We describe and examine a view of knowledge application in schooling developed from aspects of contemporary learning theory. To situate our perspective in contemporary practice, we establish the significance of the issue of knowledge application as an educational challenge. We then review some enduring theoretical conceptions of the problem and their educational ramifications following which we introduce some developments in educational learning theory and consider their implications for teaching knowledge application.

Because health care professions exist to provide a good for society, ethical questions are inherently part of them. Such professions and their members can be assessed based on how effective they are in developing knowledge and enacting practices that further the health and well‐being of individuals and society. The complexity of contemporary health care environments makes it important to prepare clinicians who can anticipate, recognize, and address problems that arise in practice or that prevent a profession from fulfilling its service (...) goals and obligations. Different health care professions have evolved distinct perspectives about appropriate goals for, and the purposes of, their clinicians, even when the goal of improving health and well‐being for society is shared across professions. While medicine and nursing goals are shared in principle, they differ in the particulars. Given the centrality to nursing of ethical questions, the profession has a collective responsibility to help clinicians at all levels of practice become ethically savvy and to reinforce their moral agency as needed. Both knowledge of nursing ethics and knowledge of the interdisciplinary field of bioethics are critical to nursing work. (shrink)

This paper examines the extent to which parents have absorbed New Right ideas about education and acted accordingly. What emerges is that their commitment to the rhetoric of school choice is strong. However, concepts such as the market and competition are viewed less favourably. An important theme here is the avoidance by parents of any collective agenda in discussing education policy, a factor that may thwart those who attempt to predict their responses to government policy for schools.

There is a growing trend in Australia to require lawyers to certify reasonable prospects of success for the cases they bring and defend. New South Wales has led the way with the Legal Profession Act 2004 (NSW) Pt 3.2 Division 10 requiring legal practitioners to certify reasonable prospects of success in all claims for damages. The requirement places a significant onus on lawyers to make a judgment about the merits of a case before it is begun, yet the common law (...) has long provided mechanisms to ensure that cases without prospects of success do not go to trial. This article considers Australian legislative provisions requiring lawyers to certify reasonable prospects of success of cases. It examines the application of the NSW legislation by the courts highlighting the difficulties of interpretation of what constitute 'reasonable prospects of success' and the application of the legislation in the context of the dynamic litigation process. It is argued that these legislated obligations on lawyers will have a detrimental effect on access to justice by denying parties, in particular plaintiffs, the opportunity to have their cases properly and fully determined in the courts. This article examines common law mechanisms for dissuading cases without prospects and argues that the general law is an effective system for ensuring that cases without prospects of success are not maintained. The Australian experience is instructive for consideration of optimal reform packages for the administration of justice and to evaluate the role of any litigation lawyer within the judicial and court process. (shrink)

‘Individualized medicine’ is an emerging paradigm in clinical life science research. We conducted a socio-empirical interview study in a leading German clinical research group, aiming at implementing ‘individualized medicine’ of colorectal cancer. The goal was to investigate moral and social issues related to physician–patient interaction and clinical care, and to identify the points raised, supported and rejected by the physicians and researchers. Up to now there has been only limited insight into how experts dedicated to individualized medicine view its problems. (...) Interviews with researchers and clinicians were based on a prestructured questionnaire. The content analysis revealed a broad spectrum of opinions. Major findings were disappointments with the limits of the current therapy regimen and clinical practice; problematic impacts on physician–patient relationship; and an informed consent procedure which is mainly based on paternalistic assumptions. According to our analysis, major problems will be uncertainties related to the biomarker's sensitivity and specificity, and the identification of ‘non-responders’. However, the findings also indicate that experts expect evidence-based medicine to replace decisions based on gut feeling or hierarchical structures. (shrink)

Advances in life-sustaining medical technology as applied to neonatal cases frequently present ethical concerns with a strong emotional component. Neonates delivered in the gestation period of approximately 23held hostagemoral distress” regarding aggressive courses of treatment for some patients. Some of this distress results from a feeling of powerlessness regarding treatment decisions, coupled with a high intensity of hands-on contact with the patients and family. Lack of authority coupled with high responsibility may itself be a recipe for a different kind of (...) futility. (shrink)

