Understanding Ourselves

Chapter 9 builds on the arguments of its predecessors, focusing on the social sciences and the humanities. Its central theme is the importance of an interactive curriculum in these disciplines in promoting self-understanding. The subjects in question, when imaginatively combined, can play an important part in helping developing individuals discover the path they wish to pursue, and the character of the social environment in which they will make their journey. Literature, art, geography, history, anthropology, psychology, economics, and political science are all crucial parts of a general pre-university course of study. As before, the chapter makes concrete proposals. It concludes with a discussion of the value of studying foreign languages, and of an introduction to philosophy at the pre-university level.

Teaching Python for Data Science: Collaborative development of a modular & interactive curriculum

We are bioinformatics trainees at the University of Michigan who started a local chapter of Girls Who Code to provide a fun and supportive environment for high school women to learn the power of coding. Our goal was to cover basic coding topics and data science concepts through live coding and hands-on practice. However, we could not find a resource that exactly met our needs. Therefore, over the past three years, we have developed a curriculum and instructional format using Jupyter notebooks to effectively teach introductory Python for data science. This method, inspired by The Carpentries organization, uses bite-sized lessons followed by independent practice time to reinforce coding concepts, and culminates in a data science capstone project using real-world data. We believe our open curriculum is a valuable resource to the wider education community and hope that educators will use and improve our lessons, practice problems, and teaching best practices. Anyone can contribute to our educational material on GitHub (https://github.com/GWC-DCMB).

A qualitative approach to identify barriers to multi-professional teamwork among medical professors at Iranian teaching hospitals

Background In some cases of diseases, such as infectious, neurological and chronic ones prevention and treatment is complex. Therefore, a single medical specialty alone cannot effectively manage treatment of patients due to health care needs of them and complexities of treatment. Instead, a team composed of different healthcare disciplines with effective, continuous, and organized communication must follow up various aspects of patient care. In this regard, the present qualitative study aimed to shed light on the experiences of clinical teachers of multi-professional teamwork barriers within Iranian teaching hospitals. Methods In this qualitative research, the experiences of medical clinical teachers of multi-professional teamwork barriers within teaching hospitals were explained. Sampling was theoretical and the data were collected from experienced clinical teachers and medical students studying at several Universities of Medical Sciences through semi-structured interviews and observation, which were continued until data saturation. Fifteen clinical teachers and five medical students participated in the study. The interviews were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Results Three main categories were extracted. The first category was “enhancing the culture of interdisciplinary education” included “paving the way for an interdisciplinary culture”, “enhancing teamwork culture”, and “having a general view of medical sciences instead of specialization”. The second category was “barriers of interdisciplinary education” included “influence of the dominant culture of specialization in society”, “poor interdisciplinary education infrastructure”, and “individualism as a value of society”. And the third category was “consequences of specialization” included “medical sciences education under the shadow of specialization”, “possibility to harming patients”, and “distrust of society in the services provided by the 1st and 2nd level centers”. Conclusion It seems that attitudinal barriers, teamwork difficulties, and the culture of individualism are evident in Iran; more, roles of the healthcare team and the status of each member is not clear. Designing interactive curriculum and arranging clinical settings to facilitate exchange of ideas among clinical teachers and students of different disciplines, is a step forward to achieving a common value concept, language, and common perception, and establishing cooperation and understanding among disciplines involved, which leads to further understanding of the professional responsibilities of other disciplines.

Exploring the feasibility of a cluster randomised control trial to improve children’s 24 hour movement behaviours and dietary intake: Happy Homework.

High levels of childhood obesity have been observed globally over the last three decades. Schools are promising settings to implement interventions aiming to improve health-related behaviours in children. The aim of this study was two-fold; (1) explore the feasibility of Happy Homework (HH) from qualitative investigations with teachers and pupils and (2) examine preliminary effects of the HH pilot on children’s activity patterns, sleep and dietary behaviours. Four schools in Lanarkshire, UK, were randomised to either the HH intervention (n = 2) or usual curriculum control group (n = 2). The intervention ran for 8 weeks and consisted of interactive curriculum-focussed health and wellbeing homework tasks. Primary outcome measures were intervention fidelity, recruitment rates and compliance with trial procedures. Secondary outcomes were objectively measured physical activity (PA), sedentary behaviour (SB) and sleep via ActiGraph GT3X+ and activPAL4™ accelerometers, dietary intake, and screen-time (ST). Children (n = 158) were provided with informed consent, and subsequently, 68 of those children participated in this study. A recruitment rate of 43% and retention rate of 93% was observed. In relation to fidelity, the intervention group teachers (n = 3) provided children with HH each week for the full 8 weeks of the intervention. Compliance for ActiGraph GT3X+, BMI, ST and dietary intake questionnaire outcomes was high ranging from 91% to 100%, while 67% of the sample provided valid activPAL4™ data for both baseline and post-intervention. HH was found to improve measures of PA and SB in children in 8 weeks. Before progression to an effectiveness trial, additional procedures should be considered to improve recruitment rates, compliance with outcome measures, and implementation of the HH intervention long-term.