What is already known about this subject• Context-learning in medicine is mainly based on theories explaining how medical expertise is achieved, particularly with regard to diagnostic problem solving.• By frequently solving diagnostic clinical problems doctors generate so-called networks of organized knowledge in their memory.• Preclinical medical students are well able to learn to choose and prescribe drugs. What this study adds• Preclinical pharmacotherapy context learning for medical students has a modest but positive effect on learning cognitive pharmacotherapeutic skills, i.e. choosing a drug treatment and determining patient information.• The effect can be obtained with role-play sessions, a suboptimal form of context learning, with a minimal study load and a high appreciation by students. AimTo evaluate a context-learning pharmacotherapy programme for approximately 750 2nd, 3rd and 4th year preclinical medical students with respect to mastering cognitive pharmacotherapeutic skills, i.e. choosing a (drug) treatment and determining patient information. MethodsThe context-learning pharmacotherapy programme consists of weekly organized role play sessions in the form of consulting hours. Fourth year students sit for a therapeutic Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the form of consulting hours at the outpatient clinic. Sixty-one 2nd, 74 3rd and 49 4th year medical students who attended the role play sessions and the OSCE were randomly selected. Their performances were assessed by clinical examiners and clinical exper ts and compared with a reference group of 6th year graduated students. Additionally, the scores of a questionnaire on study load and appreciation were collected. ResultsThe level of the pharmacotherapeutic skills of the 4th year students who followed the pharmacotherapy context-learning programme was not far below that of 6th year graduates who had finished their clinical clerkships, but had not followed the pharmacotherapy programme. The time spent on the programme was about 1% of the total study load per year. The students appreciated the role play sessions and OSCE by around 80% and 99% of the maximum possible scores. ConclusionsPreclinical pharmacotherapy context learning has a modest but positive effect on learning cognitive pharmacotherapeutic skills, i.e. choosing a drug treatment and determining patient information. This effect has been obtained with role play sessions, a suboptimal form of context learning, with a minimal study load and a high appreciation by students.

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Listening to young children’s voices is crucial to improving children’s library services. The first step is unveiling how young children think about the library. Thus, researchers recruited the Mosaic approach including photography, interview, and drawing to explore the features of children’s libraries in children’s perspectives in six libraries in China. The results indicate that first, the children’s library is a “primary third place”. Second, the children’s library is an overlapping of home and society. Third, children can read books in the children’s library, but not just read. Fourth, the children’s library improves children’s awareness as patrons. It is suggested that young patrons already form initial understandings of the library, begin to complain about any problems, and put forward requirements for the library. Additionally, their interpersonal needs should be paid attention to. Therefore, librarians and researchers should respect the rights of children and listen to their voice when designing and providing library services associated with children.

Young children’s perceptions of library services are often ignored when providing library services to this group. In order to reveal young children’s perceptions, grounded theory technique was used to analyze the interview data from 92 young Chinese children. The authors first proposed an integrated model of young children’s perceptions of Chinese public libraries, including the elements of books, physical spaces, rules, and people. Subsequently, the model is compared to the adult experts’ perspectives, revealing that young children could perceive all the experts’ proposed services and functions. Besides, they could perceive rules in libraries. Furthermore, young children were able to convert the abstract library classification index system to perceptible clues. The findings could be used to improve library services to accurately conform to young children’s perspectives.

This article addresses the experience of people who listen to stories, with particular attention to the trancelike quality of that experience. Interviews and observations at organized storytelling events provide the data, which are analyzed for content and theme. The results show that people listening to stories often do enter a qualitatively different state of consciousness. This article explores the character of and influences on this state and presents a theoretical model.