| Adult Learning by Parents of Children with Disabilities |
This project explores the adult learning process that occurs when parents discover their child has a disability. This qualitative research project entails interviews with individuals whose children have been diagnosed with a disability about the process they underwent in adjusting to their child’s diagnosis, and learning how best to parent the child once the diagnosis has been made. |
| Fostering Professional Development Among Graduate Education Students |
In this project funded by the National Educational Association Learning and Leadership Grants, Drs. Hill and Shelleyhave developed a weekly professional seminar series designed to improve the graduate student experience, as well as graduate students’ employability and eventual success as they become educational leaders themselves. The seminar series will addressess preparing for, obtaining, and succeeding in a professional position. |
| Adult Education for Health and Wellness |
This project involved editing an issue of New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education devoted to adult education for health and wellness. Chapters will include learning for health, global dimensions of health, community education and health, technology applications for health, health literacy, and cultural competence. |
| Cultural Competence in Health Professions Students |
| The objective of this research project is to test and validate a Cultural Humility Scale that is designed as a tool for health professions education. Health educators would be able to use the scale as a measure of their students’ readiness to learn about the intersection of culture and health care. As our country becomes more diverse, educators need to prepare health professions students to work in an environment in which health care providers are increasingly called upon to treat people of different races, backgrounds, ages, socioeconomic levels, and beliefs. Because cultural competence is a large construct with knowledge, skill, behavioral, and attitudinal aspects, this psychometric instrument is developed for a smaller, more manageable construct, cultural humility, which has been proposed as a more suitable goal in multicultural health professions education than cultural competency. A practitioner with cultural humility realizes that his/her personal cultural perspective is not universal. For the purposes of this effort in scale development, cultural humility is defined as respect for and acceptance of health beliefs and practices based in cultures different from one’s own, and the desire to learn more about them. |
| Suitability of Patient Education Materials for the Poor and Underserved |
This study analyzed patient education materials available to poor and underserved patients treated by safety net providers, evaluated their suitability and created guidelines for patient education and preventive care services. A content analysis was conducted to evaluate the materials’ formatting and written style, language, readability, pictorial content, source, and accessibility. Many of the analyzed materials require a higher reading level than many patients possess, contain unexplained medical jargon and evidence of bias, and are culturally inappropriate. Patients may not have the sophistication to understand the information presented about medication risks; therefore guidance from health practitioners is essential. Patients with limited reading abilities and unfamiliarity with western cultures can be confused, misled, or deceived by patient education materials that are poorly chosen. |