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This study addresses the following research question: How does telementoring urban high school students by English teacher candidates develop candidates' cultural competence and impact mentees' cultural identity development? Mentee-mentor exchanges were analyzed to uncover how mentees used writing to develop cultural identity, how mentors' responses demonstrated cultural competence, and how cultural competence enhanced cultural identity development. Data analysis revealed two themes of synergy, where mentor-mentee exchanges enabled mutual learning. As mentors demonstrated cultural respect through cultural exploration, mentees broadened identity through cultural sharing. As mentors exhibited cultural affirmation through cultural empathy mentees shifted from silenced to spoken anger. Detailed excerpts illustrate how mentees grappled with cultural identity development and how mentors challenged personal assumptions and began to develop ideological clarity.

The criteria for determining whether resources are included in consumer health library collections are summarized in institutional collection development policies (CDPs). Evidence suggests that CDPs do not adequately capture all of these criteria. The aim of this study was to describe the resource review experience of librarians and compare it to what is described in CDPs.A phenomenological approach was used to explore and describe the process. Four consumer health librarians independently evaluated cancer-related consumer health resources and described their review process during a semi-structured telephone interview. Afterward, these librarians completed online questionnaires about their approaches to collection development. CDPs from participating libraries, interview transcripts, and questionnaire data were analyzed. Researchers summarized the findings, and participating librarians reviewed results for validation.Librarians all utilized similar criteria, as documented in their CDPs; however, of thirteen criteria described in the study, only four were documented in CDPs.CDPs for consumer health libraries may be missing important criteria that are considered integral parts of the collection development process.A better understanding of the criteria and contextual factors involved in the collection development process can assist with establishing high-quality consumer health library collections.

In preparation for the launch of a gynecologic oncology survivorship program, this study looked at the informational needs of women with gynecologic cancers. Although studies have touched on some of these needs, no published literature has investigated the comprehensive informational needs of gynecologic oncology patients within all sites of gynecologic cancers.A needs assessment, consisting of a self-administered questionnaire, was conducted at an ambulatory gynecologic oncology clinic from August 2010 to March 2011. This study investigated the informational needs of patients, including the importance of information, the amount desired, and the preferred mode of delivery. Informational needs were grouped into six domains: medical, practical, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual.185 surveys were analyzed and the majority of the respondents were Caucasian (77%) and over the age of 50 (66%). Forty-nine percent of respondents were diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and there was an even distribution between newly diagnosed patients (38%), those in long-term follow-up (27%), and those with recurrent disease (37%). Overall, respondents placed more importance on receiving medical information (P0.01). The three preferred education modalities were; pamphlets, one-on-one discussions with health care professionals and websites. Age, education, and disease site were associated with differing informational needs.This study has highlighted the most important informational needs of patients with gynecologic malignancies in our patient population. This information may guide the development of clinical survivorship programs and educational resources for patients in the future.

The objective of this study was to determine effective teaching strategies and methods of delivery for patient education (PE). A systematic review was conducted and reviews with or without meta-analyses, which examined teaching strategies and methods of delivery for PE, were included. Teaching strategies identified are traditional lectures, discussions, simulated games, computer technology, written material, audiovisual sources, verbal recall, demonstration, and role playing. Methods of delivery focused on how to deliver the teaching strategies. Teaching strategies that increased knowledge, decreased anxiety, and increased satisfaction included computer technology, audio and videotapes, written materials, and demonstrations. Various teaching strategies used in combination were similarly successful. Moreover, structured-, culturally appropriate- and patient-specific teachings were found to be better than ad hoc teaching or generalized teaching. Findings provide guidance for establishing provincial standards for the delivery of PE. Recommendations concerning the efficacy of the teaching strategies and delivery methods are provided.

Reflective practice is a major focus of teacher preparation programs (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Zeichner, 1986; Zeichner & Listen, 1987), yet Zeichner (1986) asserts that developing reflective practice in preservice teachers has focused primarily on short-term, less systematic interventions and that interventions must be successful with all prospective teachers, not just those who are reflective by nature. The following research explores the use of the reflective judgment model (King & Kitchener, 1994) to explain how preservice teachers reason about ill-structured dilemmas of practice and the potential impact of a multifaceted intervention to raise levels of reflective judgment during field experiences.

