Thomas Chandler

Social Studies and Sustainability: A Global Competency Framework

Using the framework of four critical global education competencies, this chapter considers the possibilities in curriculum and pedagogy for social studies to engage the concept of sustainability. Although it is acknowledged at the outset that social studies have just begun to engage with this concept, suggestions are offered for further development of sustainability within the disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts of teaching this school subject in K-12 classrooms.

On Academics: Teaching Emergency Preparedness to Public Health Workers: Use of Blended Learning in Web-Based Training

This article presents the development of a program and results of a study to evaluate an online distancebased learning (DBL) program for competency-based, basic emergency preparedness training for employees of local health departments nationwide. The program was developed and implemented beginning in May 2003 by Columbia University’s Center for Public Health Preparedness (CU-CPHP), and was designed to be delivered in two parts. The first part was an online training program, providing the basic knowledge required for public health preparedness. The second part was a downloadable template, which the student could use to guide learning and subsequent demonstration of the core emergency preparedness competencies to his or her supervisor. The student could return this documentation to the CU-CPHP to receive a certificate of completion, which would be e-mailed to the recipient. Evaluation findings indicate that this course resulted in a high degree of participant satisfaction along with an increased level of participant understanding of the basic emergency preparedness core competencies.

Superstorm Sandy: Lessons for Optimizing Limited Training Resources for Local Impact.

Professional training development, whether for a classroom, work environment, or other setting, typically follows a validated instructional design model that includes an assessment of learner needs before the development of a training. This foundational principle is integrated into federal guidance documents for emergency preparedness training. That said, local preparedness resources are sometimes in misalignment with this principle. Funding tends to favor nationally defined priorities as a proxy for the assessment of local needs. For example, the guidance for the 2015 Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) and Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) funding application requires “justification” that “all training is purposefully designed to close operational gaps and sustain jurisdictionally required preparedness competencies.” Beyond such vague references, there are no robust training needs assessment requirements. Additionally, many of the recommended and freely available preparedness trainings for public health personnel are not specific to public health and are instead based on a nationallevel view of preparedness needs that may not fully accommodate local requirements. During the response to Superstorm Sandy, local public health departments had to carry out disaster response tasks based in part on federally funded trainings developed over years of investment in public health preparedness. To understand this further, we analyzed field data collected as part of a research study on the public health system response to Superstorm Sandy, based on key informant interviews and focus group discussions with lower New York State county health officials and first responders.