Los métodos productivos de enseñanza preparan a los estudiantes para resolver problemas semejantes a los que se enfrentarán en el ejercicio laboral. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo fundamentar la pertinencia de la utilización del caso clínico como herramienta didáctica para la enseñanza en las ciencias básicas biomédicas, mediante un sistema de tareas para abordar los contenidos del tema Fisiología de la sangre de la asignatura Sangre y Sistema Inmune de la carrera de medicina. El caso clínico permite la vinculación de (...) las ciencias básicas biomédicas con las ciencias clínicas. Su utilización contribuye a la aproximación del estudiante de las ciencias básicas al estudio de estas durante su formación médica. El aprendizaje se logra a lo largo del proceso de resolución del mismo, se estimula la incorporación de conceptos necesarios para resolver el problema y se aprende un método para abordar situaciones en la práctica. Se elaboró un sistema de tareas y preguntas derivadas del problema profesional síndrome anémico. El problema docente se basó en un artículo médico que expone un caso de lesiones por empalamiento que produjo un gran sangramiento en un individuo. Se elaboraron preguntas problémicas relacionadas con la fisiología de la sangre y el tratamiento que recibió el paciente con eritropoyetina, factores de la coagulación y soluciones cristaloides en sustitución de la sangre. Se incluyó una pregunta que aborda un conflicto ético para sistematizar los conocimientos adquiridos en la asignatura Sociedad y Salud II. Productive teaching methods train students to solve problems similar to those they will face in their work life. The objective of the paper is to argue pertinence in the use of the clinical case as a didactic tool in biomedical basic sciences teaching by means of a task system that deals with the contents of the Blood Physiology subject in the Blood and Immune System subject matter of the medicine degree. Clinical cases enable the link between biomedical basic sciences and clinical sciences. Their use contributes to basic sciences students' approach to the study of the latter during their medical training. Learning is achieved through its solving process; the introduction of necessary problem-solving concepts is encouraged and a method to deal with in-practice situations is learned. A task and questions system derived from the anemic syndrome professional problem was made. The teaching problem was based on a medical article which presents a case of an individual who suffered impaling injuries which caused a great bleeding. Problem questions related to blood physiology and to the erythropoietin-based treatment the patient received, coagulation factors and crystalloid fluids used as blood substitutes, were prepared. It was included a question that deals with an ethical conflict in order to systematize the knowledge acquired in the Society and Health II subject matter. (shrink)

The need to establish a research field within psychology didactics at secondary level has recently been voiced by several researchers internationally. An analysis of a Swedish case coming out of secondary level education in psychology presented here provides an illustration that complexity thinking – derived from complexity theory – is uniquely placed to consider and indicate possible solutions to challenges, described by researchers as central to the foundation of a new field. Subject-matter didactics is defined for the purpose of this (...) paper as a combination of general didactics and subject- matter content, and considering the international nature of research traditions coming out of psychology, the implications of the results presented here cannot be regarded as limited solely to national concerns. An on-line survey was sent to secondary schools in Sweden. Discussions and lectures along with teaching to the book – alternatively used as inspiration – emerged as central from the thematic analysis of the results, providing the first mapping of teaching practices in secondary level psychology in Sweden. An analysis, founded on complexity thinking – combined with a model enabling a delimitation of the scope of study – focused on time use and the importance placed on self-knowledge, along with the transformation of theory into practice. The former pointing to a teacher centred nested subsystem (e.g. asymmetric relations between teachers and students), the latter pointing to student centred nested subsystems coming out of embodied knowledge (e.g. students as node) where psychological perspectives are learnt through self-reflexion, case studies and everyday life experiences (turning theory to practice), implying a holistic approach. The analysis applied to the Swedish case provides an illustration of how complexity theory has the potential to address challenges at micro and macro level to the establishment of a new research field in psychology didactics and to indicate possible solutions. Psychologies high relevance to everyday life, multi-causality, perspective pluralism, dynamic systems character and scientific character, makes complexity thinking a relevant approach in the consideration of challenges to the establishment of a research field in didactics of psychology. (shrink)

