Stimulus control of immunization against chronic learned helplessness

Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of multiple (five) sessions of signaled eseapable-shock pretraining in preventing (immunizing against) the shack-escape impairment produced by an equal number of sessions of signaled inescapable shock. In Experiment 1, rats were exposed to 50 pairings per session of a white-noise stimulus with escapable shock during the immunization phase. Subsequently, they were exposed to 50 pairings per session of a different (houselight) stimulus with inescapable shock. Shock-escape performance in a shuttlebox test with constant illumination revealed no evidence of immunization relative to the performance of rats given five prior sessions of light-signaled inescapable shock only. Experiment 2 was identical in all respects to Experiment 1, except that both the escapable- and the inescapable-shock phases for animals in the immunization treatment group involved the same stimulus (houseüght) as a shock signal. Under these circumstances, the prior escapable-shock training significantly reduced the shuttle-box escape deficit engendered by chronic exposure to signaled inescapable shock; performance in the shuttle-box was not reliably different from that of rats exposed to signaled escapable shock alone. These findings suggest that, under chronic conditions, the development of stimulus control using Pavlovian conditioning procedures may serve to modulate the normally prophylactic influence on later shock-escape acquisition of serial exposure to escapable and inescapable shocks.     

The new one-drop rule: challenging the persistence of white supremacy with in-service teachers

ABSTRACT

The one-drop rule refers to the process of being racialized Black when someone contains any amount of Black ancestry, i.e. one drop of Black blood. In this article, I use what I call ‘the new one-drop rule’ to explain how even the smallest presence of white discourse can disrupt racial equity work in schools. Based on a critical race study in a racially desegregated elementary school, I illustrate how one drop of white discourse from even one less racially literate white teacher can cause usually more racially literate white teachers to support white supremacy. I also share how collaborative research utilizing critical race theory (CRT) can help schools build greater racial literacy and resist white discourse. I argue that critical research on race with in-service teachers should not forefront the consciousness-raising of resistant white teachers but rather center the wants, needs, and racial knowledge of racially literate teachers and especially teachers of color.     

Overcoming Veriphobia – Learning to Love Truth Again

Truth has had a hard time in much recent educational and social scientific writing. Veriphobia, the fear of truth, can be witnessed in the work of postmodernists, radical social constructivists, pragmatists, and others. Although it manifests itself in numerous ways, there remain certain frequently appearing symptoms, and these are examined in this paper. It is suggested that the veriphobic stance is inherently self-contradictory. It is also fatal for serious and meaningful research and inquiry. Once veriphobia has been treated, researchers can stop worrying and start loving truth again.     

Contents of Volume 31 2003

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 31 2003     

Students' environmental NOS views,compassion, intent,and action: Impact of place‐based socioscientific issues instruction

Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non‐normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting students' NOS views, compassion for others, and decision making. However, extant investigations appear to neglect fully engaging students through authentic SSI in several ways. These include: (i) providing SSI instruction through classroom approaches that are divorced from students' lived experiences; (ii) demonstrating a contextual misalignment between SSI and NOS (particularly evident in NOS assessments); and (iii) framing decision making and position taking analogously—with the latter being an unreliable indicator of how people truly act. The significance of the convergent parallel mixed‐methods investigation reported here is how it responds to these shortcomings through exploring how place‐based SSI instruction focused on the contentious environmental issue of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone Area impacted sixty secondary students' NOS views, compassion toward those impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent. Moreover, this investigation explores how those perspectives associate with the students' pro‐environmental action of donating to a Yellowstone environmental organization. Results demonstrate that the students' NOS views became significantly more accurate and contextualized, with moderate to large effect, through the place‐based SSI instruction. Through that instruction, the students also exhibited significant gains in their compassion for nature and people impacted by contentious environmental issues and pro‐environmental intent. Further analyses showed that donating students developed and demonstrated significantly more robust and contextualized NOS views, compassion for people and nature impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent than their nondonating counterparts. Pedagogical implications include how place‐based learning in authentic settings could better prepare students to understand NOS, become socioculturally aware, and engage SSI across a variety of contexts.     

Which ingroup,when? Effects of gender,partisanship, veteran status,and evaluator identities on candidate evaluations

Military service is acknowledged as one of many elements voters use to evaluate candidates, but it has primarily been studied as a univariate element of a candidate’s biography. This project experimentally manipulates veteran status, gender, and partisanship as potentially interactive heuristics for evaluation of a hypothetical candidate specifically regarding military issues. We found an almost universal benefit enjoyed by veterans over civilians regardless of whether the candidate was a member of the participant’s partisan ingroup or outgroup. We also found little evidence of a gender penalty, and even a benefit for women candidates who were veterans, though this benefit was restricted to evaluations from Republican women. We also found that Democratic respondents assigned a penalty to outgroup veteran men candidates. We explain these nuanced findings in the context of moderation by gender mis/alignment between participant and candidate. Implications of the study are offered.     

The role of values in pre-service teachers’ intentions for professional engagement

This study investigated inclusion of epistemic value into Richardson and Watt Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) framework to produce a more robust, useful teacher motivation model. We specifically examined pre-service teachers’ social utility value (SUV), personal utility value (PUV) and epistemic value regarding pursuing future professional engagement and development. Using principal axis factoring, we found four main factors: PUV, SUV, epistemic value—future value of knowledge (EVF) and persistence/satisfaction. These factors were then used in a structural equation model (SEM) to predict pre-service teachers’ intentions to pursue future professional engagement. Results provided the following three insights: (a) SUV was the most consistent, positive predictor of professional engagement and predicted all dependent variables; (b) EVF was a newly identified factor and a positive predictor of pre-service teachers’ desire to pursue a leadership position and (c) PUV negatively predicted planned effort and a desire to pursue a leadership position.     

Young Children’s Prosocial Behavior Protects Against Academic Risk in Neighborhoods With Low Socioeconomic Status

Children raised in neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status (SES) are at risk for low academic achievement. Identifying factors that help children from disadvantaged neighborhoods thrive is critical for reducing inequalities. We investigated whether children’s prosocial behavior buffers concurrent and subsequent academic risk in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Bradford, UK. Diverse children (N = 1,175) were followed until age seven, with measurements taken at four times. We used governmental indices of neighborhood-level SES, teacher observations of prosocial behaviors, and direct assessments of academic achievement. Neighborhood SES was positively associated with academic achievement among children with low levels of prosocial behavior, but not among children with high levels of prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior may mitigate academic risk across early childhood.     

Expanding interaction in online courses: integrating critical humanizing pedagogy for learner success

Millions of college students in the U.S. are enrolled in online courses, with the global pandemic resulting in a “pivot to online” for educational and health reasons. African-American college students continue to face barriers to academic success, and this response to Kuo and Belland (in Educ Technol Res Dev 64(4):661–680, 2016) investigates how the concept of “learner interaction” supports success. Finally, this response includes examples from online courses informed by “critical humanizing pedagogy,” in which social interaction is a key driver of learning.