The learned function of food-deprivation cues: A role for conditioned modulation

Rats trained in one context to use stimuli arising from food deprivation as discriminative signals for shock were tested in other contexts to assess the basis of conditioned responding (i.e., freezing or behavioral immobility). In Experiment 1, discriminative control by 24-h food-deprivation cues failed to promote transfer responding in a test context that had no association with shock. This indicated that food deprivation cues had little direct excitatory power. However, transfer of behavioral control by 24-h food-deprivation cues was obtained in a context paired with shock only when the rats were 19 h water deprived. This finding agrees with the idea that food-deprivation cues become conditioned modulators of the capacity of external stimuli to activate their association with an unconditioned stimulus. In Experiment 2, rats trained to use 24-h food-deprivation cues as signals for shock exhibited significantly greater transfer performance when the transfer context had undergone partial extinction relative to when the transfer context had undergone only simple excitatory training. This finding with deprivation cues and transfer contexts (1) paralleled earlier results obtained with discrete (auditory and visual) conditioned modulators and transfer targets, and (2) posed difficulties for associative summation and generalization interpretations of transfer performance.     

Initial Academic Momentum and Student Success: Comparing 4- and 2-Year Students

ABSTRACT

Today, many full-time students spend one, two, or more additional years completing a 2-year associate or 4-year bachelor degree. In order to reduce this time frame, many institutions are utilizing a 15 to Finish campaign to encourage full-time students to enroll in 15 credits each semester. The first purpose of this study was to examine if there is a relationship between the number of credit hours enrolled in the first semester and the number of credits earned at the end of the first year. Concurrently, it examined how a student’s initial academic momentum (i.e., the number of credit hours earned in the first year) relates to student persistence and degree completion. The second purpose was to determine if there was a relationship between a student’s socioeconomic status and the number of credit hours enrolled in the first semester—and if it is feasible for low-income students, who primarily attend community colleges, to afford additional credit hours. The results showed that more students who earned 30 credit hours in the first academic year persisted to the second year and earned a degree than students who did not earn 30 credit hours. Also, the results showed that the majority of low-income community college students had enough Federal Pell Grant funds to pay for the additional tuition cost. Given these results, practical and policy implications are discussed.     

From Córdoba to Washington: WTO/GATS and Latin American Education

This article examines the educational dimension of the General Agreement on Trade in Services of the World Trade Organisation (WTO/GATS), with a special focus on its potential implications for the Latin American region. This ambitious strategy to transform education into a tradable commodity in a global economy cannot be isolated from other international treaties and from the neoliberal policies that have impacted Latin American societies for the last two decades. In this regard, we argue that the WTO/GATS educational agenda has the potential to further the project of privatisation to a higher level, opening the door for international competition. In a continental political economy characterised by large asymmetries in educational export markets and in interactive technologies, such competition will not take place on an even playing field, as the USA is better positioned than most countries in the region to take advantage of a ‘free educational market’. If the proposed WTO/GATS goes ahead in such a context, Latin American countries can be adversely affected in terms of their sovereignty on cultural policy, the quality and accessibility of their public education systems, the training of scientists and researchers oriented towards national development, and the contribution of their education systems to the common good and to the equalisation of opportunities in largely unequal societies. We recommend that Latin American governments do not commit themselves to the educational agenda of the WTO/GATS before holding a wide process of public participation, information and reflection in national parliaments and in civil society.     

Supporting Teachers in Scottish Schools: Has the Money Been Well Spent?

Traditionally, education in Scotland has been viewed as a national service that is locally administered. This research casts new light on that relationship between the Scottish Executive and local authorities by drawing on evidence from an evaluation of the implementation of the additional support staff element of the Teachers’ Agreement which determined not only teachers’ pay structure but also established the professional conditions under which they would work. The paper identifies how local authorities and schools spent the grant aid on staff and equipment, how many additional support staff were appointed, and what impact they were reported to be having on teaching and learning. Information was gathered from a postal survey of all 32 Scottish local authorities and a random sample of 267 schools, and also from interviews held in six case study schools. The findings show that: all the grant aid could not be accounted for, the target number of support staff was not achieved, and their deployment and impact varied across local authorities and schools. By way of conclusion it poses the question: ‘Was the money well spent?’     

Design Issues in a Cross‐institutional Collaboration on a Distance Education Course

Collaborative learning has been gaining momentum as a promising pedagogy in higher education. Research on student collaboration is increasing. However, one arena is often overlooked—faculty collaboration. In this article, a cross‐institutional faculty collaboration is presented. The context is faculty collaboration on the design of an undergraduate engineering course. Specifically, this paper examines design issues encountered in the faculty collaborations associated with developing, delivering, and redesigning a senior‐level engineering design course that was taught simultaneously at two universities. This course was taught in state‐of‐the‐art distance learning classrooms. Both within class and outside class, participating students and faculty made use of a Web‐based environment that supported a variety of synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The course itself focused on team design projects and provided instruction on the engineering design process, in various specific skills needed for the students’ projects, and on how to function effectively as part of a geographically distributed engineering design team. The participating faculty members represented different backgrounds, academic disciplines, and academic cultures. Issues related to collaborations on development, delivery, and redesign are elaborated. Based on the lessons learned, suggestions for future cross‐institutional faculty collaboration in course development are provided.