Financial literacy education and Skills for Life

This report presents a review of the provision and accreditation of financial literacy education in England at the levels covered by Skills for Life (i.e. up to and including Level 2), not including financial advice and information. It is based upon data collected in the first half of 2004. Financial literacy education provision is mapped against the broad areas identified by the Financial Services Authority and the Basic Skills Agency (BSA) in the Adult Financial Capability Framework (FSA/BSA 2003). This is thought to be the first such attempt

The case for measuring adults’ numeracy practices

In this article, we make the case for the development of a numeracy practices measure in the light of a review of relevant research and extant measures. We argue that a numeracy practices measure would acknowledge and validate adult learners’ practice gains and inform teaching geared to their circumstances, needs and interests

Using task models to understand the intersection of numeracy skills and technical competence with medical device design

Task models are used in many different ways throughout the design and development of interactive systems. When the interactive systems are safety critical, task models can play an important role in ensuring system behaviours are consistent with user requirements, which may help to prevent errors. While task models can be used to describe a user’s goals and the steps required to achieve that goal, to understand where user errors may occur we also need to consider the users’ understanding of how to perform a task and how this relates to the system they are using. Our focus is on the use of medical devices such as syringe drivers and infusion pumps for intravenous medication, which forms a major part of hospital inpatient care throughout the world. While we might rely on software engineering and human factors techniques to ensure correctness of such devices, their use by medical personnel in practice includes other factors that are equally important. These include training medical personnel in the use of medical devices. Also numeracy education for medical staff to ensure that they are able to set up and perform the necessary calculations to convert prescribed medication into the appropriate values and measures for their delivery mechanisms. We have developed an approach that aims to bring together concepts of technology design (both functional correctness and usability concerns), numeracy and medication delivery competency. In order to do so we use task models as a common language that enables us to consider these different domains in a single way. We find that the ability to describe the two domains within a single process allows us to compare models of knowledge, tasks and use of devices, which can elicit potential mismatches and problems

Safety first: combining task models of medical devices with numeracy skills and technical competence

We propose that by more closely aligning interdisciplinary work in (a) numeracy education for medication dosage calculations and (b) model-driven design for medical devices that are used for delivery of medication we may help address the incident-rate in incorrect medication calculations and delivery, given that such devices commonly require the user to engage with numerical information via a digital interface. We demonstrate the use of task models as a way of supporting safe, effective and efficient delivery of medication to the patient, taking as our example the use of infusion and syringe pumps in Nursing. This work indicates a new way of facilitating knowledge transfer between numeracy education and medical device design and usage, using task models. We aim to support medical professionals’ and students’ numeracy education as well as to inform the design of medical devices based on a better understanding of the use and potential errors of medication delivery by trained professionals