Health professionals need to collaborate. Changing how they’re taught helps build that skill: It's crucial that medical professionals learn to collaborate. Katleho Seisa When health professionals collaborate rather than operating in silos, everyone benefits – patients, families and the health system at large. This is a fact supported by ample research evidence. The professionals reap …
Empathy can be taught at school – and it can lead to more creative thinking: DGLimages/Shutterstock Most people think that empathy – the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes – is fixed, but it’s not. Empathy can be taught. Research has shown that reading can help children develop empathy. Through reading, children can …
I bonded with COVID vaccine sceptics over saunas and Mother Earth rituals – this is what they taught me: I was standing in a forest at night, by a dark lake taking part in a Mother Earth ritual. Shaman drums echoed between the cliffs. The witch leading the ritual suddenly encouraged us to sound like …
The magic of touch: how deafblind people taught us to ‘see’ the world differently during COVID: Toeizuza Thailand/Shutterstock As someone who is severely deaf and completely blind, I felt overnight I had lost a third sense, my sense of touch. To make matters worse, people around me faded away – voices had become so quiet …
We taught an AI to impersonate Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde – here’s what it revealed about sentience: Shakespeare AI. iku4 Nay, nay, I say! This cannot be, That machines should e’er surpass our art. We are the masters, them the slaves, And thus it ever shall be so! They learn, ‘tis true, but they learn Only …
Five lessons the pandemic taught us about ending homelessness permanently: Srdjan Randjelovic / Shutterstock One surprising success story to come out of the pandemic was how many countries and cities were able to significantly reduce street homelessness. Lockdowns enabled governments to treat homelessness as a public health emergency and act swiftly to accommodate and support …
How grammar is taught in England should change: goodluz/Shutterstock The teaching of grammar – the ways that words are combined to make sentences – can be controversial. It often leads to debates about “correct English”, and can result in people being judged if their use of language deviates from this “correct” form. Language is constantly …
What Kubernetes taught me about development: As a full-stack developer, especially a front-end developer, DevOps technologies and the way DevOps developers think were always a mystery to me. When the company I work for launched a new command-line interface (CLI) application called Gatekeeper, I jumped into the world of DevOps and Kubernetes, and what I …
What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them: It was April 1995, and I was preparing to travel to Afghanistan for my first volunteer post with a UK charity. I had travelled to London to meet the Afghanistan director for the non-governmental organisation (NGO) …
Most UK adults don’t know key details of the Holocaust – how it has been taught in schools may explain why: Students visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Shanae Ennis-Melhado/Shutterstock A survey exploring knowledge of the Holocaust has exposed limited awareness in the UK of some of the most fundamental aspects of this history. Conducted …
Universities in Nigeria must rethink how journalism is taught: A student going through his work at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Changes in the journalism profession have made journalism education challenging. For instance, the growth of the internet has given everyone the ability to generate and distribute information. This includes news materials …
What the great work from home experiment has taught us about the way we work: Ready to go back to the office? nito via Shutterstock This is a transcript of episode 8 of The Conversation Weekly podcast, The great remote work experiment – what happens next? In this episode, four experts dissect the impact a …
South Africa in the news: They need to be taught a lesson, angry protesters warn farmers involved in Senekal violence: Angry protesters have warned white farmers who stormed a court building and set alight a police vehicle in the Free State that they would be ‘given war if they wanted it’.: “South Africa” – BingNews …
How my students taught me to code: “Hello, I’m Miss Jess, and my students taught me how to code.” When I say this to new students, they often think I misspoke. But it’s true. Coding always interested me, but it seemed inaccessible. Then my students taught me to code a video game during a few …
Why children need to be taught more about their human rights: Charlein Gracia/Unsplash Many children have an innate sense of equality, fairness and justice and know how these concepts relate to their day-to-day lives. A lot of children also have the confidence to voice their opinions when they feel a lack of justice. But unfortunately, …
Dentists in South Africa aren’t being taught genetics. Why they should: Many genetic abnormalities involve the oral and dental region of the face. Shutterstock Genetic and genomic research has improved our understanding of the genetic origin of growth, development and disease and affects all areas of healthcare. There is also mounting evidence that many complex …
An AI taught itself to play a video game – for the first time, it’s beating humans: Macrovector/Shutterstock Since the earliest days of virtual chess and solitaire, video games have been a playing field for developing artificial intelligence (AI). Each victory of machine against human has helped make algorithms smarter and more efficient. But in …
How sports science in Africa can be taught and thought about differently: Sports science needs to race towards a different approach. kentoh/Shutterstock In the four years since the decolonisation debate took centre stage at South African universities, much of the focus has been on what decolonisation might look like in the humanities. But science subjects, …