RESUMEN Introducción: La educación en el trabajo es la forma fundamental del proceso docente educativo en las carreras de las ciencias médicas y en específico para la asignatura de Medicina Comunitaria de la carrera de Medicina. Objetivo: Exponer elementos referidos a una guía didáctica para la educación en el trabajo de la asignatura Medicina Comunitaria. Método: Se diseñó una guía didáctica para la educación en el trabajo, desde la asignatura Medicina Comunitaria. Se interactuó con estudiantes de segundo año de la (...) carrera de Medicina, la cuak abarcó 4 etapas. Resultados: Se ofrecen las tareas con sus objetivos y acciones a cumplimentar por los estudiantes, amparados por la guía actual de confección del Análisis de la Situación de Salud. Conclusiones: La guía constituye una herramienta que posibilita la realización de las actividades de la educación en el trabajo a la vez que permite el logro de competencias profesionales. ABSTRACT Introduction: The education in the work is the fundamental form of the educational teaching process in the careers of the medical sciences and in specific for the subject of Community Medicine of the career of Medicine. Objective: To exhibit elements referred to a didactic guide for the education in the work of the Community Medicine subject. Method: A didactic guide was designed for the education in the work, from the Community Medicine subject. It was interacted with students of the second year of the career of Medicine, which included 4 stages. Results: The tasks are offered with their objectives and actions to complete for the students protected by the current guide of preparation of the Analysis of the Situation of Health. Conclusions: The guide constitutes a tool that makes possible the achievement of the activities of the education in the work, simultaneously it allows the achievement of professional competitions. (shrink)

We note an increasing consciousness of weakness of legal methodology taught to law students today: The students get neither real idea nor feeling of legal decision-making as mixture of legal matters, issue of facts, personal inputs, diverging interests, and the interplay with other actors. For minimize these defects it is necessary that law students learn in legal studies the following points: (1) Legal decision-making is a special kind of decision-making and is embedded in all problems of this process. (2) Jurisprudence (...) is a hybrid science: It deals with facts of issue as well with legal matter. (3) Jurisprudence will be understood as transnational science and requires greater cooperation between law schools all over the world. (4) Legal education should focus on general principles and legal tools rather than on detailed rules. (5) Legal theory should demonstrate students our lack of understanding legal decision-making. (6) A realistic legal methodology has to take into account the impossibility of absolute certainty of the correctness of legal decision. (7) It is important to point out that analysis of facts of the case as crucial part of legal methodology requires teaching systems to introduce students in the respective techniques in practice like case studies, projects as well as legal clinics or SASLA-system. (shrink)

The authors believe there is a need for novel ways of enhancing professional judgment and discretion in the contemporary healthcare environment. The objective is to provide a framework to guide a discursive analysis of an ongoing clinical scenario by a small group of healthcare professionals to achieve consensual understanding in the decision-making necessary to resolve specific healthcare inadequacies and promote organisational learning. REPVAD is an acronym for the framework’s five decision-making dimensions of reasoning, evidence, procedures, values, attitudes and defences. The (...) design is set out in terms of well-defined definitions of the dimensions, a rationale for using REPVAD, and explications of dimensions one at a time. Furthermore, the REPVAD process of application to a scenario is set out, and a didactic scenario is given to show how REPVAD works together with a sample case. A discussion is fleshed out in four real life student cases, and a conclusion indicates strengths and weaknesses and the possibility of further development and transferability. In terms of findings, the model has been tried, tested and refined over a number of years in the development of advanced practitioners at university healthcare faculties in two European countries. Consent was obtained from the four participating students. (shrink)

I argue that teaching evaluation tools may function as ethical codes, and answer certain demands that ECs cannot sufficiently fulfill. In order to be viable, an EC related to the teaching profession must assume a different form, and such a form is already present in several of the contemporary TETs. The TET matrix form allows for certain features that are incompatible with the EC form. The TET’s benchmark scale – ranging from below the acceptable to the ideal level across (...) the dimensions of teachers’ competence – allows it to answer the demands upon ECs, raised by the EC critics. TETs embrace both minimal requirements and lofty ideals, while ECs of different types have a hard time combining these two features. TETs relate to different dimensions of teacher competence, connecting ethical and professional components with didactical, managerial and cognitive components, without lumping them together. (shrink)

Obtaining a sufficient amount of measurable and reliable results of student surveys has always posed a challenge for university teams tasked with the provision of the quality of education. This is especially visible at faculties where education is based on the classic classroom-based model, which then transfers to clinical units, hospital wards, and specialist laboratories. The highly unpredictable pandemic situation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus raises the bar for the evaluation of didactics. Fortunately, the continuous technological progress in the area (...) of Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to design the implementation of tools that would improve the position of systems for the management of courses of studies. The evaluation survey for didactic classes, as one of the last output data obtained during the process, may finally become a fully recognized source of information about the conducted classes and the teachers themselves. On the other hand, it may become a tool for those surveyed to influence the quality of classes, express their opinion, present suggestions and propositions generally pertaining to changes in the process of education. New information technologies not only make it possible to improve the effectiveness of reaching the recipients, but also provide completely new, very reliable methods of acquisition of credible behaviour, used as integration data in solutions based on machine communication. Using Artificial Intelligence coupled with data may make it possible to use intelligent communication for effective management of the process of surveying – a solution that has so far been used in business, in the form of the so-called bots. As a result, this would lead to an ongoing, fully quantitative and qualitative, assessment of classes. (shrink)

The development of children must be an integral part of their educational environment, focusing on strengthening their learning and social skills. The research is framed in the design of didactic material, under the perspective of product design. As a discipline of study, it focuses on the needs andparticularities of the rural educational environment and attempts to support the integral development that Ecuadorian education has been pursued. In this context, with a qualitative approach, the characteristics of the environment are collected, (...) as well as the perspectives of basic general education teachers, inrelation to the integral education and the existing materials in formal education. In a comparative analysis, we analyzed data obtained with similar training projects, which show the importance of working on social skills in children. The results determine parameters and requirements to develop didactic products that complement education, based on concepts of design, pedagogy, and didactics as knowledge-building tools. Keywords: Product Design, Teaching Material, Comprehensive Training, Social Skills. (shrink)

As medical ethics and professionalism education continues to equip medical students and residents with long-lasting tools, educators should continue to supplement proven teaching strategies with engaging, relatable, and generationally appropriate didactic supplements. However, popular teaching aids have recently been criticized in the literature and summative information on alternatives is absent. The purpose of this review is to evaluate and assess the functional use and application of short form audiovisual didactic supplements or "icebreakers" in medical ethics and professionalism (...) teaching. A systematic review of both the medical and humanities literature (i.e., PubMed/medline, Cochrane Library, and JSTOR) was conducted from inception to August 1, 2019. Final articles were subjected to a qualitative appraisal and thematic analysis. Thirteen articles were included for final analysis. Sixty-nine percent (n = 9) of the studies were published after 2000. Two studies were qualitative, one study was quantitative, and the remaining articles were commentaries. Short form audiovisual media was most popular outside of the United States (n = 10). Sixty-nine percent (n = 9) of articles advocated for self-contained media in the form of trigger films or short films/videos, while the remaining articles (n = 4) discussed the use of TV/film clips. Producibility of media was exclusive to short/trigger films. Nine themes were identified in the content analysis: adaptability, conversation catalyst, effective, engaging, nuance, practice, producibility, real, and subject diversity. The three most common themes in descending order of frequency were: conversation catalyst, realness, and adaptability. Trigger films represent an effective and unique pedagogical strategy in supplementing current medical ethics and professionalism teaching at the medical school level. (shrink)

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 hours of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5-6, and eight preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts –the use of digital (...) tools in the social organization of the activities are examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that are made relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in interaction between the children and between the adults and children in the form of norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g. smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program (...) enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program (...) enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

