History of Science - With Labs

Science &; Education - We describe here an interdisciplinary lab science course for non-majors using the history of science as a curricular guide. Our experience with diverse instructors...     

Biological significance attenuates overshadowing, relative validity, and degraded contingency effects

Miller and Matute (1996) showed that blocking is attenuated when the blocked conditioned stimulus (CS) is “biologically significant” (i.e., when the CS has the potential to elicit vigorous responding of any kind). To the extent that blocking is representative of cue competition, this finding suggests that biological significance protects CSs against cue competition effects in general. In the present experiments, we tested this possibility by examining the influence of biological significance of CSs on other examples of cue competition, namely, overshadowing, the relative stimulus validity effect, and the degraded contingency effect in rats. In Experiment 1, we found that intense auditory stimuli induced transient unconditioned lick suppression, thereby indicating that intense sounds were of high inherent biological significance. In Experiment 2A, we found that cues with high inherent biological significance were protected from overshadowing. In Experiment 2B, this finding was extended to cues with high acquired biological significance, which was obtained through prior pairings with a reinforcer of the valence opposite to that used in the overshadowing treatment. In Experiments 3 and 4, we found that cues with high inherent biological significance attenuated the relative validity effect and the degraded contingency effect, respectively. These results lend support to the view that biological significance (inherent and acquired) protects stimuli from cue competition effects, a finding that is problematic for many contemporary theories of learning.     

Teaching boys: towards a theory of gender-relevant pedagogy

This article calls attention to the social and educational challenges facing boys and men around the world. Next, it highlights how the outcomes for males of African descent across the Americas, in particular the USA, are especially troubling. Moreover, a critique is presented about the recruitment campaigns that see increasing the number of Black male teachers as an elixir for improving the crisis facing Black boys. Then, the article focuses on the intersection of race and gender and reframes the discussion around improving the deleterious school outcomes facing Black boys by shifting the conversation to exploring how educators' socialised views around gender influence the ways in which they teach boys. Finally, the article provides practical applications for designing a curriculum that is gender relevant.     

Policing and Teaching: The Positioning of Black Male Teachers as Agents in the Universal Carceral Apparatus

Given the challenging in- and out-of-school outcomes that some boys and young men of color exhibit, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have advocated for increasing the number of Black male teachers. This strategy is predicated on the belief that having same-race and same-gender teachers can improve student learning. Drawing on Shedd’s Universal Carceral Apparatus and Brown’s Pedagogical Kind, this study used the qualitative method, specifically phenomenology, to explore the school-based experiences of 27 Black male teachers across 14 schools in one urban school district. Participants perceived that their peers and school administrators positioned them to serve primarily as disciplinarians first and teachers second. The Black male teachers described how their colleagues expected them to redirect student misbehavior. They rejected the idea that they were magically constructed or that students who were deemed as misbehaving responded to the teachers’ redirection simply because they were Black men. Instead, participants described how they attended to students’ social and emotional development, thereby influencing their capacity to engage and manage perceived misbehavior. Implications for future research are presented at the conclusion of the study.