Incorporating Environmental Health into Pediatric Medical and Nursing Education

Pediatric medical and nursing education currently lacks the environmental health content necessary to appropriately prepare pediatric health care professionals to prevent, recognize, manage, and treat environmental-exposure–related disease. Leading health institutions have recognized the need for improvements in health professionals’ environmental health education. Parents are seeking answers about the impact of environmental toxicants on their children. Given the biologic, psychological, and social differences between children and adults, there is a need for environmental health education specific to children. The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation, in partnership with the Children’s Environmental Health Network, created two working groups, one with expertise in medical education and one with expertise in nursing education. The working groups reviewed the transition from undergraduate student to professional to assess where in those processes pediatric environmental health could be emphasized. The medical education working group recommended increasing education about children’s environmental health in the medical school curricula, in residency training, and in continuing medical education. The group also recommended the expansion of fellowship training in children’s environmental health. Similarly, the nursing working group recommended increasing children’s environmental health content at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing nursing education levels. Working groups also identified the key medical and nursing organizations that would be important in leveraging these changes. A concerted effort to prioritize pediatric environmental health by governmental organizations and foundations is essential in providing the resources and expertise to set policy and provide the tools for teaching pediatric environmental health to health care providers

Developing an Action Learning Community Advocacy/Leadership Training Program for Community Health Workers and Their Agencies to Reduce Health Disparities in Arizona Border Communities

Community health workers (CHWs) make unique and important contributions to society. They serve as patient advocates, educators, and navigators in our health care system and a growing body of research indicates that they play an important role in the effective delivery of prevention and treatment services in underserved communities. CHWs also serve as informal community leaders and advocates for organizational and community change, providing valuable insiders\u27 insights about health promotion and the interrelatedness of individuals, their community, its institutions, and the surrounding environment. Accion Para La Salud or Action for Health (Accion) is a CDC-funded community based participatory research (CBPR) project addressing the social determinants of health affecting health-related behaviors with the ultimate goal of creating a mode in which community advocacy to address the systems and environmental factors influencing health is integrated into the role of CHWs working in chronic disease prevention. Kingdon\u27s three streams theory and the social ecological model provide an overarching conceptual framework for Accion. The curriculum and training are also grounded in the theory and principles of action learning, which emphasizes learning by doing, teamwork, real-world projects, and reflection. The curriculum was delivered in four workshops over thirteen months and included longitudinal team projects, peer support conference calls, and technical assistance visits. It is now being delivered to new groups of CHWs in Arizona using a condensed two-day workshop format

Assessing collaborative learning: big data, analytics and university futures

Traditionally, assessment in higher education has focused on the performance of individual students. This focus has been a practical as well as an epistemic one: methods of assessment are constrained by the technology of the day, and in the past they required the completion by individuals under controlled conditions, of set-piece academic exercises. Recent advances in learning analytics, drawing upon vast sets of digitally-stored student activity data, open new practical and epistemic possibilities for assessment and carry the potential to transform higher education. It is becoming practicable to assess the individual and collective performance of team members working on complex projects that closely simulate the professional contexts that graduates will encounter. In addition to academic knowledge this authentic assessment can include a diverse range of personal qualities and dispositions that are key to the computer-supported cooperative working of professionals in the knowledge economy. This paper explores the implications of such opportunities for the purpose and practices of assessment in higher education, as universities adapt their institutional missions to address 21st Century needs. The paper concludes with a strong recommendation for university leaders to deploy analytics to support and evaluate the collaborative learning of students working in realistic contexts

Infusing social emotional learning into the teacher education curriculum

Research supports the importance of policies and interventions to infuse social emotional curricula in schools. The role of teachers in supporting young children’s social and emotional readiness for classroom learning has been recognized, but instruction in children’s well-being and social emotional competence is a low priority in teacher preparation programs. In this study we, used qualitative methods to examine whether we could successfully infuse an undergraduate curriculum and instructional course with social emotional learning content. The article reports on this effort, and considered the following questions: How can courses infused with SEL content impact prospective teachers’ views on the overall role of emotions in the classroom? What is the influence of the course on preservice teachers’ conceptions of SEL and its association with children’s classroom learning and behavior? How can teacher preparation programs encourage prospective teachers to consider children’s social emotional skills once they enter the classroom as teachers? At course end, the 15 enrolled students responded to predetermined questions as part of a self-reflection assignment. Using grounded theory methods, three themes were identified from participants’ reflections, including the connection between SEL and academic learning, shifting from teacher- to student-centered pedagogy, and the desire for continued learning related to SEL. An in-depth examination of these themes revealed that SEL concepts can be successfully infused in an undergraduate course on curriculum and instruction. Implications for teacher training are discussed and future avenues for research are presented.peer-reviewe

GI-education: the impact of EduMapping

The creation of a European Higher Education Area during the last 20 years has resulted in a considerable degree of harmonization when it comes to the structure of higher education in the European countries. With regard to geoinformation (GI) education, less progress has been made. Formats for course and curriculum descriptions vary per organization and languages vary per country. For the described content a central reference on domain level seems absent. The reference documents published in the United States (2006: the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge, 2010: Geospatial Technology Competency Model) have not yet been widely accepted in Europe, but seem useful. The EduMapping method aims at concisely characterizing GI course or curriculum content in a label, to be added to existing descriptions. This paper points at a role for EduMapping as a connection between the European multinational and multilingual situation and the American reference potential. Application of EduMapping might help Europe to achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy