Finding a moral homeground: appropriately critical religious education and transmission of spiritual values

Values-inspired issues remain an important part of the British school curriculum. Avoiding moral relativism while fostering enthusiasm for spiritual values and applying them to non-curricular learning such as school ethos or children's home lives are challenges where spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development might benefit from leadership by critical religious education (RE). Whether the school's model of spirituality is that of an individual spiritual tradition (schools of a particular religious character) or universal pluralistic religiosity (schools of plural religious character), the pedagogy of RE thought capable of leading SMSC development would be the dialogical approach with examples of successful implementation described by Gates, Ipgrave and Skeie. Marton's phenomenography, is thought to provide a valuable framework to allow the teacher to be appropriately critical in the transmission of spiritual values in schools of a particular religious character as evidenced by Hella's work in Lutheran schools

The evaluation of a new method of operative competence assessment for surgical trainees

Recent high profile cases of surgical incompetence have damaged public confidence and resulted in the demand for more explicit checks throughout professional practice. The current system of assessing the operative skills of higher surgical trainees (HSTs) involves a single tick-box on the Record of In-service Training Assessment (RITA) form. The form gives no guidance to the trainer as to the expected range of procedures, makes no distinction between each year of training and allows no indication of progress (or otherwise) through the training system. The trainee's logbook is reviewed at the annual assessment, but this record of experience gained does not necessarily reflect the competence level achieved. While operative ability is only one of the skills that the trainee surgeon must acquire, it is a core competency which is not formally assessed at any point in the present system. A new assessment instrument known as the Operative Competence system was developed from previously suggested methods in response to this need