'Holistic reform of education' in Jordan (an eastern dose of serendipity)

View from The Citadel, Amman 23 April 2013

Yesterday morning I arrived back safe and sound from Amman in Jordan, via Istanbul through to Manchester and full of new experiences and learning. I say 'safe and sound' because travel to the region is clearly not a matter of routine given ongoing events. Checking governmental advice in the UK it becomes a question of personal evaluation as was the unexpected trip to Colombia in 2011. Once the non-trivial decision is out of the way ... Jordan's nursing and educational communities provide a truly remarkable welcome and experience. Not only that, but the kingdom of Jordan and the people have so much to offer in their culture, history, hospitality and engagement.

Returning on Thursday from a full day's trip to Petra - amazing! - I asked for an English language paper to read at the hotel before leaving for the airport. I was provided with a copy of The Jordan Times to accompany a cappuccino^*. On page nine Mona Smadi,^# Asst. Professor, Al Balqa Applied University) wrote an opinion piece on Holistic reform of education. The opening sentence enabled my brain to reconnect with my legs (although I would have gladly walked back through the valley):

A holistic perception of reality means having a vision of the context of the constituent fragments and thereby gaining a clearer perception of the reality in its totality.

Prof. Smadi's focus is children's education and curriculum reform. The overlap between children's education, the professor's concerns and nursing is not limited to how curricula are designed and who owns them. Is, for example, the curriculum centered on the student as an individual nurse, or child? If nurses are to be able to integrate their learning and effectively negotiate the emotional and ethical spaces they find themselves in then when is this deeper thinking to start?

Petra 25 April 2013

Not surprisingly there was a lot of talk about this at the JNC conference. The theory - practice gap is not just alive and kicking there is an echo off the seemingly disparate walls. Given too the debate in the UK about student nurses spending time as a health care assistant before starting their formal nurse education. The word applied in the title of Prof. Smadi's university's is interesting. We are accustomed to applied mathematics, ethics, energy and of course applied nursing research and many other examples?

What of applied nursing - does that make sense? Or is there a circularity of sorts in nursing applied? I will check my notes as this point was raised in conference regards to evidence based care and evidence based practice.

Prof. Smadi's referring to a 'clearer perception' can also be extended to recognition of patterns, contexts and situations that are 'hot' in how they relate to values.

(There are a couple of points to add here which I will get too).


There was another serving of serendipity to add to that at Le Meridien, soon after rejoining the land of the virtual I came across the UK Department of Education's Preparing for Adulthood initiative on twitter. If you read the brief article by Prof. Smadi you will see how the two are closely related. Do lifestyles and family life today for many compromise the ability of families to teach moral values to children? As noted in the text this then becomes a critical role for education. In westernized cultures is this one of the qualities referred to in the saying of 'spending quality time' with the family? An acknowledgement of a deficit?

Source: http://www.preparingforadulthood.org.uk/

Vital and complex work in two senses. On the one hand cultures try to understand themselves; and on the other, they seek to understand the other others out there: now not so far away. The patterns that are realised be they mosaic, prayers, celtic knot, tartan, languages, landscapes - rock cut architecture - sculpture; these patterns work, that is 'make a difference' by virtue of both the detail and the whole.

"Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock ..." UNESCO.

^#If I have not used the proper name and title I will edit this accordingly asap upon advice.
 
^*Why not an Arabic coffee? Well I had one the day before. What can I say... It was different in the preparation, being an observation as in so many cultural patterns (tea). I would like to think I will have another one day. The key thing is I did not necessarily want to have the capability to run to the airport at 11pm, or back to Petra for that matter.