Intercultural

The aim of this study was to investigate multiprofessional collaboration as well as collaboration between professionals and challenging students and their parents in which the focus for these collaborations was on handling the challenging students’ academic and social behavior. A grounded theory study of collaboration between a prereferral resource team and teachers, principals, challenging students, and their parents was conducted. Qualitative interview and focus group methods were used. The findings presented a grounded theory of collaborative synchronizing in relation to challenging students around two ideal types, human resource synchronizing and human resource desynchronizing.

The GBT and ω indices are the most recent methods suggested in the literature to detect answer copying on multiple-choice tests. ω is one of the most studied index, and has been previously investigated, but there has not been a systematic simulation study for the GBT index. In addition, the effect of the ability levels of the examinees in answer copying pairs on the statistical properties of the GBT and ω indices have not been systematically investigated as yet. The current study simulated 500 answer copying pairs for each of 1,440 conditions (12 source ability x 12 cheater ability x 10 amount of copying) to study the empirical power, and 10,000 pairs of independent response vectors for each of 144 conditions (12 source ability x 12 cheater ability) to study the empirical type I error rates of the GBT and ω indices. Results indicated that neither GBT nor ω inflated the type I error rates and they were reliable to use in practice. The difference between statistical power was very small in most conditions, and GBT performs slightly better than ω. The interaction effect between source ability level and amount of copying was very strong while the interaction effects between cheater ability level and amount of copying and cheater ability level and source ability level was not remarkable.

Judging a place as wasteland or homeland is not a matter of objective fact, but a matter of perspective: presupposed values, knowledge through acquaintance, and comportment. Therefore, contra Martin Drenthen, the value of wilderness is a judgement call, not a conceptual necessity. I show this by first distinguishing wilderness from “wildness,” then culture from civilization, and finally, by situating Nietzsche’s teachings of the will to power in the context of a devalued world-view. Nevertheless, I agree with Drenthen that some understandings of wilderness are more appropriate than others. When wild nature is understood to be “good” in an axiologically transcendent sense, morality and humanness per se are not undermined, and the transcendence of wildness is still sufficiently immanent to avoid the drive to devalue it. Even thought such conceptualisation can be attained by civilized urbanites, it seems to be optimally actualised in life by non-civilised cultures. This leads to implications that are not easy for us to accept, but deserve our serious consideration nonetheless.

"Virtual Europe is a web-based European community from which health education scenarios may be accessed for learning and teaching purposes. Featuring a map giving access to country specific resources, it is populated with different cultural case studies allowing contrasts between cultures to be examined. For example, a student could evaluate the differences between UK, Belgium and Dutch approaches to the care of a patient in a particular situation. The project is initially funded by the Consortium of Institutes of Higher Education in Health and Rehabilitation In Europe (Cohehre).

This paper offers a unique view on the benefits and limitations surrounding the development and implementation of a European health based virtual community. How will it facilitate the elimination of barriers for international mobility of students and staff? How easy is it to integrate into differing European health curricula? How does it compare to the experiences offered by new virtual environments?

During the first year, the pilot version of Virtual Europe was created incorporating cardiac and burns case studies. During the second year of the project, the aim is to refine the pilot and incorporate further case studies. During the third year of the project, Virtual Europe will be utilised within partner institutions as a learning and teaching tool. The project team are working to evaluate the user-friendliness of the system on an on-going basis encouraging feedback from the students and academics that will use it. Tutorials will be used to evaluate how successfully lecturers are able to utilise and integrate it within their curriculum. Evaluation will be iterative and formative, with feedback used to identify potential changes that will be incorporated into subsequent pilots, group sessions and system enhancements.

The paper presents a cogent and stimulating analysis of an e-Learning virtual health education project which is interprofessional in outlook;"

In this paper, we take the position that the quality of any DL provision is, in part, assured by a good match between the educational context(s) involved and the DL methodology/ies embodied in that provision. To this end, our research focuses on the development of a new generation of DL courseware for the established MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (‘MA TESOL’) programme offered by the Hellenic Open University (‘HOU’). The research investigates the understandings of the experienced tutorial team regarding the appropriacy of the DL methodology used in the 1st generation of the programme. It does so at the critical point when tutors’ roles are expanding to include DL materials writing. The 1st generation courseware was provided by the University of Manchester (‘Manchester’) in the UK and then operationalised by the HOU. The 2nd generation courseware will be an in-house HOU development with the research findings informing the work of the tutors-as-writers.

The article concentrates on setting some specific criteria for the EIL (‘English as an international language’) classroom and raising teachers’ awareness of what is needed in order to identify and teach EIL classrooms. It starts by distinguishing between those communicative and teaching situations that are norm-bound and those that prioritise interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility and cultural identity. On that basis, it goes on to delineate the EIL domain in norm-bound terms and suggests that teachers should also concentrate on teaching English as an intercultural language (EIcL). It subsequently addresses the following questions: What are the defining characteristics of an EIL/EIcL situation? How can a teacher identify such a situation and by what means can this be done? To what extent are EIL/EIcL situations similar to or different from other ESL, EFL, or more general ESOL situations? Are all EIL/EIcL situations around the world the ‘same’ and, if not, to what extent are they similar/different? To what extent do learners’ and teachers’ attitudes towards English, language learning and their own national, cultural and personal identity matter in EIL/EIcL learning/teaching?