In many teacher education programs, some form of inquiry or practitioner research is now included in the preservice teacher education curriculum. The intention is to help teacher candidates become professionals who are lifelong learners who raise questions and research their practice across the professional career. At the same time, teacher education evaluation has shifted from primary emphasis on resources and curriculum to an emphasis on K-12 student learning outcomes. This article speaks to the outcomes focus of teacher education policy and practice and to the agenda to prepare professional teachers who know how to learn from and about teaching in an ongoing way. The article describes an inquiry project carried out by a group of teacher education practitioner-researchers to examine how and what teacher candidates learned when they were required to conduct classroom inquiry focused on student learning outcomes. The purpose of the study was to explore the processes and results of this new focus ...

Teachers’ voices explore and document what is at stake when they are excluded from power-brokering conversations that mandate how teachers practice and model democracy in classrooms. Case study vignettes, interviews, classroom observations, and reflections of teachers in urban and suburban schools reveal four significant teacher subcultures of democratic practice: a subculture of compliance, a subculture of noncompliance, a subculture of subversion, and a subculture of democratic inquiry and practice. Analyses reveal that each subculture poses significant stakes for teachers, preservice teachers, the teaching profession, pupils, and society writ large.

Broad (1999) observed that “troubled borders crisscross the geography of teacher preparation in English” (p. 373), calling for collaboration where preparation is a university responsibility (Gregorian, 2001). This research documents a three-year complex case study that addressed the question: What happens when English, education, and high school faculty cross borders to prepare secondary English teachers to teach in urban schools? This study looked at faculty mentors and preservice teacher mentees as they collaborated on multi-leveled projects to improve teacher preparation of secondary English teachers. Interventions included collaborative seminars, collaborative mentoring, and individual mentoring of preservice English teachers by English, education, and high school faculty. Results indicate that interventions challenged biases of stakeholders, enhanced the quality of teacher preparation, and revised instructional practices of university English and education faculty and preservice teachers. Results ind...

Forty-three female undergraduate and graduate students preparing for careers as educators provided Omnibus Personality Inventory and Reflective Judgment Interview data. The sample included 14 seniors, 15 master's candidates, and 14 doctoral candidates. Each educational level group included participants with a range of intellectual disposition scores as measured by the Omnibus Personality Inventory. Scores on six scales of the Omnibus Personality Inventory correlated significantly with Reflective Judgment Interview scores (p < .05): thinking introversion, response bias, altruism, autonomy, complexity, and theoretical orientation. These findings support the conclusion that postformal reasoning, as described in P. M. King and K. S. Kitchener's (1994) reflective judgment model of cognitive development, is related to measurable personality traits.

The following case study (Stake, 2000) explores the collective properties of the group of leaders working together to enact instructional change in an urban high school (Spillane, et al., 2001). It documents how an urban public high continues to work toward developing and enacting a model of leadership that is transformational, distributed, and democratic and the challenges and successes it has encountered as it struggles to establish such leadership in the context of educational reform which by nature is transactional. The subsequent discussion applies the characteristics of transactional leadership to educational reform, identifies several characteristics of effective urban school leadership, documents the evolution of collective leadership in one urban high school, and asserts that the transactional framework of systemic leadership necessitates school leadership that is collective, democratic, and comprehensive in its breadth of interdependence (Gronn, 2003) if instructional transformation is to occur.

Objectives In response to the dearth of consumer health information for patients with gastrointestinal cancers, this study examined the informational needs of these patients to build a plan for future resource development. Although studies have examined informational needs of some such cancers, no published literature has investigated the comprehensive informational needs across all sites of gastrointestinal cancer. Methods A cross-sectional needs assessment comprising a self-administered questionnaire was conducted at an ambulatory gastrointestinal oncology clinic in Toronto, Canada. Patient informational needs were measured, including importance of information, amount desired and preferred mode of delivery. Informational needs were grouped into six domains: medical, practical, physical, emotional, social and spiritual. Results Eighty-two surveys were analysed. The majority of the respondents were male (53.8%), over the age of 50 (77.8%), and born outside of Canada (51.9%). While many did not speak English as a child (46.3%), and do not speak English at home (22.2%), nearly all indicated comfort with receiving health information in English (97.5%). The majority of respondents were college educated (79.3%) and married (73%). Multiple cancer types were reported; the most common being colorectal (39%), followed by pancreatic (12%) and cancers of the gallbladder or bile duct (12%). Overall, respondents placed highest importance on medical information (P

