Dissection versus Prosection: A Comparative Assessment of the Course Experiences,Approaches to Learning,and Academic Performance of Non-medical Undergraduate Students in Human Anatomy

Many institutions rely upon prosection-based laboratories as more resource-efficient and time-effective alternatives to traditional cadaver dissection for human anatomy education. To facilitate growing enrollment numbers despite resource limitations, the University of Guelph (a non-medical institution) introduced a modified “stepwise” prosection-based laboratory cohort to supplement a dissection-based course. In this design, all students attended the same lectures, but those in the dissection-based cohort learned by performing regional dissections and students in the prosection-based cohort studied from those dissections. Prosection students thereby witnessed a “slow reveal” of structures throughout the course. This study compared the perceived course experiences, student approaches to learning, and academic performance between the two groups. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to isolate the effect of the laboratory environment on student approaches to learning and academic performance from demographic and situational covariates. Both groups reported positive course experience ratings and high average final grades that were not statistically dissimilar (P > 0.05), increased reliance on deep approaches to learning (P = 0.002), and decreased reliance on surface approaches to learning (P = 0.023). When controlling for covariates, participation in dissection had small but statistically significant positive associations with deep approaches to learning (P = 0.043), performance on laboratory oral assessments (P < 0.001), and average final grades (P = 0.039). Ultimately, both designs promoted meaningful learning and desirable performance outcomes, indicating that both dissection and stepwise prosection have the potential to facilitate high quality human anatomy instruction.     

Do Latino Youth Really Want to Get Pregnant?: Assessing Pregnancy Wantedness

Despite recent declines, Latinas bear a disproportionate burden of teen births. Understanding social, cultural, and demographic factors underlying pregnancy desire among Latino adolescents is needed to design effective teen pregnancy prevention interventions.

A questionnaire was completed by 794 Latino youth including a “pregnancy wantedness scale” (PWS) to assess attitudes toward an early pregnancy and socio-demographic variables. Regression analyses examined the association between these variables and PWS score. PWS scores for all groups were below but near the midpoint, suggesting ambivalence toward an early pregnancy. Being female, older, acculturated, using hormonal contraception, living with parents, and having an educated mother were significantly associated with lower PWS scores, but impacted youth differently depending on their sex and sexual experience. Multi-component Latino teen pregnancy prevention strategies should address behavioral and attitudinal differences based on sex and sexual experience and acknowledge the contribution of social determinants on pregnancy intentions.     

Black Muslim Girls Navigating Multiple Oppositional Binaries Through Literacy and Letter Writing

Writing alongside 12 African American Muslim girls, we led a summer literacy program in an effort to understand how Black Muslim adolescent girls write about their identities and ideas. The 4-week literacy program was designed to engage and support Black Muslim girls, aged 12–17 years old, in reading, writing, and understanding the multiple contexts that inform their worlds. The girls received writing instruction connected to their experiences and identities in an environment that afforded them time to represent their situated worlds of being Black, Muslim, and girls in the United States. In this qualitative inquiry, we investigated the following research question: How would Black Muslim girls write to encourage a future generation to navigate multiple identities? The participants penned letters to a future generation of African American Muslim girls. Drawing upon methods of thematic analysis, we found that themes of sisterhood and unity, shattering misrepresentations, empowerment, strength through faith, knowledge (education), and speaking up and fighting for rights emerged. These themes indicate the messages Muslim girls write are indicative of the multiple identities they navigate and speaks to how they would encourage youth who share their complex racialized-gender religious identities, as well as the need to open the conversation on Black education to center both Black girls and Black Muslim girls.     

