Students' prior knowledge and threshold concepts in a first-year biology course: The lecturer as middleman

Constructive alignment focuses on alignment between curriculum, learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment. This study argues that for lecturers to set intended learner-centred outcomes, they need insight into students’ prior knowledge of a discipline’s threshold concepts. Little is known about how a syllabus’s assumptions of prior knowledge match up to what first- year students know. Yet this insight is necessary; new knowledge is built on existing knowledge, and learning is about moving to higher cognitive levels. To gain this insight, at the start of the 2018 academic year, 292 first year biology students voluntarily answered two formative, online multiple-choice assessments on DNA and RNA synthesis. The responses showcased their knowledge gaps versus what the syllabus expected. Data analysis of their responses was used to shape teaching activities. This study extends constructive alignment by showing how quality teaching in content-dense disciplines such as biology further requires that lecturers gauge students’ prior knowledge.

Primary Palliative Care Education Programs: Review and Characterization

Background: Primary palliative care (PPC) education programs have arisen in response to the recognition that all clinicians need to have a basic set of knowledge and skills to provide excellent care to all patients. PPC education programs appear to vary widely, making it difficult for potential learners to find the right program to fit their needs. We have cataloged and categorized a snapshot of PPC education programs across the United States to serve as a resource for those seeking training, and for educators interested in starting or optimizing such programs. Methods: Medical and commercial search engines (MSEs and CSEs, respectively) were used to generate a list of PPC education programs in the United States. Programs were contacted to supplement information available online, and then categorized based on intended learner, certification/degree conferred upon completion, and other characteristics. Results: There was little overlap between the PPC education programs found through MSEs and CSEs. Programs found via CSEs varied with respect to intended learners, pedagogy, content, and cost. Among the minority of programs that confer a certification/degree upon completion, there is no consensus as to what these signify. Conclusions: The wide variety of PPC education programs is both a challenge to and strength of the field. We hope that this report will serve as a call to develop a standard PPC education taxonomy to help define essential components of all PPC programs, while also leaving sufficient room for programs to serve the unique needs of their local learners and patient populations.

Dialogic Education and the Schemas to Guide Dialogue: An Example from Malaria Research in Guinea

This article first reviews the importance of dialogical education in general and in malaria control specifically. Dialogical education requires knowledge of how people think as well as what people think. Through a mutual appreciation of the educators' and learners' respective frame of reference, the intended learners may come to appreciate differences between the educators' and learners' viewpoints and the ways these differences may constrain understanding and acceptance of new knowledge and practices. Dialogical education is presented as a means by which all involved in health education (professionals and non-professionals, those educating on-the-job, and those doing it informally) may be involved in health education. The appropriate presentation of research findings is central to the task of preparing for dialogical education. This article then discusses the discovery and the presentation of a culture's schemas. Schemas are concisely stated formulations of cultural orientation. They are core principles and rules. The schemas of the intended learner are critical for the educator to know so as to educate in a dialogic mode, to motivate acceptance and understanding. The schemas for malaria held by the Fulani of Guinea, West Africa, are presented as a case in point for a presentation of research findings in a form that is concise, comprehensible, accessible, and useful for nourishing dialogical education.