Search

The ongoing emphasis on micro practice and declining interest in macro practice has raised concerns regarding the availability and quality of macro internships. Effective training of macro practitioners entering the field remains necessary for reasons including oversight of staff and student internships. This study examines student and faculty perceptions of macro practice field internship experiences within social work programs across the United States and Canada. Findings suggest the majority of internships are offered within MSW programs. Respondents identified a lack of support from social work programs or field departments and a lack of internships as primary barriers to obtaining quality placements.

Nudging is increasingly used in public health interventions in Western societies to produced health-promoting behavior changes; however, there is lack of clarity as to what constitutes a nudge, scant knowledge of the effectiveness of nudging techniques in public health lifestyle interventions and a number of ethical and value-based concerns. The aim of this review is to address these research lacunae and identify the characteristics of nudges in empirical research on public health interventions intended to induce healthy lifestyle changes, including whether they are effective. We conducted systematic searches for relevant articles published between January 2008 and April 2019 in three databases, PubMed, CINAHL and PsycINFO, and combined this with a metasynthesis to construct interpretative explanations. A total of 66 original studies met the inclusion criteria. The findings of the systematic review showed that most nudging interventions involved diet/nutrition, most were carried out as single experiments, and the majority had the intended effects. Specific nudging techniques were identified with respect to the broader nudging categories of accessibility, presentation, using messages and pictures, technology-supported information, financial incentives, affecting the senses, and cognitive loading; several studies included more than one nudging technique. Although many nudging techniques had the intended effects, it is unclear whether they would work outside the study setting. The synthesis revealed that the studies lacked critical reflection on the assumptions about health that were implicit in nudging interventions, the cultural acceptability of nudges, the context-free assumptions of nudging theory, and the implications of these aspects for the public health context.

Purpose: We describe the natural auditory environment of people with cochlear implants (CIs), how it changes across the life span, and how it varies between individuals. Method: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of Cochlear Nucleus 6 CI sound-processor data logs. The logs were obtained from 1,501 people with CIs (ages 0-96 years). They covered over 2.4 million hr of implant use and indicated how much time the CI users had spent in various acoustical environments. We investigated exposure to spoken language, noise, music, and quiet, and analyzed variation between age groups, users, and countries. Results: CI users spent a substantial part of their daily life in noisy environments. As a consequence, most speech was presented in background noise. We found significant differences between age groups for all auditory scenes. Yet even within the same age group and country, variability between individuals was substantial. Conclusions: Regardless of their age, people with CIs face challenging acoustical environments in their daily life. Our results underline the importance of supporting them with assistive listening technology. Moreover, we found large differences between individuals' auditory diets that might contribute to differences in rehabilitation outcomes. Their causes and effects should be investigated further. From learning language in a noisy nursery to tea time at the retirement home, different stages of life are characterized by different environments. Each of these comes with particular learning tasks and social interactions. For 360 million people with hearing loss (World Health Organization, 2015), the environment also provides acoustical challenges that can jeopardize learning and social participation. This holds true for those who perceive sounds through a cochlear implant (CI).

Recent research has identified certain goals of adult second language (L2) learners and their teachers for writing instruction in English as a second language (ESL), yet questions remain as to whether students' and teachers' goals correspond in ways that achieve instructional objectives and facilitate L2 development. The present study compared L2 students' goals for grammar improvement in academic writing with those of their teachers as students transitioned from an intensive ESL programme to university courses. Over a two-year period, we conducted 60 semi-structured interviews and stimulated recalls with 15 ESL university students along with 25 interview and stimulated recall sessions with 5 ESL and 9 university instructors. Results showed limited correspondence between learners' and teachers' intentions for grammar improvement. Learners expressed a strong preference for improving formal grammatical features, particularly verb tenses and clause structure, whereas instructors either reported that they had no goals for grammar improvement or sought to improve grammatical complexity and the stylistic appropriateness of text features. However, learners had little knowledge and awareness of these areas.

Includes five articles that examine the application of information technology to cultural activities throughout the world. Highlights include the development of information standards for the description of art objects; standards for the computerized exchange of museum information; the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN); vocabulary coordination projects; and the Witt Computer Index. (LRW)