His research is into the psychodramatic concept of warm-up and he is reconceptualising and evaluating the concept and developing a process for evaluating the goodness of a concept.

This paper is a critical analysis of Biggs's deep and surface approaches to learning model, which is prominent in the higher education and tertiary learning fields. The paper reflects on the model's origins and the contextual pressures of the educational landscape extant at that time. It is argued that these pressures have led to a demonstrable lack of serious critique of the model, which has truncated the model's development, leaving it underdeveloped. There are significant problems with the model in the areas of supporting evidence, imprecise conceptualisation, ambiguous language, circularity, and a lack of definition of the underlying structure of deep and surface approaches to learning.

No abstract

In the first of two articles on the development of the emergency nurse practitioner, Peter Howie reports on a new scheme in Lincoln where all first-level nurses have been trained as nurse practitioners. The initiative was introduced following a study in the theoretical management of patients by experienced accident and emergency sisters. The author outlines the training course provided and the protocols within which nurse practitioners work.

This paper reports a critical comparative analysis of two popular and significant theories of adult learning: the transformation and the deep approach theories of learning. These theories are operative in different educational sectors, are significant, respectively, in each, and they may be seen as both touching on similar concerns with learning that is profound in its nature and impact on the learner-hence the case for a critical comparison. The critical analysis focused on similarities and differences between the two theories on a set of general criteria. It found that, while there are unacknowledged similarities, the differences are complementary, each theory suggesting a different way of considering the same territory, without excluding the other theory. The analysis strongly suggests the imperative for research findings from each theory to be used to inform practice and research through the other, although the literature reveals a lack of such cross-fertilization.