Teachers' perceptions of the effects of a scientific literary course on subsequent learning in biology

Five teachers were interviewed as to their perceptions of the effect of an intervention to teach scientific literacy on learning in subsequent biology courses. The sample consisted of 450 students who had a literacy course in ninth grade and had completed tenth-grade biology. At the end of the academic year the biology teachers were interviewed and asked to compare the biology students who had the literacy course to students they had taught in earlier years. The biology teachers concluded that the literacy course did have an effect on students' subsequent ability to learn biology. The strength of the effect varied according to level of biology. Students had a better understanding of the nature of science and better laboratory and process skills. They were also better at analyzing data. The advanced and intermediate biology students were more creative, more likely to take risks, and engage in hypothetical thinking than other groups of students that the teachers had taught. Although the purpose of the literacy course was to teach literacy skills the advanced students retained a substantial amount of content material that was applicable to biology.     

OFSTED, Inspection and the Betrayal of Democracy

Drawing briefly on the quite different discourses of schooling-as-performance and education-as-exploration, the paper opens by exploring some of the consequences of the distinction between schooling and education for any system of school inspection. The second section of the paper examines the conceptual and practical inadequacy of 'accountability' as an agent of reciprocal public engagement in a participatory democracy. In its stead a more robust, more open notion of 'reciprocal responsibility' is offered as a more fitting means of professional and communal renewal. Section III focuses on the relationship between means and ends that is at once central to democracy and so conspicuously absent from current inspection arrangements. The short conclusion suggests we need a radical break from OFSTED if we wish to approximate more closely to our democratic aspirations.     

Who mentors undergraduate student researchers? An analysis of faculty involvement at a four-year university

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigated a profile of faculty who mentor undergraduate researchers at a four-year Hispanic-serving, public research university. Six variables were investigated: ethnicity, gender, age, tenure status, teaching evaluations, and research productivity. Data were compiled from institutional databases. Findings showed a greater percentage of tenured faculty mentoring undergraduate researchers while the percent of minority UR faculty mentors was consistent with institutional percentages. Additionally, findings included a higher percentage of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Undergraduate Research (UR) underrepresented minority faculty mentors compared to STEM Institution (INST) underrepresented minority faculty. For research productivity, UR faculty mentor funding comprised 28.0% of all external grant awards and 36.0% of all external funding during the sampling period. The majority funding for INST and UR faculty were found to be in the STEM disciplines. These findings provide evidence of potential predictors to describe UR faculty mentor profiles and can be considered important information for determining future educational policies and practices.     

German children's comprehension of word order and case marking in causative sentences

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with both cues supporting each other—the prototypical form. Five-year-olds were able to use word order by itself but not case markers. Only 7-year-olds behaved like adults by relying on case markers over word order when the two cues conflicted. These findings suggest that prototypical instances of linguistic constructions with redundant grammatical marking play a special role in early acquisition, and only later do children isolate and weigh individual grammatical cues appropriately.     

清代河州穆斯林乡约制度考述

清代河州穆斯林乡约制度在西北穆斯林社会中具有非常典型的代表性,但穆斯林乡约制并非始于河州。清代河州乡约除承担内地乡约所承担的职能外,还承担着一些独具宗教和民族特色的职能。清代河州乡约制度的推行对于废除明代以来河州地区实行的世袭里长制有着积极的意义,对于建立一个兼容宗教、行政为一体的管理体系亦有着重要的意义。它是清政府直接管理西北穆斯林社会的成功尝试。     

试论体育课中的隐性课程

体育课是由显性课程和隐性课程组成的。显性课程旨在发展学生身体素质、提高其基本技术、技能，而隐性课程则对学生的品质、习惯、态度等非智力因素的形成有重要作用。在应试教育向素质教育转变的今天，挖掘隐含在体育课中的德育和美育等其他教育因素，有利于培养学生具有健康的心理和良好的社会适应能力，同时有助于显性课程目标的实现。     

Mandatory criteria for the application of variability-based parameters of fluid responsiveness: a prospective study in different groups of ICU patients

Background and objective

Stroke volume variation (SVV) has high sensitivity and specificity in predicting fluid responsiveness. However, sinus rhythm (SR) and controlled mechanical ventilation (CV) are mandatory for their application. Several studies suggest a limited applicability of SVV in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. We hypothesized that the applicability of SVV might be different over time and within certain subgroups of ICU patients. Therefore, we analysed the prevalence of SR and CV in ICU patients during the first 24 h of PiCCO-monitoring (primary endpoint) and during the total ICU stay. We also investigated the applicability of SVV in the subgroups of patients with sepsis, cirrhosis, and acute pancreatitis.

Methods

The prevalence of SR and CV was documented immediately before 1241 thermodilution measurements in 88 patients.Results: In all measurements, SVV was applicable in about 24%. However, the applicability of SVV was time-dependent: the prevalence of both SR and CV was higher during the first 24 h compared to measurements thereafter (36.1% vs. 21.9%; P<0.001). Within different subgroups, the applicability during the first 24 h of monitoring ranged between 0% in acute pancreatitis, 25.5% in liver failure, and 48.9% in patients without pancreatitis, liver failure, pneumonia or sepsis.

Conclusions

The applicability of SVV in a predominantly medical ICU is only about 25%–35%. The prevalence of both mandatory criteria decreases over time during the ICU stay. Furthermore, the applicability is particularly low in patients with acute pancreatitis and liver failure.

     

Conditioning copulatory behavior to an artificial object: Efficacy of stimulus fading

Copulatory behavior rarely occurs in response to an arbitrary inanimate object. However, such behavior can provide important information about the stimulus control of copulatory behavior. In the present study, male Japanese quail were administered 15–20 conditioning trials that included exposure to an inanimate object and an opportunity to copulate with a live female quail. For some subjects, the stimulus object was always entirely covered with terrycloth. For other birds, the stimulus object contained a taxidermically prepared head and neck of a quail hen. Fading consisted of gradually covering up the neck and then the head portions of the stimulus object over successive trials. After conditioning, all subjects were tested with the entirely covered object. The fading procedure facilitated the conditioning of copulatory behavior to the entirely artificial object. In subjects that received the fading procedure, learning did not depend on pairings of the stimulus object with copulatory opportunity. The results are discussed with respect to an associative mediation mechanism.