Background: Community-based education (CBE) involves educating the head (cognitive), heart (affective), and the hand (practical) by utilizing tools that enable us to broaden and interrogate our value systems. This article reports on the use of virtue ethics (VE) theory for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain a socially accountable community placement programme for undergraduate medical students. Our research questions driving this secondary analysis were; what are the goods which are internal to the successful practice of CBE in medicine, (...) and what are the virtues that are likely to promote and sustain them? -/- Methods: We conducted a secondary theoretically informed thematic analysis of the primary data based on MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory as the conceptual framework. -/- Results: Virtue ethics is an ethical approach that emphasizes the role of character and virtue in shaping moral behavior; when individuals engage in practices (such as CBE), goods internal to those practices (such as a collaborative attitude) strengthen the practices themselves, but also augment those individuals’ virtues, and that of their community (such as empathy). We identified several goods that are internal to the practice of CBE and accompanying virtues as important for the development, implementation and sustainability of a socially accountable community placement programme. A service-oriented mind-set, a deep understanding of community needs, a transformed mind, and a collaborative approach emerged as goods internal to the practice of a socially accountable CBE. The virtues needed to sustain the identified internal goods included empathy and compassion, connectedness, accountability, engagement [sustained relationship], cooperation, perseverance, and willingness to be an agent of change. -/- Conclusion: This study found that MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory provided a useful theoretical lens for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain CBE practice. (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated drastic changes to undergraduate medical training at the University of Botswana (UB). To save the academic year when campus was locked down, the Department of Medical Education conducted a needs assessment to determine the readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) of the Faculty of Medicine, UB. Objectives. To report on the findings of needs assessment surveys to assess learner and teaching staff preparedness for fair and just ERT, as defined by philosopher John Rawls. Methods. Needs (...) assessment surveys were conducted using Office 365 Forms distributed via WhatsApp, targeting medical students and teaching staff during the 5 undergraduate years. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results. Ninety-two percent (266/289) of students and 73.5% (62/84) of teaching staff responded. Surveys revealed a high penetration of smartphones among students, but poor internet accessibility and affordability in homes. Some teaching staff also reported internet and device insufficiencies. Only WhatsApp was accessible to students and teaching staff. Conclusions. For equitable access to ERT in the future, the surveys revealed infrastructural improvement needs, including wider, stronger, affordable WiFi coverage within Botswana and enhanced digital infrastructures in educational institutions, with increased support for students. (shrink)

The destruction of the Egyptian army in the Book of Exodus is the primary story of salvation for Israel; God is the chief combatant in this story. "Yahweh is a warrior!" So goes the victory hymn in Exodus 15:3 after the annihilation of the enemy by Yahweh, marking the importance held by this show of divine power. This unleashing of divine power and its militaristic imagery has long caught the attention of scholars as starkly nationalistic. Thomas B. Dozeman furthers this (...) study by addressing the theological problem of divine power in the Exodus story and, by extension, the Judeo-Christian attempt to deify nationalism by calling its wars holy. He interprets Exodus as liturgy, the Day of Yahweh, celebrating God's defeat of Pharaoh and the ultimate ascendancy of Israelite authority. This liturgy, though, did not remain static, but changed as the national experience of exile changed the practice of Israelite worship. An isolated event evolved into an extended account of salvation history, in which the life of faith becomes a wilderness march to the promised land. Dozeman traces how revisionary embellishments in the plot structure and characters of the Exodus story reflected the new understanding of divine power. By combining literary and historical interpretation this study offers the first serious inquiry into the idea of divine power, and makes a major contribution to resurgent research on the Pentateuch as a whole. No scholar concerned with biblical historiography and its justification of holy wars can afford to ignore this book. (shrink)

It is fashionable nowadays to discredit the theory of the general will, and an attempt to rehabilitate it is not likely to receive much sympathy. Nevertheless, I propose to give some reasons for adopting a more lenient attitude towards the theory, and to indicate some possible lines along which a rehabilitation might be conducted.

I. ¿Filosofía? ¿Ciencia?--II. ¿Reprensión? ¿Crítica?

The question of how to distinguish between science and non-science, the so-called ' demarcation problem', is one of the most high-profile, perennial, and intractable issues in the philosophy of science. It is not merely a philosophical issue, however, since it has a significant bearing on practical policy questions and practical decisions. This essay develops a pragmatic approach to the demarcation problem: it argues that while there are some core principles that we can use in distinguishing between science and non-science, particular (...) judgments and decisions about something's scientific status depend, in part, on practical goals and concerns. (shrink)

Chaos in nervous system is a fascinating but controversial field of investigation. To approach the role of chaos in the real brain, we theoretically and numerically investigate the occurrence of chaos inartificial neural networks. Most of the time, recurrent networks (with feedbacks) are fully connected. This architecture being not biologically plausible, the occurrence of chaos is studied here for a randomly diluted architecture. By normalizing the variance of synaptic weights, we produce a bifurcation parameter, dependent on this variance and on (...) the slope of the transfer function, that allows a sustained activity and the occurrence of chaos when reaching a critical value. Even for weak connectivity and small size, we find numerical results in accordance with the theoretical ones previously established for fully connected infinite sized networks. The route towards chaos is numerically checked to be a quasi-periodic one, whatever the type of the first bifurcation is. Our results suggest that such high-dimensional networks behave like low-dimensional dynamical systems. (shrink)

First authoritative and comprehensive study in the field of Inkblot Personality Test, this book describes the historical roots of the three major projective inkblot measures: the Rorschach, the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) and the Somatic Inkblot Series (SIS). It presents the extensive psychometric background work accompanying the normative data and diagnostic indicators along with indices for selecting executives in a business organization. The book begins with a detailed history of Hermann Rorschach and his early experiments with inkblots in the diagnosis (...) of mentally ill patients. Special attention is given to the administration and scoring of the Rorschach, with the sections detailing the systems developed by Klopfer and Exner. The HIT and SIS are also reviewed in detail, emphasizing their psychometric qualities. (shrink)

De 1872 à 1921, le manuscrit D d'd'Hérodote, codex du XIe siècle, a ètè perdu pour la philologie. C'est seulement en 1927 qu'il en a été publié une collation, dans la troisième édition de Hude. II s'agit maintenant d'eliminer les manuscrits dont l'intéiêt avant 1927 était de permettre de reconstruire D. Bien que la connaissance de D les rende inutiles, Hude, qui à pris tant de peine a les collationner, n'a pas eu le cœur de leur dire adieu.