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Bridging education programs have been developed to enhance the ability of internationally educated professionals (IEPs) to access professional employment in Canada. IEPs are professionals who received their original training outside of Canada. Bridging education programs consist of specialized courses, offered by higher education institutions, focusing on skill and knowledge upgrading in preparation for meeting professional licensure requirements. The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the preferred learning styles of IEPs enrolled in nursing, pharmacy and teacher programs.Design/methodology – This survey research assessed the learning styles/preferences and degree of self‐directed readiness of IEPs enrolled in three different Ontario bridging education programs: pharmacists, nurses and teachers. These professions represent some of the largest regulated professions in Canada. Three professions were selected for this study because they have similar regulatory procedures for candidates seeking licensure. These programs were situated within higher education institutions. Adult immigrant students participated by completing Kolb's Learning Style Inventory and Guglielmino's Self‐Directedness Scale.

The most significant finding of this research is that all three professions were found in the divergent quadrant of the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. The learner with a divergent style of learning prefers observation rather than action and is able to view concrete situations from multiple perspectives. These learners value concrete experience and reflective observation, suggesting that they tend to consider a situation from differing perspectives. This finding suggests that being a recent adult immigrant has a stronger effect upon preferred style of learning in bridging education than profession‐specific factors. IEPs are also illustrated to be highly self‐directed learners.

The generalizability of these results must be treated with caution due to the small sample size. Several factors influenced the results such as difficulties in accruing a larger and more representative sample.

Currently, substantial funding is provided for bridging education in Canada. There is little research being conducted on the effectiveness of this type of higher education from the perspective of learning processes. More research is needed to enhance the ability of IEPs to succeed in these programs. Ultimately, it can improve new immigrant professionals' success in the labor market.

Research on bridging education is still in its infancy and there is little research evidence to guide the development of effective programs. Some research indicates that bridging education programs are useful for providing profession‐specific language training and orientation to the Canadian workplace. If the preferred learning styles of immigrant professionals can be identified, more effective courses for immigrant learners can be developed. Educators can create increased academic success and improved employment outcomes.

This paper aims to explore issues that must be addressed in post‐secondary educational planning and delivery such that social cultural factors within the learning environment are recognized in ways that affirm the learner's cultural traditions.

The adoption of a multiple cultures model of instructional design with an emphasis on implementing flexible learning using instructional technology is proposed.

The paper finds that as student mobility continues to increase across educational programs and geographic borders, the need to accommodate cultural differences in an increasingly heterogeneous study will have to increase dramatically and, for this to occur, institutions and faculty will have to improve their insight into cultural and learning differences that affect teaching and learning.

Distance education courses are commonly offered in professional upgrading or “bridging” programs as one solution to addressing the apparent knowledge and experience gaps of newly immigrated internationally‐educated practitioners. Useful strategies for accommodating individual styles and preferences in a multiple cultures professional online learning context have been described.

Learning preferences and styles are inextricably related to cultural background as well as curricular and course design. This paper provides a much‐needed professional distance education framework that integrates the skills and values of the student with those of the local professional community to create a unified and authentic learning environment.

This piece is about how elementary and secondary social studies students participate in transformational social studies education for social justice through oral history. The exemplar oral history illustrated is through the life of an exemplary educator, Ms. Lillie M. H. Fincher. She was a former social studies specialist in the Birmingham Schools and a civic activist. How she ushered in integration with her students in the early 1970s and the ways in which Ms. Fincher influenced students, imprinted lasting impressions, and made differences in their lives forever. This is the spirit of transformational social justice.

Racial and ethnic minorities utilize less healthcare than their similarly situated white counterparts in the United States, resulting in speculation that these actions may stem in part from less desire for care. In order to adequately understand the role of care-seeking for racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, we must fully and systematically consider the complex set of social factors that influence healthcare seeking and use.

Data for this study come from a 2005 national survey of community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries (N = 2,138). We examine racial and ethnic variation in intentions to seek care, grounding our analyses in the behavioral model of healthcare utilization. Our analysis consists of a series of nested multivariate logistic regression models that follow the sequencing of the behavioral model while including additional social factors.

