The Wall Street Specialist: King of the Jungle

A book review essay considering The Wall Street Jungle, by Richard Ney (1970)

Stories, Ethics and the Interpretation of Meaning: Bearing Witness to Mothers\u27 Stories of Their Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Experience

This study grounded in narrative perspectives was conducted to uncover mothers\u27 experience of having a baby in the Neonatal intensive Care Unit (NICU). The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret mothers NICU experiences, and to sensitize health care professionals about the importance of mothers\u27 personal experience stories. The NICU experience began with mothers\u27 birth experience or the incident that led up to her infant requiring care in the NICU and her experience extended beyond the NICU with future concerns about the health and wellbeing of her baby. Stories of mothers\u27 experience were gleaned from data generated from audio-taped interviews, photographs taken by families, mothers\u27 journals and mothers\u27 NICU memorabilia. Four mothers participated in the study and their interviews were transcribed verbatim and provided the primary text for analysis. Watson\u27s (1985) carative factors provided a theoretical structure for studying and understanding mother\u27s stories. Accordingly, narratives provided a tentative foundation for caring in nursing. Looking at narratives with carative factors in mind helped to delineate them and their importance in helping a nurse to care for another person. Data analysis was guided by narrative inquiry combining structural approaches of Labov and Waletzsky (1967/1997), and Riessman (2008), adapted from Gee (2005). Analysis also identified narrative features and transcendent themes drawing on approaches outlined by Charon (2006). The first level of reflection identified three core narratives: enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment stories. Enchantment stories were stories mothers told about their hopes, dreams and ideals for their first pregnancy, birth and baby. Disenchantment stories were stories that mothers told when things didn\u27t go as planned and babies required care in the NICU. Re-enchantment stories were stories told by mothers about their attempts to create normalcy in the chaos of the NICU. These stories are also about mothers\u27 efforts to create new ideals, hopes and dreams as they create memorable moments and celebrate each new milestone. The second level of reflection revealed descriptions of five narrative features and transcendent themes. The first narrative feature of causality/contingency illuminated the following themes: tears in the fabric of daily life, mourning life as imagined, questions of why? and search for answers. The second narrative feature of temporality illustrated the following themes: rollercoaster, waiting, baby jail or petting zoo? The third narrative feature of singularity identified the following five themes: tailored care, assembly line, desire for normality, burden of depression and prior experience with illness and death. The fourth narrative feature of intersubjectivity gleaned the subsequent themes: encounters with others, earned trust, butterflies and curtains, protecting family and family support. The fifth narrative feature of ethicality, revealed the following transcendent themes: valued responsiveness, vulnerable aspects of life, demonstrating hope and faith and desire to help others This research makes a case to heath care providers that through narrative understanding, we can maintain a better balance between the highly technological nature of the NICU and also achieve therapeutic relationships with patients by embracing our duties toward individuals. Mothers\u27 stories have the potential to provide moral education, reminding care providers who NICU mothers are, what concerns them and why certain care practices are valuable. These care practices can help guide care providers in what to do next and how to live now. Through narrative understandings, mothers\u27 stories can help sort out what makes some care practices better than others. Implication for health care professionals in practice, education, healthcare policy and research are described

An Evidence-Based Faculty Development Program For Online Teaching In Higher Education

A critical component in the successful implementation of online education hinges on providing faculty development opportunities that promote the utilization of pedagogical best practices in online teaching. While such training programs are on the rise, institutions are no closer to a universal consensus on how to design and evaluate such efforts. Historically, the success of faculty development programs has been measured via post-completion satisfaction surveys, attendance counts, and faculty perceptions of the usefulness of the content immediately following a training event. However, such metrics rarely provide an accurate measurement of the true efficacy of training, which in the context of online faculty development, points to the adoption of pedagogical best practices in online teaching. There is a clear call in the literature for institutions and faculty developers to adopt evidence-based models in faculty training to identify the strategies that work best. To that end, the purpose of this study was to document how a higher education institution implemented an evidence-based faculty development program for online teaching. The researcher mounted the investigation on a case study framework and centered the lens on the training developers who lent first-hand accounts of their experiences when implementing an evidence-based model. This study explored how the evidence-based program was designed, the factors that led to its implementation, the reported enablers and barriers to its deployment, the role of instructional designers in the program, and the institutional conditions perceived by participants to support the implementation. Data was collected through document analysis and through one-on-one interviews with trainers and middle-managers. The study revealed that traditional methods used to measure training programs (satisfaction surveys, participation counts) were insufficient in providing verification of learning, and that training developers viewed deeper, and more sophisticated methods of program evaluation as desirable. However, training developers also reported concern in regards to the scalability of evidence-based models in higher education and they perceived certain institutional conditions as enablers and barriers. The study also explored the role of the instructional designers as supporters of the learning experience. The researcher suggested several key areas for future investigations to continue to build upon the growing body of knowledge as it relates to supporting faculty teaching online