Labyrinth of the world and paradise of the heart belongs to the jewels of Czech literature. The author – Jan Amos Comenius – consciously uses allegorical narrative for didactic purposes – mainly for his own moral self-reflection in the face of suffering. His method proved to be very effective. The goal of this text is to explore the potential of the literary method from the perspective of moral (trans)formation. The key question is: How did Comenius convey the moral content (...) of his “lesson” in the Labyrinth? Or in general: How does allegorical narrative work as a tool of moral (trans)formation – both for the reader and author of the text. Specifically, this paper attempts to show several literary functions of the Labyrinth as a tool of moral (trans)formation: the therapeutic function, the emphatic function, the imitation function, the organizational function, the performative function and the plot function. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology, the view that social identity is relevant to knowledge-acquisition, has been consigned to the margins of mainstream philosophy. In part, this is because the principles of standpoint epistemology are taken to be in opposition to those which guide traditional epistemology. One goal of this paper is to tease out the characterization of traditional epistemology that is at odds with standpoint epistemology. The characterization of traditional epistemology that I put forth is one which endorses the thesis of intellectualism, the (...) view that knowledge does not depend on non-epistemic features. I then suggest that two further components – the atomistic view of knowers and aperspectivalism – can be usefully interpreted as supporting features of intellectualism. A further goal of this paper is to show that we ought to resist this characterization of traditional epistemology. I use pragmatic encroachment as a dialectical tool to motivate the denial of intellectualism, and consequently, the denial of both supporting components. I then attempt to show how it is possible to have a view, similar to pragmatic encroachment, that takes social identity, rather than stakes, to be the feature that makes a difference to what a person is in a position to know. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify (...) existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression. (shrink)

Within the last decade, burgeoning interest in the intersection of epistemology and social issues has generated a new set of research questions. These questions range from the relevance of social identity, to peer disagreement, to debates on the significance of moral considerations to epistemic evaluations, to discussions of our epistemic practices and how those practices exclude certain agents and certain bodies of knowledge. Central in this new and emerging body of work is the realization that epistemology has more to do (...) than simply answer questions about what knowledge consists in; it must also acknowledge that our answers to these questions might be influenced by features we have previously failed to make space for. It is in this respect that we are witnessing a renewed interest in a theoretical approach long consigned to the margins of epistemology – that of standpoint epistemology. (shrink)

It used to be that the touchstone of objectivity was the elimination of subjective features, like our values, biases, assumptions, and so on. Part of what motivates this narrow conception of objectivity is the thought that objective reality is the way that it is regardless of our relationship to it, and that our ability to accurately describe or depict this reality is distorted by this relationship. But what if that understanding is wrong, and removing these features takes us farther away (...) from truth and knowledge, rather than closer to them? This is the claim I advance. In this article, I trace this narrow conception to its political origins, and advance a broader understanding of objectivity that reimagines a new use for, rather than ignoring entirely, features that are thought to be subjective. (shrink)

Our ability to dismantle white supremacy is compromised by the fact that we don’t fully appreciate what, precisely, white supremacy is. In this chapter, I suggest understanding white supremacy as an epistemological system – an epistemic frame that serves as the foundation for how we understand and interact with the world. The difficulty in dismantling an epistemological system lies in its resilience – a system’s capacity to resist change to its underlying structure while, at the same time, offering the appearance (...) of large-scale reform. Using white supremacy as a case study, here I explore what features enable this resilience. An analysis of white supremacy that presents it as more than a tool of social and political oppression, but as an epistemic system that makes this oppression possible, allows us to better understand, and eventually overthrow, such systems. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to the view that some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness. Call this theepistemic privilege thesis. This thesis stands in need of explication and support. In providing that explication and support, I first distinguish between two readings of the thesis: the thesis that marginalized social locations confer some epistemic advantages (the epistemic advantage thesis) and the thesis that marginalized standpoints generate better, more accurate knowledge (the standpoint thesis). I then develop the former (...) by appealing to the notion of epistemic peers available in the disagreement literature. I next turn to the latter thesis, arguing that consciousness-raising plays an analogous role in the achievement of a standpoint as training does in the achievement of expertise. The upshot of this analysis is that it clarifies that while marginalization is necessary (though not sufficient) for epistemic advantage, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic privilege. (shrink)