We find that Latino, Black, and Native American older adults express greater preferences for seeking healthcare compared to whites. Worrying about one’s health, having skepticism toward doctors in general, and living in a small city rather than a Metropolitan Area, but not health need, socioeconomic status, or healthcare system characteristics, explain some of the racial and ethnic variation in care-seeking preferences. Overall, we show that even after comprehensively accounting for factors known to influence disparities in utilization, elderly racial and ethnic minorities express greater desire to seek care than whites.

We suggest that future research examine social factors such as unmeasured wealth differences, cultural frameworks, and role identities in healthcare interactions in order to understand differences in care-seeking and, importantly, the relationship between care-seeking and disparities in utilization.

This study represents a systematic analysis of the ways individual, social, and structural context may account for racial and ethnic differences in seeking medical care. We build on healthcare seeking literature by including more comprehensive measures of social relationships, healthcare and system-level characteristics, and exploring a wide variety of health beliefs and expectations. Further, our study investigates care seeking among multiple understudied racial and ethnic groups. We find that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to say they would seek healthcare than whites, suggesting that guidelines promoting the elicitation and understanding of patient preferences in the context of the clinical interaction is an important step toward reducing utilization disparities. These findings also underscore the notion that health policy should go further to address the broader social factors relating to care-seeking in the first place.

IN the April number of Public Libraries, Mr. Andrew Keogh, sometime of Newcastle‐on‐Tyne, now Professor of Bibliography at Yale University, comes forward in defence of American libraries from the aspersions alleged to be cast on them in this periodical. Other journalistic comments have also appeared, which we may have occasion to mention at another time; and altogether some pother has been caused in America over our very straightforward and simple remarks. Mr. Keogh assumes, quite erroneously, that the first Library World editorial was based on the one or two instances of American reference to European libraries which he quotes. He knows, however, just as well as ourselves, that the American pose in library work is to adopt an attitude akin to contempt for anything outside the boundaries of the United States, and this is shown in nearly every publication dealing with library work. The Nation example was only one which happened to come along at the moment, and it is direct confirmation of what was stated in these columns in April, namely, that even in secular journals the writers were, as Mr. Keogh now certifies, prominent members of the A.L.A. Our attitude is, therefore, not that of defence simply, against certain outsiders writing in non‐professional journals, but against American professional librarians lending themselves to the poor work of trying to belittle the efforts of European librarians on every possible occasion. The mere fact that, as Mr. Keogh affirms, the great research libraries of Germany were attacked in the Nation, does not justify the publication of such ungenerous articles, especially coming from librarians who profess so much friendliness and high feeling.

THIS scheme of exact classification has now been long enough upon trial to justify the publication of a few explanatory notes, adjustments, and revisions which may be useful to present and future users of the system. For an entirely new scheme, which to some extent broke fresh ground, its reception has been extremely kind and flattering, and although it has not escaped criticism, nothing has appeared which has been anything but reasonable and helpful. A surprising circumstance has been that, notwithstanding the very controversial nature of much of the subject, so few points of difference have appeared. These are all more or less directed against the mere placing of certain topics and do not to any extent reflect upon the theory or structure of the system as a whole. One mistake has been made, however, of a more important nature, but this must have arisen either through misapprehension or carelessness. It has been assumed that the Subject Classification claims to be thoroughly scientific, and that each class is arranged in a logical and evolutionary order, so as to modulate or merge naturally into its successor. Any modest claim which may have been made to an attempted logical order is invariably qualified by a statement in the “Introduction” to the effect that such perfect order is only to be expected to a very limited extent. On page eight it is stated that—“The departments of human knowledge are so numerous, their intersections so great, their changes so frequent, and their variety so confusing, that it is impossible to show that they proceed from one source or germ, or that they can be arranged so that each enquirer will find the complete literature of his special subject at one fixed place.” All through the tables and the introduction the same kind of limitation is insisted upon, and it can only be due to misunderstanding to say that I have made such a preposterous claim to sequential perfection. No librarian who has attempted to compile a system of exact classification would ever dream of claiming that he did more than get as near as possible to an ideal arrangement in accordance with his basal plan.