Effect of foster care on young children's language learning

This report examines 174 young children's language outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized trial of foster placement after institutional care. Age of foster placement was highly correlated with language outcomes. Placement by 15 months led to similar expressive and receptive language test scores as typical age peers at 30 and 42 months. Placement from 15 to 24 months also led to dramatic language improvement. In contrast, children placed after 24 months had the same severe language delays as children in institutional care. Language samples at 42 months confirmed that placement after 24 months led to lower expressive skill.     

V. THE NEUROBIOLOGICAL TOLL OF EARLY HUMAN DEPRIVATION

Children raised in institutions frequently suffer from a variety of behavioral, emotional, and neuropsychological sequelae, including deficits in attention, executive functions, disorders of attachment, and in some cases a syndrome that mimics autism. The extent and severity of these disorders appear to be mediated, in part, by the age at which the child entered and, in some cases, left the institution. Here we review the neurobiological literature on early institutionalization that may account for the psychological and neurological sequelae discussed in other chapters in this volume.     

Measuring the Diversity Inclusivity of College Courses

Most studies of curricular diversity have focused on the effects of participation in diversity courses on student outcomes. Though the results have been positive, these studies have used limited measures of curricular diversity and there is a great need for a complimentary body of research demonstrating what faculty and what types of courses are more likely to include diversity. This study relies on 12 diversity inclusivity items derived from a comprehensive model of how diversity is included into a course to investigate how much diversity is being included in collegiate courses and what predicts diversity inclusivity, as measured by two scales: diverse grounding and inclusive learning. The results, based on 7,101 responses from faculty participating in the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, suggest that most faculty are including diversity in their courses in some way, but that women and faculty of color tend to include diversity to a greater extent than their colleagues. Also, courses taught in the soft fields are more likely to be inclusive of diversity.     

Gender Gaps in Collegiate Teaching Style: Variations by Course Characteristics

Using data from over 9,000 faculty members that participated in the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), this study examined the moderating role a range of course characteristics played on the effects of gender on the percentage of class time spent on various activities, a measure of teaching style. Results revealed gender differences, but that the gaps between men and women in lecturing and active classroom practices varied by disciplinary area, course level, and the number of times a course had been taught by the same instructor. The results confirm that gender effects depend on context, which implies that efforts to improve teaching and learning must also adapt to the instructional context.     

How medical practice evolves: Learning to treat failing hearts with an implantable device

In this article we propose that medical practice evolves as a result of progress along three different pathways: improvement in the ability to develop effective medical technologies, learning in medical practice, and advances in biomedical scientific understanding of disease. The relative importance of these three pathways varies from case to case, and often they interact strongly. More specifically, we argue here that in cases of therapeutic innovation where a new medical technology is involved the advance in medical practice is driven largely by the ability to develop and use effective medical artifacts and the interactive sequence among these interdependent pathways often starts with what is learned in practice and not in science. While we state this argument in general, we develop it in detail in a longitudinal and contextual case study of the emergence and evolution of a treatment for advanced heart failure based on an implantable device, the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD). Our findings show that an essential aspect of the evolution of the LVAD therapy is collective and cumulative learning that requires experience that only can be gained through the actual use of LVADs. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications that follow from our understanding of how medical practice evolves for research on the evolution of medical practices and new medical technologies, and policies about the evaluation of rapidly moving medical practices and clinical research involved in their advancement.     

Design and environmental technologies: Does ‘green-matching’ actually help?

This paper investigates whether a green kind of design helps firms increase their capabilities for inventing in the environmental domain and whether it does so more than ‘standard’ design. It also investigates whether the effect of ‘green-matching’ between new design and technologies is conditional on firms’ innovative capabilities, as reflected by their R&D expenditure. We address these research questions with respect to the world's top R&D investors, looking at their intellectual property rights at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and proposing an original textual identification of green designs and trademarks. We find that green design increases environmental inventions by top R&D investors, and to a greater extent than non-environmental ones. Standard design also stimulates environmental inventions, but to a lesser extent than green design. The ‘green-matching’ actually helps, but internal innovative capabilities are required to make it effective: a green-tech ‘prize’ emerges from green design, but only once a minimum threshold of R&D expenditure has been reached.     

Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...