Occupational research : selected bibliography of Iowa research in vocational-technical education and related areas -- 1960-1967

The Iowa RCU has developed this selected bibliography of Iowa research in Vocational-Technical Education and related areas. Contract research as well as abstracts of masters theses and doctoral dissertations are included. For the most part, these abstracts have been gleaned from research at the three state universities and Drake University.

Occupational research supplement no. 1 : selected bibliography of Iowa research in vocational-technical education and related areas -- 1963-1968

This is a supplement to the selected bibliography of Iowa research in Vocational-Technical Education and related areas that the Iowa RCU developed. Contract research as well as abstracts of masters theses and doctoral dissertations are included.

Occupational research supplement no. 2 : selected bibliography of Iowa research in vocational-technical education and related areas -- 1966-1968

This is supplement no. 2 to the selected bibliography of Iowa research in Vocational-Technical Education and related areas that the Iowa RCU developed. Contract research as well as abstracts of masters theses and doctoral dissertations are included.

Implementing evidence-based patient and family education on oral anticoagulation therapy: a community-based participatory project.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This study aimed at developing and implementing evidence-based patient and family education on oral anticoagulation therapy. BACKGROUND: The number of persons with chronic diseases who live at home is increasing. They have to manage multiple diseases and complex treatments. One such treatment is oral anticoagulation therapy, a high risk variable dose medication. Adherence to oral anticoagulation therapy is jeopardised by limited information about the medications, their risk and complications, the impact of individual daily routine and the limited inclusion of family members in education. Hence, improved and tailored education is essential for patients and families to manage oral anticoagulation therapy at home. DESIGN AND METHODS: A community-based participatory research design combined with the Precede-Proceed model was used including a systematic literature review, posteducation analysis, an online nurse survey, a documentation analysis and patient/family interviews. The study was conducted between April 2010-December 2012 at a department of general internal medicine in a teaching hospital in Switzerland. Participants were the department's nursing and medical professionals including the patients and their families. RESULTS: The evidence-based patient and family education on oral anticoagulation therapy emerged comprising a learning assessment, teaching units, clarification of responsibilities of nurse professionals and documentation guidelines. CONCLUSION AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The inclusion of the whole department has contributed to the development and implementation of this evidence-based patient family education on oral anticoagulation therapy, which encompasses local characteristics and patient preferences. This education is now being used throughout the department.

Diverse Routes from School, via Higher Education, to Employment. A Comparison of Nine European Countries

The central theme for this study is graduate employment and employability in European-wide discussion. In this study, the complex relationships between higher education and the world of work are explored from the vantage point of how individuals make use of the higher education system in their transition from education to employment. The variation among individual transition processes in nine European countries is analysed with the help of a comparable graduate survey. Countries in this study are Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway. The data used for the study is commonly known as the “CHEERS” or “Careers after Higher Education, A European Research Survey.” The data was collected in 1999. The study discusses the possibilities and limitations the higher education system has in supporting the initial education-to-work transitions of youth. The study also addresses problems with comparing national higher education systems in terms of enrolment and graduate employability. A central purpose for this study is to reflect on concerns about the prolongation of individual transitions with a framework that simultaneously considers both the graduate employability and the duration of the education-to-work transition process. The key concept for this study is the standard student/graduate; synonym concepts are the traditional and the conventional student/graduate. Standard graduates are relatively young individuals who are performing their initial transition from education to working-life and who complete the degree-earning process within the stipulated time frame. In all nine countries, standard graduates make up a considerable share of the student flow, passing from higher education to the labour markets. The share of standard graduates is by far the largest in France, where they comprise the overwhelming mass. The proportion of the standard graduates is the lowest in Italy, Finland, and Austria where approximately one in four graduates completed the process of higher education within the stipulated time frame. Of the nine countries compared, employability of the whole graduate population is the greatest in Norway, the UK, Finland, and the Netherlands. Compared with employability of the whole graduate population, variation among the countries is considerably reduced when reviewing the employability of only the standard graduates. Thereby, even though the ranking among countries remains largely unchanged, the variations among them are smaller when the duration of degree earning process is standardized. The study also discusses other ideal types of student careers (or transition processes) besides the standard student/graduate. Results of regression analyses indicate that that at the pan-European level analysis, the graduate labour markets are not heavily segmented in terms of the type of the individual transition process. When considering within-country differences between the graduates, the field of studies is clearly a more powerful explanatory variable than the type of the transition process. There are, nevertheless, clear indications that, irrespective of the country, chances of finding a high status job are, on the average, highest amongst those who graduate within the stipulated duration of the degree program and who thereby have experienced the standard student career, whereas, participating in working life while studying protects against unemployment after finishing one’s degree.