Introduction Patients receiving radiation therapy for cancer treatment have been reported to experience increased anxiety before starting therapy and often have diminished feelings of control. An evaluation was done to measure the impact of an educational class that was designed to lower patient and family anxiety and to help them know what to expect before starting radiation therapy. Methods A single-centre, cross-sectional study was conducted from January to March 2011 at an ambulatory radiation therapy clinic. The study used the Cancer Behavior Inventory Brief (CBI-B) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-State (STAI-S) to investigate the effect of the class on the participant's perceived self-efficacy and anxiety, respectively. Participant demographics and an evaluation of the course content and the teaching skills of the facilitators were collected. Results Twenty-four responses were analyzed. Although the course was designed for those starting treatment, 11 participants had already begun. The majority of participants were non-immigrant patients with high socioeconomic status. Patient self-efficacy scores increased significantly P ≤ .001 and anxiety scores decreased significantly P ≤ .001 after completion of the pre-treatment class. Overall, participants rated the content and delivery of the class highly. Conclusion This study has shown that pre-treatment education may reduce anxiety and increase self-efficacy in patients starting and those already receiving radiation therapy. This information may provide support for the delivery of pre-treatment patient education in ambulatory radiotherapy clinics.

Objective To evaluate the acceptability and relevance of the Maximizing your Patient Education Skills (MPES) course and to determine whether it significantly improved knowledge regarding patient education (PE) theory, self-assessed PE competencies, and PE skills using case based vignettes. Methods 1-Group, multi-site, pre–post-intervention. Participants completed a pre-assessment (T1), participated in the 4-h MPES course, and then a 3-month post-assessment (T2). A focus group was conducted with sub-set of participants. Results 98 (75%) of participants completed both time points. Participants were highly satisfied with MPES and found it to be relevant. Results showed that MPES had a significant impact on all of our outcome measures. Conclusion Findings from this study show that oncology HCPs knowledge of patient education theory, self-assessed competencies and skills can improve after participating in a brief problem-focused and interactive workshop. Practice implications Given the evidence that well-planned education and support can contribute to a number of positive health outcomes and the evidence that HCPs may lack the skills to teach and support patients and their families effectively, these results suggest that MPES course may be of value to oncology professionals. Efforts to further develop this course include exploring alternative funding models and using different learning platforms.

Patients with cancer continue to lack practical information regarding their illness and report low levels of awareness and use of patient services. The challenge to educators is to find cost-effective and timely ways to deliver a complex mix of interesting and high-quality information and expertise to this large and diverse audience, while still tailoring the content to individual needs and situations. In the present article, we describe the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) computer-based patient education program. The program is aimed toward empowering those dealing with cancer and provides comprehensive medical information and support via an interactive Intranet web site containing information about cancer (the Oncology Interactive™ Education Series), library resources, Internet links, information about PMH services, and a hospital calendar of events. Preliminary evaluation results have provided valuable direction for on-going program development and suggest that the program is easy to use, informative, and enjoyable for patients, families, volunteers, and health professionals.

