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Introduction: Evidence-based practice skills and habits begin during undergraduate education and continue through professional life. It is important novices learn the skills in their education programme that are required in practice. This study explores strategies experienced occupational therapy supervisors use to encourage novices to be evidence based, and how these might be enhanced. Method: Qualitative descriptive methodology was used to explore the views and experiences of 15 experienced supervisors from a range of practice areas and geographical locations, interviewed in four focus groups. Results: Evidence-based practice is an element of professional reasoning not isolated from client-centred practice or from reflective practice. Five sources of evidence to inform competence in professional decision-making were identified: (a) research evidence from literature; (b) local environment, resources and culture; (c) client's expertise and perspective; (d) expertise of others; and (e) practitioners' own knowledge and experience. Conclusion: Intentional use of all five sources of evidence to inform professional decision-making contributes to habits of evidence-based thinking and practice. Experienced therapists and educators can support evidence-based practice in novices by prompting questioning and developing systems supportive of scanning for evidence in each area. Collaboration in this endeavour will enhance integration of academic and practice education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administrators engage all aspects of a community and need to be skillful in working with elected officials, citizens, business groups, and government employees who make things happen. Minimum qualifications, which act as a primary screening device for applicants and hiring agencies, are based in part on assumptions of the value of education and experience, but those assumptions deserve more consideration given their role in agency staffing. This paper sheds light on the value of hiring new employees with substantial public sector experience versus those with little or no work history. We use a two-stage qualitative study that asks managers what benefits and characteristics they expect when hiring experienced individuals. We subsequently test those assumptions by giving in-service and preservice public affairs graduate students a realistic problem to solve in an area where none have experience. Their responses highlight the validity of assumptions behind minimum qualifications and differences one might expect when hiring experienced individuals or novices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies on students’ perceptions of learning in business simulations often suggest that students like simulations and view them more positively than both lectures and case discussions. However, research on the actual learning outcomes deriving from participating in business simulations still needs to be pursued. Consequently, the purpose of this case-study article is to examine how a business simulation game contributes to the cognitive learning of novices in business studies. We describe the use of a clock-driven business simulation for teaching 133 novices in business studies at the University of Turku, Finland. The students’ cognitive learning was evaluated based on data generated by pre- and post-game concept map tests designed to illustrate the formation and change of mental models during the simulation course. The results of this study suggest that simulation games can provide a solid basis for novice learning. They help to increase comprehension of the complexity of business organizations and the various processes, transactions, and operations involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst ongoing concern with training students in the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute towards a knowledge-intensive economy, we explore how particular 'epistemic subjects' are produced within specific epistemic communities. We examine how social studies of science have probed the 'disciplining' practices that constitute scientific knowledge production, but have tended to overlook how students participate in, and become members of, epistemic communities. We propose that training contexts provide a window onto the disciplining processes through which scientific fields and their practitioners are co-produced. We offer an empirical example of an emerging scientific field that is working to establish community boundaries through the recruitment and training of university students. We explore how newcomers' practices, values and identities are disciplined through participation in this nascent community whilst remaining open to negotiation and resistance. The conclusion calls for more scholarly attention to educational trajectories as processes through which disciplines and their disciples are produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much media speculation and general conversation about the crisis of masculinity, the lack of male role models – in particular, the lack of fathers, and how many boys are becoming a ‘lost’ generation. An 2002 Australian House of Representatives report ‘Boys: Getting it right’ investigated this issue in depth and made recommendations to the Australian Minister of Education, Science and Training concerning policy direction and strategies that could be developed for teacher education courses relating to boys and boys educational needs. The research reported here was designed to investigate the needs of male teachers as they enter their professional life in schools. This research is significant because it addresses a major area of concern, namely the retention of newly qualified male teachers in both primary and secondary school environments, as well as issues related to the male identity and the impact of older beginning teachers as they enter the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Newly licensed drivers are disproportionally involved in fatal crashes, and there is evidence that failure to attend to potentially relevant information is a major contributor to this problem. Corroborating this, in controlled scenarios on a driving simulator, we have found that younger drivers attend to (i.e., fixate) target regions in the virtual world that contain information about potential risks much less frequently than do more experienced drivers. We have developed a PC-based training program that substantially improves younger drivers' attention to these regions in the driving simulator and have recently replicated these training results on the road in a real driving situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]