‘Building up speed’, ‘trying to break free’, ‘pushing it through the pipe’: using metaphor to explore early career STEM researchers’ grant writing capability

This study demonstrates the use of metaphor analysis in needs assessment for developmental support and shows how it can be used to critically examine assumptions in the literature about the ways emerging researchers conceptualize their career trajectory. We investigated the professional development needs of a group of science, technology, engineering and mathematics early career researchers, to provide them with better grant writing support. Conceptual metaphor theory was used to explore interview data, in part to identify where training design could be modified. In the case of the group under investigation, close metaphoric analysis presented a richly embodied view of our participants’ research activity and suggested ways to provide a stronger focus on strategic and processual aspects of grant writing in such settings.     

An investigation of grapheme parsing and grapheme-phoneme knowledge in two children with dyslexia

The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between children’s knowledge of letter-sound rules (“grapheme-phoneme knowledge”) and their ability to identify separate graphemes (e.g., SH, OI) that comprise words (“grapheme parsing”). We used a single-case study approach with children with phonological dyslexia who were able to read words accurately via whole-word processes (“lexical reading”), but were not able to read using grapheme-phoneme knowledge (“non-lexical reading”). These children were able to correctly parse some graphemes without grapheme-phoneme knowledge for these graphemes. However, they were unable to correctly parse some graphemes for which they had grapheme-phoneme knowledge. This dissociation suggests that children may acquire grapheme-phoneme knowledge and phoneme parsing independently. We discuss the implications of these findings for cognitive models of word reading.     

‘Luring the academic soul’: promoting academic engagement in South African universities

There is widespread pressure that universities should become more responsive and accountable to multiple demands in their local, national and global contexts. Academics grapple to identify appropriate organisational responses to the pressures of state steering and incentive programmes. The empirical focus of the paper is a survey of academics' community engagement activities, mapping their interaction with external partners at five South African universities. The paper addresses a basic question: Who are the academics that engage, and what are their main academic influences? We argue that engagement is more likely to ‘lure the academic soul’ when it is driven by substantive growth in a disciplinary field and enhances reputations. The analysis seeks to identify how disciplinary, institutional and positional attributes are correlated with engaged activities. ‘Luring the academic soul’ through an understanding of the influences on academics' propensity to engage can facilitate more effectively targeted incentives and policies.     

Coordination in gait: Demonstration of a spectral approach

Many important notions in Life Sciences are linked with the idea of cycles, periodicity, fluctuations and transitions. The aim of this paper is to use spectral analysis in a unique way to study and quantify whole body coordination during gait. A participant walked at 3 km/h and ran at 15 km/h on a treadmill for 2 minutes. Position of the approximate center of rotation of the toe, ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, elbow and wrist, heel, PSIS and head were collected (CODAmotion; 100 Hz). Fast Fourier Transform was performed on x-coordinate data of the 1) knee marker; 2) 4 markers attached to the free lower limb (toe, ankle, heel and knee); 3) left and right free lower limbs; 4) whole body (all markers). Gait is described by a largely harmonic and resonant oscillator that operates unilateral free limbs at the stride frequency, and axial regions at the step frequency. Running is described by a more harmonic and resonant oscillating structure than walking, with a 3 times higher Q factor and 47% lower Inharmonicity Index. This method is presented as a way to capture global dynamics of our complex multi-segment system, and presents a novel application of spectral analysis to study coordination.     

Redefining Diversity: Political Responses to the Post-PICS Environment

This article examines the federal and local political response to the Parents Involved decision. At the federal level, developments suggest a reaction to Parents Involved that, since President Obama has taken office, has been largely supportive of voluntary efforts to promote racial diversity. The administration has also been seeking to enforce more traditional race-based civil rights cases. Locally, even though reactions to the decision are as varied as the districts themselves, three broad categories of political responses emerge from our review of post–Parents Involved student assignment policies. They are the adoption of multifactor student assignment plans, the adoption of class-based (e.g., race-neutral) student assignments, and the elimination of efforts to pursue diversity. This article is particularly interested in examining the first two categories of responses. In doing so, we argue that some school districts are pursuing a redefined conceptualization of diversity in a challenging legal and political climate.