Turnstile Careers Between Academia and Practice

Abstract

With the advent of this new journal, one is drawn to ask, what should be different about "the scholarship of teaching and learning" in health promotion from other fields and from the past of health education? Professors in health education and health promotion carry a burden of teaching responsibility, similar to those teaching medical, nursing, dental, and other health professions, to bring their experience from practice to the classroom, and their students into the settings of practice for learning experiences. Other distinguished professions, such as law and engineering, require clerkships and apprenticeships. With the rapid growth of academic programs for Master of Public Health (MPH) and other graduate degrees in health promotion, and even more rapid for undergraduate courses and new baccalaureate degrees, faculty have had to be recruited directly from their own graduate training with little or no experience in the field before being thrust before classrooms of inexperienced students. Sometimes the classrooms include students with more experience than their faculty. Similarly, their research as faculty members needs to be informed by firsthand and periodic exposure to the problems, practice, and political circumstances that give rise to the research questions and that present the realities in which the results of their research would be applied. The proposed concept here of "turnstile career" captures this need for periodic immersion (back and forth) as we journey through our teaching, research, practice, policy, and service positions and responsibilities.

Building Capacity for Evidence-Based Public Health: Reconciling the Pulls of Practice and the Push of Research

“…Similarly, certification of practitioners, such as the examinations for Certified Health Education Specialists and for public health practitioners have built-in test questions of EBIs. In addition, the rapid growth in number of schools and programs in public health puts growing pressure on them to hire faculty without experience in public health, leading to calls for encouraging, if not requiring, faculty to have periodic rotations in practice or policy settings (33, 82, 83). …”

Strengthening Communities of InquiryOnline and Offline: Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Including Service-Learning in a Fully Online Women’s Global Health Course

“…Likewise, integrating SL into online classes can also help faculty keep pace with the pressing health issues in their community, strengthen community–academic partnerships, and stay in touch with their own professional practice. In the words of Larry Green (2016), “Just as usable evidence-based practices need to include practice-based evidence, so too must usable pedagogy for practitioners be built on periodic exposure and experience of instructors in contemporary practice” (p. 1). As this pilot project demonstrated, integrating SL into the health promotion online classroom is feasible and may foster transformative moments that build communities both online and offline.…”

Message From the Editor in Chief

“…In this issue of Pedagogy in Health Promotion , I am pleased to include a deeply reflective piece by Lawrence Green (2016) who wrote about his experience as an academic who went back and forth between the world of academia and the fundamental practice of health promotion. Creatively titled “Turnstile Careers Between Academia and Practice,” Green explains the immense value for “periodic immersion” of university faculty to fundamental health promotion practice positions.…”

“…Health promotion practitioners working in the policy arena take on one of the general roles of analyst, advisor, or advocate. What better way to sharpen policy analyses skills than working in “real communities” and in “real time” (Green, 2016, p. 221) on the often controversial health policy issues. If one returns to teaching from the turnstile experience in health promotion policy with even one health policy case study that was experienced live, the mentoring for one’s health promotion students in this area should be more remarkable.…”

“…If one returns to teaching from the turnstile experience in health promotion policy with even one health policy case study that was experienced live, the mentoring for one’s health promotion students in this area should be more remarkable. Green concludes in his robust reflection: “A field of practice calls for teachers with practice experience” (Green, 2016, p. 235).…”