La inclusión laboral y social de los jóvenes con discapacidad intelectual : el papel de la escuela = Work and social inclusion of young people with intellectual disabilities : the role of the school

The transition to adult life from the standpoint of inclusion is a complex process, especially for young people with intellectual disabilities. This article analyzes the context of transition processes showing the main relationships and differences of the different scenarios where young people with disabilities develop personal pathways that lead to adulthood. Among these scenarios, the school -the period of compulsory secondary education- plays a key role. Therefore, a specific section is devoted to developing an approach to the role of the school in the construction of bridges that facilitate social and work inclusion. Finally, it presents some major challenges that need to be faced to improve the processes of transition from an inclusive perspective

El juego y su estructura interna en relación con el trabajo de la condición física en primaria = Games and their internal structure in relation to the work of physical condition in Primary Education

One of the methodological resources that teachers use in a generalised way in Physical Education classes is the game. Inthis article we define the concept of game and analyse the characteristics of their internal structure. On the other hand welook at the concepts of physical condition and conditional skills and describe the objectives of its work in Primary Education.Finally, we relate these concepts and propose two practical examples of modifying the internal structure of the game so asto produce variations in the implied conditional skills

Adult education policy in the European Union during the Lisbon decade : the shift to vocational adult learning and work skills matching

This doctoral dissertation investigates the adult education policy of the European Union (EU) in the framework of the Lisbon agenda 2000–2010, with a particular focus on the changes of policy orientation that occurred during this reference decade. The year 2006 can be considered, in fact, a turning point for the EU policy-making in the adult learning sector: a radical shift from a wide--ranging and comprehensive conception of educating adults towards a vocationally oriented understanding of this field and policy area has been observed, in particular in the second half of the so--called ‘Lisbon decade’. In this light, one of the principal objectives of the mainstream policy set by the Lisbon Strategy, that of fostering all forms of participation of adults in lifelong learning paths, appears to have muted its political background and vision in a very short period of time, reflecting an underlying polarisation and progressive transformation of European policy orientations. Hence, by means of content analysis and process tracing, it is shown that the new target of the EU adult education policy, in this framework, has shifted from citizens to workers, and the competence development model, borrowed from the corporate sector, has been established as the reference for the new policy road maps. This study draws on the theory of governance architectures and applies a post-ontological perspective to discuss whether the above trends are intrinsically due to the nature of the Lisbon Strategy, which encompasses education policies, and to what extent supranational actors and phenomena such as globalisation influence the European governance and decision--making. Moreover, it is shown that the way in which the EU is shaping the upgrading of skills and competences of adult learners is modeled around the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus according a great deal of importance to the ‘new skills for new jobs’ and perhaps not enough to life skills in its broader sense which include, for example, social and civic competences: these are actually often promoted but rarely implemented in depth in the EU policy documents. In this framework, it is conveyed how different EU policy areas are intertwined and interrelated with global phenomena, and it is emphasised how far the building of the EU education systems should play a crucial role in the formation of critical thinking, civic competences and skills for a sustainable democratic citizenship, from which a truly cohesive and inclusive society fundamentally depend, and a model of environmental and cosmopolitan adult education is proposed in order to address the challenges of the new millennium. In conclusion, an appraisal of the EU’s public policy, along with some personal thoughts on how progress might be pursued and actualised, is outlined.