Prior research indicates that managers’ dark personality traits increase their tendency to engage in disruptive and unethical organizational behaviors including accounting earnings management. Other research suggests that the prevalence of dark personalities in management may represent an accidental byproduct of selecting managers with accompanying desirable attributes that fit the stereotype of a “strong leader.” Our paper posits that organizations may hire some managers who have dark personality traits because their willingness to push ethical boundaries aligns with organizational objectives, particularly in (...) the accounting context where ethical considerations are especially important. Using several validation studies and experiments, we find that experienced executives and recruiting professionals favor hiring a candidate with dark personality traits into an accounting management position over an otherwise better-qualified candidate when the hiring organization faces pressure to manage earnings. Our results help to illuminate why individuals with dark personality traits may effectively compete for high-level accounting positions. (shrink)

Issues surrounding the inclusion of transgender and intersex athletes in the women’s category in sport have spurred vigorous, and sometimes vicious, debate. The loudest voices on one edge of the de...

Published in German during the last 15 years, the 13 essays in this volume provide readers with valuable knowledge of the much discussed theme of hermeneutics today. Gadamer was an early student of Martin Heidegger and has been a lifelong friend and interpreter. These essays are an outgrowth of Gadamer's Truth and Method. They can be understood, however, independently of it. Gadamer's standpoint is a blend of Hegel's and Heidegger's, with his own independent development in part. The book contains a (...) long and highly competent introduction by the editor, David E. Linge, who has translated most of the essays. - Choice, on back cover. (shrink)

For qualitative researchers seeking the perspectives of people with unusual characteristics or circumstances, compliance with expectations about participant anonymity can be difficult, if not impossible. In the age of internet communications and emerging research methodologies, traditional strategies require ongoing re-examination to ensure cohesion between a project’s ethical framework and its research practice. This paper reflects on the approach to informed consent used in a study with parent carers whose children had high-level support needs. A two-step process of written consent was (...) developed in response to concerns about the possible re-identification of these parents as a result of their highly individual circumstances. This approach acknowledged the potential for identification, and maximised participants’ agency in choosing the level of risk that they were comfortable to accommodate. The paper discusses the researcher’s and participants’ responses to the adapted consent process and recommends that researchers and ethics review committees remain open to the development of collaborative and innovative approaches that are also culturally and contextually relevant, to enable people to contribute perspectives that might otherwise be silenced by the very ethical frameworks that purport to protect their interests. (shrink)

Voluntary disclosures of sustainability information have recently received considerable attention by investors, regulators, and public companies in improving reliability and integrity of corporate reporting. We examine the association between the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures and earnings quality in the context of corporate ethical value and culture. We posit that sustainability disclosures of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance reports are linked to earnings quality, because of the importance of both earnings quality and ESG sustainability disclosures to investors and (...) trustworthiness of corporate reporting. We collect our sample of 35,110 firm-year observations between 1999 and 2015. Using both difference-in-difference tests and OLS regression, we find that sustainability disclosure quantity is positively associated with innate earnings quality and negatively correlated with discretionary earnings quality in mitigating managerial earnings manipulation and unethical opportunistic reporting behavior. Further tests illustrate that sustainability disclosure quality can strengthen the positive relation between innate earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity and mitigate the negative relation between discretionary earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity. Finally, additional tests suggest that the relation between earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity is moderated by corporate structure and prior-year sustainability performance. Our results provide policy, practical, and research implications as ESG sustainability reporting is being integrated into corporate culture and business models. (shrink)

Two contrasting theories-actor-network theory and nondecision making-are separately applied to the same case study, namely, technologies for automatically identifying road vehicles. By this process, the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are highlighted: The actor-network approach is useful for understanding local processes but lacks tools for easily illuminating patterns across countries; by contrast, the concept of nondecision making is useful for explaining the general lack of implementation of technology for automatic vehicle identification but not for explaining variations between developments in (...) different countries. This study highlights the importance of attempting to compare theories by using the same case study. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an increasing critique of the philosophically based reasoning in bioethics which is known as principlism. This article seeks to make a postmodern contribution to this emerging debate by using notions of power and discourse to highlight the limits and superficiality of this , rationalistic mode of reflection. The focus of the discussion will be on the principle of autonomy. Recent doctoral research on a hospice organization (Karuna Hospice Service) will be used to contextualize the (...) debate to end-of life ethical dilemmas. The conclusion will be reached that the discursive richness of this organization's notion of autonomy or choice, which incorporates a holistic respect for the individual and the active creation of alternatives, can provide important insights to our understanding of autonomy in bioethics. The concern is raised that if autonomy is reified as a principle outside of the context of discourse, it may only complement the hegemonic power of biomedicine. (shrink)