In her book, Down Girl, Manne proposes to uncover the “logic” of misogyny, bringing clarity to a notion that she describes as both “loaded” and simultaneously “politically marginal.” Manne is aware that full insight into the “logic” of misogyny will require not just a “what” but a “why.” Though Manne finds herself largely devoted to the former task, the latter is in the not-too-distant periphery. -/- Manne proposes to understand misogyny, as a general framework, in terms of what it does (...) to women. Misogyny, she writes, is a system that polices and enforces the patriarchal social order (33). That’s the “what.” As for the “why,” Manne suggests that misogyny is what women experience because they fail to live up to the moral standards set out for women by that social order. I find Manne’s analysis insightful, interesting, and well argued. And yet, I find her account incomplete. While I remain fully convinced by her analysis of what misogyny is, I am less persuaded by her analysis of why misogyny is. For a full analysis of the “logic” of misogyny, one needs to understand how the patriarchy manifests in men an interest in participating in its enforcement. Or so I hope to motivate here. I aim to draw a line from the patriarchy to toxic masculinity to misogyny so that we have a clearer picture as to why men are invested in this system. I thus hope to offer here an analysis that is underdeveloped in Manne’s book, but is equally worthy of attention if we want fully to understand the complex machinations underlying misogyny. (shrink)

In this paper, the author shows how research ethics committees must deal with illegality in the research protocol. He defines their legal duty by reference to the 2001 Clinical Trials Directive, and especially in the key areas of insurance, indemnity and no-fault compensation. The author is critical of the current GAfREC and recent guidelines issued by the Royal College of Physicians. He concludes that new rules are needed to replace the 2001 edition of GAfREC.

Objectivity may be a useful regulative ideal for inquiry, but here I ponder to what extent it may be thought of more as a political ideology than an epistemological methodology. By tracing objectivity to its political origins, I aim to problematize this ideal as we tend to understand it - as one demanding that we eliminate the influence of certain subjective features - and to sketch a new conception of this ideal that accommodates (rather than dismisses) the role of these (...) features in inquiry. (shrink)

This article systematically reviews studies investigating the effect of three operationalizations of complexity in emotion experience on situat...

“Seeing is believing!”, or so the old adage goes. Roughly, the idea expressed by the adage is this: one needs to see x before one is willing to believe that x exists. In this chapter, I examine the extent to which it is more apt to say that believing is seeing​. Expanding on the work of feminist epistemologists and critical race scholars, I consider a number of cases in which one needs to believe that x exists before one can see (...) x. I then consider how reframing the relationship between seeing and believing can deepen our understanding of a wide range of social phenomena, ranging from police brutality to sexual harassment. (shrink)

In the summer of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, an event which led to the horror of World War I and which many historians suggest marked the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1992, Sarajevo again lurched into prominence as the focal point of one of the century’s bloodiest civil wars. Yet Sarajevo at one point epitomized the dreams of the Enlightenment, a city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims peacefully coexisted. In the midst of Sarajevo’s recent decline (...) into chaos and destruction, Susan Sontag decided to produce Act I of Waiting for Godot, which, despite ever-looming danger, played to packed houses. Why? Why did this city of hope lie crushed at the end of the twentieth century? Why did Sontag stage an artistic production in the middle of such overwhelming tragedy? Why Waiting for Godot ? And, most important, why the appreciative, silent tears of audience members who risked their lives to attend a play in the middle of a war?These are the questions that guide David Toole’s theological reflections in Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, where he seeks to come to terms with what it means to live a life of dignity in a world of undeniable suffering. Toole skillfully weaves together Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on nihilism with Michel Foucault’s analysis of power to produce a metaphysics of tragedy, or a “politics of dying.” Such politics are then used to shed new theological light on the Christian apocalypse and what it means to be alive at the end of the twentieth century. In making his argument, Toole draws innovative connections between such diverse figures as John Milbank, Alasdair MacIntyre, Euripides, John Howard Yoder, and Norman Maclean (author of A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire ), all the while using Beckett’s play as a compass for his direction. The end result is a fascinating, eminently readable, unexpectedly adventurous theological inquiry into the meaning of life. (shrink)

