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This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Internet has granted college students easy access to vast amount of online resources, and to some degree has increased the chances of plagiarism problems. A number of studies have suggested that both faculty’s and students’ perceptions toward plagiarism are found to be influential on students’ plagiarizing behaviors, and limited research has been done to explore the perceptional differences between these two roles. This study aims to respond to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism by comparing the perceptions held by faculty and college students. A total of 229 faculty and 634 college students in Taiwan completed the Perceptions of Student Plagiarism Questionnaire designed for the study. The results reveal that faculty held stricter standards than those of students. Results also indicate various causes of plagiarism, such as no interest in the learning subjects, lack of citation knowledge, or lack of research ability. Furthermore, significant disciplinary differences were shown to contribute to students’ plagiarism perception; the results reveal that most students with an Arts or Communication major held a relatively adverse thinking toward plagiarism. Last, this study provides research-based strategies for school and faculty to reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Context Globalisation and migration have inevitably shaped the objectives and content of medical education worldwide. Medical educators have responded to the consequent cultural diversity by advocating that future doctors should be culturally competent in caring for patients. As frontline clinical teachers play a key role in interpreting curriculum innovations and implementing both explicit and hidden curricula, this study investigated clinical teachers' attitudes towards cultural competence training in terms of curriculum design, educational effectiveness and barriers to implementation. Methods This study was based on interviews with clinical teachers from university-affiliated hospitals in Taiwan on the subject of cultural competence. The data were transcribed verbatim and translated into English. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory to identify and categorise key themes. Results Five main themes emerged: (i) there was a clear consensus that students currently lack sufficient cultural competence; (ii) the teachers agreed that increased exposure to cultural diversity improved students' cultural understanding; (iii) present curriculum design was generally agreed to be inadequate, and it was argued that devoting space to developing cultural competence across the curriculum would be a worthwhile endeavour; (iv) different methods of performance assessment were proposed; and (v) the main obstacles to teaching and assessing cultural competence were perceived to be a lack of commonly agreed goals, the low priority accorded to it in an overloaded curriculum and the inadequacy of teachers' cultural competence. Conclusions Eliciting the viewpoints of the key providers is a first step in curriculum innovation and reform. This study demonstrates that clinical teachers acknowledge the need for explicit and implicit training in cultural competence, but there needs to be further debate about the overall goals of such training, the time allotted to it and how it should be assessed, as well as a faculty-wide development programme addressing pedagogical needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]