Effects of signaled reward in instrumental conditioning: Enhanced learning on DRL and DRH schedules of reinforcement

The effects of signaled reward were examined using DRL and DRH schedules of reinforcement. In each case, one group of rats received a brief cue between the reinforced response and the reward, and a second group received brief cues at random times. With the DRL schedule (Experiment 1), signaled reward decreased response rate, increased response efficiency (number of responses per reinforcer), and increased resistence to satiation relative to the control group. With the DRH schedule (Experiment 2), signaled reward increased response rate, efficiency, and resistance to satiation. These results refute an overshadowing explanation of the effects of signaled reward and suggest that food-correlated cues enhance learning of the reinforcement contingencies.     

S(he) loves me,s(he) loves me not: Predictors of relational information‐seeking in courtship and beyond

This study extends Baxter and Wilmot's (1984) work on the secret tests couples use to acquire information about the state of their relationships. No gender differences were found in levels of testing or in the use of specific tests in our sample of 226 romantically‐involved individuals, who reported on 1025 instances of testing. The effects of commitment, perceptions of partner's commitment, courtship progress, and jealousy on testing were also examined. Overall amount of testing was inversely correlated with courtship progress, suggesting that such tests characterize the earliest stages of courtship, and positively correlated with jealousy. In addition, females who perceived that their partners were less committed to their relationships were slightly more likely to engage in relational information‐seeking. Reliance upon specific tests was associated with several of the relationship measures. For instance, Endurance tests were best predicted by perceptions of high partner commitment; Separation tests were used when commitment by self and partner was low, when the relationship had not advanced much, and when the information‐seeker was jealous; and use of Triangle tests was associated with jealousy. Several significant contingencies were found among dimensions of the testing situation. The type of test used was associated with what respondents learned about their partners' commitment, with the probability of engaging in state‐of‐the relationship talks, and with the deliberate versus accidental nature of the testing episode. It was also found that deliberate tests were more likely than accidental ones to lead to feelings that the future course of the relationship was predictable and to open communication about the relationship. Finally, tentative support was found for a confirmatory bias in testing in which testers set themselves up to learn that their partners value the relationship.     

Impact and educational outcomes of a small group self‐directed teaching strategy in a clinical neuroscience curriculum

The complexity of the material being taught in clinical neuroscience within the medical school curriculum requires creative pedagogies to teach medical students effectively. Many clinical teaching strategies have been developed and are well described to address these challenges. However, only a few have been evaluated to determine their impact on the performance of students studying clinical neuroscience. Interactive, 2‐hour, self‐directed small‐group interactive clinical case‐based learning sessions were conducted weekly for 4 weeks to integrate concepts learned in the corresponding didactic lectures. Students in the small groups analyzed cases of patients suffering from neurological disease that were based on eight learning objectives that allowed them to evaluate neuroanatomical data and clinical findings before presenting their case analysis to the larger group. Students’ performances on the formative quizzes and summative tests were compared to those of first‐year medical students in the previous year for whom the self‐directed, small‐group interactive clinical sessions were not available. There was a significant improvement in the summative performance of first‐year medical students with self‐directed clinical case learning in the second year (Y2) of teaching clinical neuroscience (P < 0.05) when compared with first‐year students in the first year (Y1) for whom the self‐directed learning approach was not available. Student performance in the formative assessments between Y1 and Y2 was not significantly different (P = 0.803). A target of ≥70% student scoring above 80% in the final summative examination was met. The current study revealed evidence for the impact and educational outcomes of a self‐directed, clinical teaching strategy in a clinical neuroscience curriculum for first‐year medical students. Anat Sci Educ 11: 478–487. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

RECONSTRUCTING DEWEYAN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION FOR A GLOBALIZING WORLD

As democratic citizenship education gains importance worldwide, one wonders whether common civic education practices in the United States, such as mock elections, are adequate models for other countries, or whether they fall short of realizing the goal of promoting democracy in different regions and cultures. Despite various controversies, one fundamental question remains: How should we teach democracy? Should we teach it as a system of government or as a way of life? Jessica Ching‐Sze Wang finds inspiration in Dewey's life and works. She draws on Dewey's experience during the First World War and his insights into the connection between democracy and education to reconstruct a culturally and morally robust form of democratic education, as opposed to the politically dominated one currently being practiced. Wang concludes that Deweyan democratic education thus reconstructed can help us better realize democracy as a way of life for our globalizing world.     