“Development work thesis” as a tool for continuing professional education

Julkaisumaa: 158 TW TWN Taiwan

Neuropsychological dysfunction related to earlier occupational exposure to mercury vapor

We assessed the neuropsychological test performances of 26 patients (mean age = 41.5 ± 6.1 years; mean years of education = 9.8 ± 1.8; 20 males) diagnosed with chronic occupational mercurialism who were former workers at a fluorescent lamp factory. They had been exposed to elemental mercury for an average of 10.2 ± 3.8 years and had been away from this work for 6 ± 4.7 years. Mean urinary mercury concentrations 1 year after cessation of work were 1.8 ± 0.9 µg/g creatinine. Twenty control subjects matched for age, gender, and education (18 males) were used for comparison. Neuropsychological assessment included attention, inhibitory control, verbal and visual memory, verbal fluency, manual dexterity, visual-spatial function, executive function, and semantic knowledge tests. The Beck Depression Inventory and the State and Trait Inventory were used to assess depression and anxiety symptoms, respectively. The raw score for the group exposed to mercury indicated slower information processing speed, inferior performance in psychomotor speed, verbal spontaneous recall memory, and manual dexterity of the dominant hand and non-dominant hand (P < 0.05). In addition, the patients showed increased depression and anxiety symptoms (P < 0.001). A statistically significant correlation (Pearson) was demonstrable between mean urinary mercury and anxiety trait (r = 0.75, P = 0.03). The neuropsychological performances of the former workers suggest that occupational exposure to elemental mercury has long-term effects on information processing and psychomotor function, with increased depression and anxiety also possibly reflecting the psychosocial context.

Sustainable Computer Science Education

As the world becomes more technologically advanced and economies become globalized, computer science evolution has become faster than ever before. With this evolution and globalization come the need for sustainable university curricula that adequately prepare graduates for life in the industry. Additionally, behavioural skills or “soft” skills have become just as important as technical abilities and knowledge or “hard” skills. The objective of this study was to investigate the current skill gap that exists between computer science university graduates and actual industry needs as well as the sustainability of current computer science university curricula by conducting a systematic literature review of existing publications on the subject as well as a survey of recently graduated computer science students and their work supervisors. A quantitative study was carried out with respondents from six countries, mainly Finland, 31 of the responses came from recently graduated computer science professionals and 18 from their employers. The observed trends suggest that a skill gap really does exist particularly with “soft” skills and that many companies are forced to provide additional training to newly graduated employees if they are to be successful at their jobs.

Our future in geriatrics : an examination of the knowledge, attitudes and career choices of physical therapy students in Ontario : a pretest-posttest study /

There continues to be a shortage of health professionals interested in providing care for the older adult. Part of the problem seems to stem from the negative perceptions of geriatrics as a clinical speciality. This study examines the knowledge, attitudes and career decisions of physical therapy students in Ontario before and after an educational intervention. Surveys were conducted with 144 physical therapy students from five universities before and after their geriatrics course in order to measure their knowledge, attitudes and interest in working with older adults. The incoming class of physical therapy students (n = 1 86) acted as control subjects for the study. The Revised Palmore Facts On Aging Quiz measured the students' knowledge of aging (Miller & Dodder, 1980). The Revised Tuckman-Lorge (Axelrod & Eisdorfer, 1961) and the Kogan Old People Scales (Kogan, 1961) were used to examine attitude. An environmental scale was developed based on the work of Snape (1986) to measure the impact of the working conditions on the students' career choices. A 10-point Likert-type scale based on the work of Michlelutte & Diseker (1985) was modified and used to measure career interest in working with the elderly. On independent sample t-tests, positive attitudes were related to the demographic characteristic of gender; ethnicity was negatively related; and marital status was found to be unrelated to attitude (fi<.05). Having a relationship with an older adult and taking courses in gerontology were also found to be positively related to attitude (fi<.05). Results on a betweensubjects design which compared students before and after the course found that knowledge scores improved from pretest to posttest (fi<.05). In general, attitude scores improved from T1 to T2 on both measurement tools (b<.05). The environmental and vocational interest scales yielded statistically significant differences between the control and experimental groups during the intervention period (p<.05). The results of this research indicated that knowledge and attitudes improve after an educational intervention; however, there was little impact on the students' overall career decisions. Further research is indicated to examine the complex relationship between attitude and behaviour and its impact on students' career choices. In addition, the impact of geriatric clinical environment on students' attitudes and career decisions needs to be further explored.

