It's not always easy to get teens talking. But when the author became a young adult specialist at the Wilbraham (Massachusetts) Public Library four years ago, that's exactly what she had to do. Her main mission was to bring in as many high schoolers as possible. She needed to find out exactly what they wanted from the library. when she asked them…

An academic and professional development course has been introduced to help first-year chemical engineering students to deal proactively with the transition from secondary school to university and to develop professional skills. The course uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as a personality model to facilitate skills development and many…

To meet workforce demand and the needs of working or place-bound students, Whatcom Community College developed an online version of its existing face-to-face Physical Therapist Assistant program which became a model for other lab-based health science degrees. This article describes research studies that support the program's practices and includes…

The provision of high-quality, efficient care results from the coordinated, cooperative efforts of multiple technically competent health care providers working in concert over time, spanning disciplinary and professional boundaries. Accordingly, the role of medical education must include the development of providers who are both expert clinicians…

Portuguese is the sixth-most-spoken native language in the world, with approximately 240,000,000 speakers. Within the United States, there is a growing demand for K-12 language programs to engage the community of Portuguese heritage speakers. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 85,000 school-age children speak Portuguese at home. As a result, more…

In "Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling," this author argued for new education service-delivery organizations that, free from the constricting norms and rules of traditional providers, focused single-mindedly on executing their model. The challenge for reformers is to recognize that enabling such providers is not…

Although research has shown that multi-systemic interventions (MSIs) improve youth psychosocial functioning, MSI dissemination has been hampered by low levels of parent participation. The current pilot project was designed to examine the effectiveness of a brief motivational interviewing (MI) protocol to increase parental engagement in an MSI for…

Perhaps no other words occur more frequently than standards in today's discourse on educational reform. There is much debate about standards. Instead of taking sides on the debate, this paper argues that the problem with standards does not lie so much in standards themselves as in how they are viewed by those who make them and those who are held…

Limited resources have led to a lack of comprehensive state outreach strategies that are geared for non-English speaking constituencies. The investigators worked with Southeast Asian communities in Rhode Island to determine perceptions and levels of trust with various health authorities providing health messaging about fish-consumption practices.…

This article presents research findings on mentoring within PCET ITT (Post-Compulsory Education and Training Initial Teacher Training). The research has identified that mentors and mentees consider that the role of the mentor is unclear. Moreover, mentors are unsure of the aims of PCET ITT programmes. The inconsistency of mentor training…

Successful transition into an online delivery programme requires several critical considerations. This paper provides insight with respect to initiating a systemic needs assessment from the micro to the macro level for any university moving to the online delivery of a complete programme. Moreover, the following four topics are essential in…

Vigilance has been central to nursing practice since Florence Nightingale. Often, the nurse's work of surveillance goes unnoticed and the public never recognizes the value of the nurse's work. The 1999 Institute of Medicine report on hospital deaths due to preventable errors has lifted the veil shrouding professional vigilance. But how to measure…

Parents of children who are deaf and who have disabilities often face barriers in ensuring that their children receive the services they need. Some of these barriers include lack of awareness about deafness-disability constellations, shortages of professionals knowledgeable about how deaf children learn or the impact of the disability on deaf…

Efforts to reinvent public education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina have drawn such interest that it's easy to lose sight of some very concrete changes that will become obvious over time: A generation of brand-new school buildings is rising across the city. New Orleans is in the early stages of a construction spree both to build and…

The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHO-DAS II) is a non-disease-specific International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health-based disability assessment instrument developed to measure activity limitations and restrictions to participation. The aim of this pilot study is to evaluate WHO-DAS II…