and without an induction phase, faces were culturally adapted, the stimuli were presented according more to priming rules, and the canonicity of antonyms was controlled. Results show that the response latency of detecting antonyms is difficult to predict. Even if faces are culturally adapted and priming rules are applied more strictly, response latency depends on whether the induction phase is applied and on the canonicity of antonyms rather than on the trustworthiness of faces. In general, this paradigm seems not to be appropriate to test thinking the opposite under distrust.

The philosophy of religion; a critical and speculative treatise of man's religious experience and development in the light of modern science and reflective thinking.

Mode of access: Internet.

Organisational learning - a critical systems thinking discipline

Original Paper European Journal of Information Systems (2001) 10, 135–146; doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000394 Organisational learning—a critical systems thinking discipline P Panagiotidis1,3 and J S Edwards2,4 1Deloitte and Touche, Athens, Greece 2Aston Business School, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK Correspondence: Dr J S Edwards, Aston Business School, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK. E-mail: j.s.edwards@aston.ac.uk 3Petros Panagiotidis is Manager responsible for the Process and Systems Integrity Services of Deloitte and Touche in Athens, Greece. He has a BSc in Business Administration and an MSc in Management Information Systems from Western International University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA; an MSc in Business Systems Analysis and Design from City University, London, UK; and a PhD degree from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. His doctorate was in Business Systems Analysis and Design. His principal interests now are in the ERP/DSS field, where he serves as project leader and project risk managment leader in the implementation of SAP and JD Edwards/Cognos in various major clients in the telecommunications and manufacturing sectors. In addition, he is responsible for the development and application of knowledge management systems and activity-based costing systems. 4John S Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Operational Research and Systems at Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK. He holds MA and PhD degrees (in mathematics and operational research respectively) from Cambridge University. His principal research interests are in knowledge management and decision support, especially methods and processes for system development. He has written more than 30 research papers on these topics, and two books, Building Knowledge-based Systems and Decision Making with Computers, both published by Pitman. Current research work includes the effect of scale of operations on knowledge management, interfacing expert systems with simulation models, process modelling in law and legal services, and a study of the use of artifical intelligence techniques in management accounting. Top of pageAbstract This paper deals with the application of critical systems thinking in the domain of organisational learning and knowledge management. Its viewpoint is that deep organisational learning only takes place when the business systems' stakeholders reflect on their actions and thus inquire about their purpose(s) in relation to the business system and the other stakeholders they perceive to exist. This is done by reflecting both on the sources of motivation and/or deception that are contained in their purpose, and also on the sources of collective motivation and/or deception that are contained in the business system's purpose. The development of an organisational information system that captures, manages and institutionalises meaningful information—a knowledge management system—cannot be separated from organisational learning practices, since it should be the result of these very practices. Although Senge's five disciplines provide a useful starting-point in looking at organisational learning, we argue for a critical systems approach, instead of an uncritical Systems Dynamics one that concentrates only on the organisational learning practices. We proceed to outline a methodology called Business Systems Purpose Analysis (BSPA) that offers a participatory structure for team and organisational learning, upon which the stakeholders can take legitimate action that is based on the force of the better argument. In addition, the organisational learning process in BSPA leads to the development of an intrinsically motivated information organisational system that allows for the institutionalisation of the learning process itself in the form of an organisational knowledge management system. This could be a specific application, or something as wide-ranging as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. Examples of the use of BSPA in two ERP implementations are presented.

Media Studies: "Media, History and Society", and "Thinking Popular Culture".

“When cultural life is re-defined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk.” (Postman) The dire tones of Postman quoted in Janet Cramer’s Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of US Media introduce one view that she canvasses, in the debate of the moment, as to where popular culture is heading in the digital age. This is canvassed, less systematically, in Thinking Popular Culture: War Terrorism and Writing by Tara Brabazon, who for example refers to concerns about a “crisis of critical language” that is bothering professionals—journalists and academics or elsewhere—and deplores the advent of the Internet, as a “flattening of expertise in digital environments”.