This essay reviews some of the issues associated with the challenge of integrating the concepts of medical professionalism into the socialization and identity formation of the undergraduate medical student. A narrative-based approach to the integration of professionalism in medical education proposed by Coulehan (Acad Med 80(10):892–898, 2005) offers an appealing method to accomplish the task in a less didactic format and in a way that promotes more personal growth. In this essay, I review how the Osler Student Societies of (...) the University of Texas Medical Branch developed and how they offer a convenient vehicle to carry out this narrative-based approach to professionalism. Through mentor-modeled professional behavior, opportunities for student self-reflection, the development of narrative skills through reflection on great literature, and opportunities for community service, the Osler Student Societies provide a ready-made narrative-based approach to medical professionalism education. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology has been linked with increasing calls for deference to the socially marginalized. As we understand it, deference involves recognizing someone else as better positioned than we are, either to investigate or to answer some question, and then accepting their judgment as our own. We connect contemporary calls for deference to old objections that standpoint epistemology wrongly reifies differences between groups. We also argue that while deferential epistemic norms present themselves as a solution to longstanding injustices, habitual deference prevents (...) the socially dominant from developing for themselves the skills necessary to expand their capacity for empathy, to deftly probe for evidence, and to ask critical questions. Consequently, we argue that standpoint epistemology must be understood as calling for inclusion, not deference. (shrink)

This article is a response to the public consultation on the draft Code of Practice issued by the Human Tissue Authority on the import and export of human bodies, body parts and tissue. The question is whether the Draft Code and the Human Tissue Act go far enough to prevent the unethical acquisition and movement of human tissue. I conclude that the answer to this question is ‘no’ and go on to demonstrate how the identified deficiencies can be remedied.

In this paper the author argues that the Academy of Medical Sciences's ‘Review of the regulation and governance of medical research’ has produced a set of muddled recommendations that could increase complexity and uncertainty in research governance rather than reduce it. Issues discussed in the paper include the additional legal burden placed upon the newly proposed Health Research Agency by the plan for a National Research Governance Service and its system of centralized permissions, the consequences that this may have for (...) the research ethics committees in the discharge of their legal duty, and the unanswered questions surrounding the TGN1412 incident. (shrink)

This article is a response to the letter from the Department of Health that was published in the previous edition of the Research Ethics Review upon the matter of the legal duty of the research ethics committees. It also deals briefly with the article published in the current edition of Research Ethics Review by Colin Parker on what appears to be the same topic.

In this article, the author contends that the current indemnity provided to REC members is unfair and is so badly drafted that it cannot be described as an indemnity at all. He contends that the Appointing Authorities should give guidance to clarify the scope of the indemnity or replace it. The author discusses potential legal claims by REC members against their Appointing Authority if this is not provided. The legal liability of REC members for negligence and other claims is also (...) discussed. The author provides a solution in a simpler form of indemnity framed by reference to actual claims that can be made against a REC member. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns to (...) outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

This collection brings together eighteen of the author's original papers, previously published in a variety of academic journals and edited collections over the last three decades, on the process of interpretation in literature and the visual arts in one comprehensive volume. The volume highlights the centrality of artistic texts to the study of multimodality, organized into six sections each representing a different modality or semiotic system, including literature, television, film, painting, sculpture, and architecture. A new introduction lays the foundation for (...) the theoretically based method of analysis running through each of the chapters, one that emphasizes the interplay of textual details and larger thematic purposes to create an open-ended and continuous approach to the interpretation of artistic texts, otherwise known as the "hermeneutic spiral". Showcasing Michael O'Toole's extensive contributions to the field of multimodality and in his research on interpretation in literature and the visual arts, this book is essential reading for students and scholars in multimodality, visual arts, art history, film studies, and comparative literature. (shrink)

Localism is a social movement often associated with “buy local” food initiatives or the prevention of big-box retail expansion. At its core, however, localism is also about fostering local independence by encouraging businesses to opt for local alternatives when making purchasing decisions. In this article, we develop and test hypotheses that organizations with stronger community-oriented identities are more likely to source locally and that this relationship is moderated by the importance of the focal firm’s purchasing decisions. Results support the strong (...) influence of identity but the conditional effect is unconfirmed. (shrink)