Helping Eastern students to master Western critical thinking

It is possible that some of the problems that confront Eastern learners when they are asked to engage in critical thinking come from the misleading association of the title with criticising negatively and even with disagreeing. In some other educational situations, careful choice of first language titles for concepts so that they do not introduce difficulties for learners has proved fruitful in easing acquaintance with a new concept. Since the definitions of critical thinking emphasise the central role of reasoning in this process and make no explicit mention of disagreement or fault finding, there seems potential in a pedagogical approach to the development of the ability for critical thinking which focuses on identifying, considering and presenting reasons—and perhaps renaming the process, even if only temporarily, accordingly. Such an approach has been devised, in response to the difficulties that Taiwanese students have met when engaging with critical thinking. It has been piloted on one class in an online discussion forum in English as a Foreign Language. The outcomes of this pilot are encouraging and are presented at this stage for that reason.     

Defining curriculum policy through slogans

This article explores the upper secondary (or post‐16) school market. The study on which it is based, funded by the Swedish Research Council, was entitled ‘Upper‐secondary education as a market’. Empirical data include official statistics, policy documents, school publications, company reports and school visits. Printed and other news media were also scrutinised to identify how the marketisation of education is represented in public discourse. A number of themes emerged from the study which included mapping the expansion of the school market, chains of ownership and influence, marketing strategies, choice and the school market and issues raised in the media. These imply that there is a new market discourse which represents a clear break with previous social democratic education policies primarily aimed at enhancing citizenship and wider democratic values within an inclusive public school. However, critiques have also emerged including a call for strengthened regulations of and control over independent schools and concern about an education market equated more with shares and profits rather than pedagogy and student citizenship.     

Developing an audiovisual notebook as a self‐learning tool in histology: Perceptions of teachers and students

Videos can be used as didactic tools for self‐learning under several circumstances, including those cases in which students are responsible for the development of this resource as an audiovisual notebook. We compared students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the main features that an audiovisual notebook should include. Four questionnaires with items about information, images, text and music, and filmmaking were used to investigate students' (n = 115) and teachers' perceptions (n = 28) regarding the development of a video focused on a histological technique. The results show that both students and teachers significantly prioritize informative components, images and filmmaking more than text and music. The scores were significantly higher for teachers than for students for all four components analyzed. The highest scores were given to items related to practical and medically oriented elements, and the lowest values were given to theoretical and complementary elements. For most items, there were no differences between genders. A strong positive correlation was found between the scores given to each item by teachers and students. These results show that both students' and teachers' perceptions tend to coincide for most items, and suggest that audiovisual notebooks developed by students would emphasize the same items as those perceived by teachers to be the most relevant. Further, these findings suggest that the use of video as an audiovisual learning notebook would not only preserve the curricular objectives but would also offer the advantages of self‐learning processes. Anat Sci Educ 7: 209–218. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

PGDnet: a new problem‐solving virtual learning environment

The purpose of this paper was to provide information about the virtual learning environment known as PGDnet (the Spanish acronym for Plataforma de Gestión Docente or Educational Management Platform in English), which was developed by the innovative education group at the Technical University of Madrid known as “Nuevas metodologías docentes en ingeniería mecánica y fabricación” (New Teaching Methodologies in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing). This tool has been created on an ad hoc basis to cover specific teaching requirements for some engineering courses, which would be difficult to implement on general educational platforms such as Moodle or Blackboard. PGDnet was essentially created as an online engineering problem‐solving tool. These exercises are checked and corrected automatically, providing students with their final and partial scores, and with the solutions to these various sections. A stochastic programming model selects different exercises each time that an activity is performed and attaches the tables, graphs, figures and annexes that are needed for their resolution in each case. As is common with these types of tools, PGDnet provides effective management of publication and delivery dates for the proposed work, and contains records and databases, which allow the stored information to be processed. Its main features include ease of use, reliability and great versatility as a specific tool in the area of technical university education.     

Interests in School Subjects and Vocational Preference 1

Sjöberg, L. & Drottz, B.‐M. 1983. Interests in School Subject and Vocational Preference. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 27, 165‐182. A group of Swedish high school students rated their interests in school subject areas. Interests were related to perceived effort, ability as regards grades and vocational preferences as well as to perceived job market prospects in the vocations. It was found that interests could be well accounted for by the logical appeal of the subject areas and, to some extent, by their practical value. Interests were related to perceived ability and to perceived effort in structural model analyses applied to intercorrelations. Vocational preferences were only weakly related to interests in subject areas, though most students stated that their choices were based on ‘interest’. Preferences among vocations were correlated especially with individual job market prospects.