Indian adult education and the post‐colonial legacy

Under the Raj education concentrated on reproducing a small Anglicized elite capable of administering the country. Adult education was minimal and confined to a few urban centres. After Independence Indian adult education was burdened with the project of modernization as India under Nehru and the nationalist movement desperately tried to industrialize the state according to western and soviet models. Despite the relative success of the first Five Year Plan's literacy programme, levels of funding dropped while bureaucracy and falsification of figures increased. Despite Gandhi, Indian education also suffered from elitist discourses inherited from the British Raj which assumed a ‘trickle‐down’ effect and resulted in the over‐balancing of the system towards higher education. Western experts (with the honourable exception of Frank Laubach) have tended to confirm the bias, but even Laubach's agenda raised suspicion. Only with the coming of the NAEP in 1978 was a serious attempt to redress the balance made. Subsequent radical educationists have once again taken up the banner of ‘Gandhi’ in the cause of educating the very poor and the project of modernization has given way to more needs‐based programmes.     

Reducing Children's Implicit Racial Bias Through Exposure to Positive Out‐Group Exemplars

Studies with adults suggest that implicit preferences favoring White versus Black individuals can be reduced through exposure to positive Black exemplars. However, it remains unclear whether developmental differences exist in the capacity for these biases to be changed. This study included 369 children and examined whether their implicit racial bias would be reduced following exposure to positive Black exemplars. Results showed that children's implicit pro‐White bias was reduced following exposure to positive Black exemplars, but only for older children (M_age = ~10 years). Younger children's (M_age = ~7 years) implicit bias was not affected by this intervention. These results suggest developmental differences in the malleability of implicit racial biases and point to possible age differences in intervention effectiveness.     

Academic attitudes toward new media: An exploratory multidisciplinary study

This article looks at the attitudes of UK academics toward new media, utilizing organizational and sociocultural understandings of fields of scholarly enquiry. It focuses on four traditionally distinct disciplines—art and design, computer science, health science, and politics and international relations—representative of the range of approaches in higher education. Agreement was found among respondents across disciplinary communities about what new media represent and how they support their work. Analysis of semantic differential charts identified two dimensions underlying attitudes—“flexibility” and “fitness for scholarly purposes.” Rather than being anchored by epistemological divisions, new media are assessed by practical viewpoints relating to the activity types they allow, and by traditional measures of reliability. In response to questions about other characteristics of their disciplines (such as reputation and audience diversity), distinctions are in evidence, although in some cases these are not traditional ones.     

Evaluation of usage of virtual microscopy for the study of histology in the medical,dental, and veterinary undergraduate programs of a UK University

This article describes the introduction of a virtual microscope (VM) that has allowed preclinical histology teaching to be fashioned to better suit the needs of approximately 900 undergraduate students per year studying medicine, dentistry, or veterinary science at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Features of the VM implementation include: (1) the facility for students and teachers to make annotations on the digital slides; (2) in‐house development of VM‐based quizzes that are used for both formative and summative assessments; (3) archiving of teaching materials generated each year, enabling students to access their personalized learning resources throughout their programs; and (4) retention of light microscopy capability alongside the VM. Student feedback on the VM is particularly positive about its ease of use, the value of the annotation tool, the quizzes, and the accessibility of all components off‐campus. Analysis of login data indicates considerable, although variable, use of the VM by students outside timetabled teaching. The median number of annual logins per student account for every course exceeded the number of timetabled histology classes for that course (1.6–3.5 times). The total number of annual student logins across all cohorts increased from approximately 9,000 in the year 2007–2008 to 22,000 in the year 2010–2011. The implementation of the VM has improved teaching and learning in practical classes within the histology laboratory and facilitated consolidation and revision of material outside the laboratory. Discussion is provided of some novel strategies that capitalize on the benefits of introducing a VM, as well as strategies adopted to overcome some potential challenges. Anat Sci Educ 7: 389–398. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.