Among the devices that we use to impose order upon a complicated (but by no means unstructured) world, classification--or the division of items into categories based on perceived similarities--must rank as the most general and most pervasive of all. And no strategy of classification cuts deeper--while providing such an even balance of benefits and difficulties--than our propensity for division by two, or dichotomy. Some basic attributes of surrounding nature do exist as complementary pairings--two large lights in the sky representing day and night; two sexes that must couple their opposing parts to produce a continuity of generations--so we might argue that dichotomization amounts to little more than good observation of the external world. But far more often than not, dichotomization leads to misleading or even dangerous oversimplification. (Stephen Jay Gould, 1997, pp. 30-31) As the new editors of the Journal of Teacher Education, we begin our term at a particularly important, and somewhat daunting, moment--at the beginning of a new millennium and a time when, once again, teacher education is under heavy attack with its future uncertain. Perhaps most important, our editorship is aimed at eschewing dichotomies, as Gould (1997) does in Questioning the Millennium, his essay on the significance of 1,000 years in human history. Gould points out that people--and their beliefs--are not simply either good or evil, nor even are organisms either plant or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate. Similarly, we believe that the field of teacher education is not best illuminated or explored when it is framed in the terms of dichotomies--teacher education as either policy or pedagogy, teacher educators as either researchers or practitioners, and learning to teach as either theoretical or practical. Along the same lines, we do not find it useful to think of professional development in dichotomous terms as either conservative or liberating, teacher education policy as either deskilling or professionalizing, and schools and departments of education as either collaborative or isolated. We believe it is imperative, especially at this time when the issues are so highly publicized and politicized, to recognize that teacher education is an extraordinarily difficult, complex, and essential enterprise that is no more reducible to dichotomies than it is to eclectic jumbles. As new editors, we are committed to upholding the 50-year tradition of the Journal of Teacher Education as the major national forum for consideration of essential themes and topics in teacher education. Since it became a campus-based journal in the early 1970s, the editors--Haberman, Lasley, Ashton, and Ducharme and Ducharme--have built the reputation of the journal as the top peer-reviewed publication in its field. Although each aspect of teacher education named in the journal's subtitle--research, practice, and policy--is important in its own right, the hallmark of JTE has been its inclusion of all three. As new editors, we intend to concentrate on producing a journal that examines the complex intersections of research, practice, and policy in teacher education. We urge prospective authors to consider these intersections in their submissions. The key to our editorial vision for the journal is recognition of the increasingly complex and interdisciplinary field of teacher education and the growing number of competing positions in the discourse. Although history reminds us that this is not a new state of affairs, it is inescapably clear at the turn of the century that there is no consensus about what teachers need to know, who should provide education for teachers, how teachers should be certified and licensed, and what role teachers and teacher education should be expected to play in school improvement. As editors, we hope to broaden the perspectives represented in the journal by including a wider range of cultural, social, and political positions and including articles written by a greater range of stakeholders in teacher education. …

sense of justice and truth, but this action will orphan him, severing his connection to the only life he has ever known. Demonstrating reasoning and reflective judgment far beyond his years, the young boy exemplifies John Dewey's concept of reflective inquiry in which the thinker "turn[s] a subject over in the mind, giving it serious and consecutive consideration" (113). Even in his young mind, he systematically considers the dilemma. When summoned by the Justice, the boy is mute, knowing that "they wanted only truth, justice" (8) but also knowing that his father would hit him again if he told the truth. In fact, his father hits him again and reminds him that he is getting to be a man and must learn to stick to his own blood or "he won't have any blood to stick to" (8). As the family moves to a new county, the boy is filled with hope that perhaps the people in this town will be safe from his father's "puny flames" (10) and that maybe, his father "will feel it too," (11) and maybe even change. The boy weighs all the possible outcomes and ramifications as he reflects about his situation. Like most adolescents, his thinking is colored by his own perceptions and experiences. Daily, he lives this dilemma. Each time he complains or shows reluctance to take part in the barn burning, he is verbally and physically abused. Refusal brings alienation and condemnation. Experience teaches him that his father is "right" no matter what he, himself, believes. For all his life, he has known only one truth, his father's-an authority no one has yet been able to subvert. Even the Justice cannot convict his father and orders him to leave the country. The boy's mother, fearful for herself and her children, and perhaps subconsciously believing that her husband's behavior is right, models no other belief system for her son to explore. Yet, the boy does consider another viewpoint; he thinks about his own beliefs and what is right and fair for himself and the victims of his father's anger and hatred. He considers reasons beyond the word of his father or even personal opinion. In a moral world, what his father does is not just; it is not right to hurt others, maliciously destroy their property, and lie about the destruction, but "kin shouldn't hurt kin." Acutely aware of the despair he will feel and uncertain about his future if he tells on his father, the boy's reflection leads him to a decision: Warn Major De Spain about his father and tell him that his father is a barn burner. Resting at the top of the hill that late spring night, the boy breathes