Research in the clinical setting : a qualitative study of the value of play research in the continuing education of occupational therapists.

Occupational therapists have always recognized playas an important part of a child's life. However, until recently play has been viewed as a medium for reaching treatment goals, rather than as an activity that is valuable in and of itself. If occupational therapists think of playas the primary activity or occupation of childhood, then play should be a very important area of focus for paediatric clinicians. In order to assist children to become as independent as possible with play and to have fulfilling play experiences the occupational therapist needs to have a clear understanding of how to assess, set goals which lead towards competence in play, and promote play. Recent play literature has placed importance on play behaviours and looking at the relationship between the child and both the human and nonhuman environment. Believing that play and playfulness can and should be promoted, for children with physical disabilities, requires that therapists learn new assessment and intervention strategies. A new assessment tool, The Test of Playfulness, was developed by Bundy in 1994. It addressed play behaviours and environmental influences. The author, a co-investigator and eight occupational therapists were involved in a playfulness study using this test to compare the playfulness of children with physical disabilities with their able-bodied peers. After the study was completed the author questioned whether or not involvement in the playfulness study was enough of a change agent to bring about transformative learning in order to further the eight occupational therapists' education about play.This study investigated changes in either the therapists' thinking about play or their behaviour in their clinical practice. The study also examined the participants' retention of knowledge about the Test of Playfulness. The eight therapists who had been involved in the playfulness study (participants) were matched with eight therapists who had not been involved (nonparticipants). The therapists were interviewed 9 to 12 months after completion of the playfulness study. They were asked to describe various scenarios of play and open ended prompts were used to elicit the therapists' perceptions of play, good play, the role or value of play, environmental and gender influences on play, play assessment and intervention, and play research, for children with and without disabilities. The participants were also prompted to discuss their experience with the playfulness study. A self-report questionnaire was also completed at the end of the interview. The results of the study demonstrated that: (a) the play research project was a good format for continuing the participants' education about play; (b) their thinking had changed about play; (c) according to self report, they had used this new knowledge in their clinical practice; and (d) the participants remembered the items on the Test of Playfulness and could use them in describing various aspects of play. This study found that participating in a play research project had been an effective method of professional development. It also highlighted the need for increased awareness of the recent literature on play and the developing role of the occupational therapist in the assessment and intervention of play.

Youth's experiences of motivation in school physical education and sport

This study's objective was to examine how thirteen year-old females perceive and describe their lived experiences of being physically active in school PE (physical education) and organized youth sport settings through a self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) lens. Motivational factors and links between both settings were discussed with five participants using in-depth interviews. Participants discussed factors that facilitated and disrupted their motivation to be active in PE and sport settings. The selfdetermination theory was used as a framework in this qualitative study and results are based on participants' own words and perspectives. Results indicate that participants' positive experiences in school PE and organized sport have the potential to meet their needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. The autonomy supportive behaviours of social agents, feeling challenged and successful at activities and the strong relationships formed in both settings are all things that motivated young people in this study to continue being physically active throughout high-school and into adulthood.