It is now common in health care for a diverse range of professions and disciplines to work together in regular and close contact. Thus, there are now calls in the literature for research that documents insights on the ethical dimension of multidisciplinary relationships. Recent Australian research has responded to this call by examining how a multidisciplinary team of health professionals define and operationalize the notion of ethics in an acute ward hospital setting. This article provides findings from the research study (...) that indicate that, although there is a shared conceptualization of ethics as "patient-centered care", there can be times of conflict and tension in determining what is best for the patient. The discussion begins to build an understanding of how a multidisciplinary mix of health professionals responds to ethical conflict and tension. The authors' hope and expectation is that, by keeping the research focus on what health professionals in a multidisciplinary team (MDT) actually do, rather than exclusively on how they philosophically think about ethical dilemmas, the insights can be translated into practical strategies that can be utilized to strengthen the process of ethical decision making within the health care system. (shrink)

The confusion/non-consequential thinking explanation proposed by Newstead, Girotto, and Legrenzi (1995) for poor performance on Wason's THOG problem (a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task) was examined in three experiments with 300 participants. In general, as the cognitive complexity of the problem and the possibility of non-consequential thinking were reduced, correct performance increased. Significant but weak facilitation (33-40% correct) was found in Experiment 1 for THOG classification instructions that did not include the indeterminate response option. Substantial facilitation (up to 75% correct) was obtained (...) in Experiment 2 with O'Brien et al.'s (1990) one-other-THOG classification instruction. In Experiment 3, a revised version of O'Brien et al.'s pre-test problem format also led to substantial facilitation, even with the use of the standard three-choice THOG classification instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of Newstead et al.'s theoretical proposal and possible attentional factors. (shrink)

In this study, we built and tested a theoretical model to determine how ethical leadership affects team creativity among teams composed of different characteristics. Following social learning theory and an antecedent–benefit–cost framework, we conducted analyses of multisource data from 50 team supervisors and 186 employees, which revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity. The teams exhibited more creativity when there was a moderate level of ethical leadership than when there were very low or very high levels. (...) Moreover, from an interactional perspective, we found that team faultlines significantly moderated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity such that the inverted U-shaped relationship was more significant among teams with weak team faultlines. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

A survey of the philosophy of sport literature reveals that arguments regarding the issue of sex segregation in athletics have been advanced from time to time, but there has been little sustained discussion, no consensus, and no change in existing practice. In this paper, an effort to advance the conversation, I begin with Jane English’s seminal 1978 article as a springboard and employ existing literature on the question of sex segregation in order to raise difficulties with English’s analysis and outline (...) the basic alternative positions that have been taken on the issue. My own contribution to the conversation is in the introduction of four distinctions – between individual and team sports, direct and indirect competition, contact and non-contact sports, and amateur and professional sports – that have not been part of the discussion about the conditions under which men and women might compete against one another. These distinctions resolve several difficulties noted by others and suggest a more nuanced conclusion about desirable changes to the structure of sporting competition. (shrink)

Nurses’ bodywork: is there a body of work? The work that many nurses do involves the use of their own body as one of the tools of their occupation. Being a nurse, in many cases, means controlled, purposeful use of her or his own body oriented to the patient. This paper discusses some of the ways in which nurses’ bodies and the work that those bodies do are represented in professional and academic research accounts and made relevant in literature. Using (...) instances of bodies and bodily activity mentioned in a variety of literature, the paper discusses three categories of accounts of nursing bodywork: those which are problematised and where the nurse's body is seen as a topic for investigation, and those which are unproblematised either explicitly discussing bodily activity (for example, touch) or implicitly dealing with bodywork (for example, taking blood pressure). Four ways in which nurses’ bodies are made relevant in accounts are proposed: relational, corporate, instrumental and human.The paper discusses the prominence (or not) nurses’ bodies are given in professional and academic accounts, as a contribution to preliminary work of generating a topic for investigation and concludes with some suggestions as to how this investigative project might be taken forward, focusing primarily on an examination of methodic practices, or how bodywork is brought off and executed as a skilled but taken‐for‐granted activity. (shrink)