Changing Minds With the Story of Adaptation: Strategies for Teaching Young Children About Natural Selection

Research Findings: Educational guidelines recommend a delayed, piecemeal approach to instruction on adaptation by natural selection. This approach is questionable given suggestions that older students’ pervasive misunderstandings about adaptation are rooted in cognitive biases that develop early. In response to this, Kelemen et al. (2014) recently showed that young children can learn a basic yet comprehensive explanation of adaptation by natural selection from a picture storybook intervention. However, this research was conducted in a laboratory-based setting with children from middle and higher socioeconomic backgrounds. To further explore the intervention’s efficacy, this investigation examined whether Kelemen et al.’s (2014, Experiment 2) findings extend to a more diverse sample of children tested in a more naturalistic setting, namely, after-school programs. After a 10-min picture storybook reading that described adaptation within a fictitious but realistic mammal species, 5- to 6- and 7- to 8-year-old children’s learning of adaptation was examined. Results revealed that younger and older children benefitted from the intervention; however, older children displayed pronounced learning and generalization. Practice or Policy: Findings confirm that children are capable of learning complex biological ideas and that comprehensive storybook interventions are simple but powerful teaching tools. Implications for instruction on natural selection are discussed.     

Improving the participation and engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in business education

Most Australian universities have among their goals to increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at their institutions. In the Australian higher education context, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are seriously under-represented, particularly in business education compared to other disciplines. An understanding of why a larger proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students do not choose to study a discipline that provides promising employment opportunities, is fundamental to improving the status quo. This paper reviews the literature to identify key barriers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ participation and engagement in business education. Apart from multiple general barriers to participation in higher education, factors specific to business as a profession and as an academic discipline are also considered. The paper then discusses a number of strategies Australian educational institutions could pursue when seeking to increase participation and engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in business. Drawing on the review, the paper concludes with recommendations for higher education institutional policy to further improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student participation and engagement in business studies.     

Influences affecting the development of students' critical thinking skills

This study estimates the relative and unique effects on changes in critical thinking of three dimensions of students' college experience: curricular exposure, formal classroom and instructional experiences, and out-of-class experiences. Students' classroom/instructional and out-of-class experiences both make positive, statistically significant, and unique contributions to gains in critical thinking above and beyond students' precollege characteristics and level of critical thinking. Theoreticians have long speculated that students' academic and nonacademic experiences jointly influence change, and this study supports that belief. The design and instruments in this study may be of interest to persons involved in assessment or the study of college impact.Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, New Orleans, LA, May 1993.The National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), under Grant No. R117G10037. The opinions herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OERI, and no official endorsement should be inferred.     

A comparison of student performance following instruction by interactive videodisc versus conventional laboratory

This experimental study compared an interactive computer/videodisc learning approach to the conventional laboratory approach for learning biology concepts and science process skills. Students at a large midwestern university were randomly assigned to instruction on respiration and biogeography by interactive videodisc or a traditional laboratory investigation teaching the same concepts. The videodisc delivery system consisted of a TRS-80 Model III microcomputer interfaced to a Pioneer laser disc player and a color TV monitor. Results show no statistically significant differences between the two approaches for student grades on laboratory quizzes, laboratory reports, and the laboratory final exam. However, the interactive videodisc group required approximately one-half the classroom time used by the conventional laboratory group. The two approaches appear equivalent when evaluated by traditional learning outcomes, but the interactive videodisc strategy was significantly more time efficient than a traditional laboratory approach.     

The effects of tactile stimulation on imprinting in ducklings after the sensitive period

Four-day-old ducklings received visual-plus-tactile exposure to one novel object and visual-only exposure to a different novel object. In a subsequent test, strong suppression of ongoing distress vocalization was exerted only by the object to which visual-plus-tactile exposure had been given. With these results, the experimental conditions under which physical contact is known to facilitate the initiation of imprinting are extended to include subjects that are past the sensitive period.     

Effects of microcomputer-administered diagnostic testing on immediate and continuing science achievement and attitudes

This investigation had three purposes: (1) to document any immediate and continuing benefits associated with the use of microcomputer-administered testing; (2) to determine what type of student might benefit most from microcomputer-administered diagnostic testing; and (3) to document the feasibility of microcomputer-administered diagnostic testing. The subjects of the study were enrolled in a biology course based on the BSCS Blue text. A random half of the students received behaviorally-stated performance objectives, while the remaining half received behaviorally-stated performance objectives in conjunction with microcomputer-administered diagnostic testing. The results of this study indicate that microcomputer-administered diagnostic testing can positively influence the immediate, but not the continuing, achievement of students in science. In addition, neither student aptitude nor achievement motivation level were found to interact with treatment or influence achievement. Affective data indicate that students react favorably to the use of objectives, computers, and diagnostic testing. Cost summary data reveal that when the expense of administering diagnostic testing by microcomputer is prorated over a five-year period, the cost of a diagnostic test is reduced to approximately three cents.     

GENDER BIAS AND THE COLLEGE PREDICTIONS OF THE SATS: A Cry of Despair

This study reviews and extends the considerableliterature demonstrating that the various College Boardexaminations (most importantly the Scholastic AptitudeTests) make a small underprediction of women's college grades relative to those of men in allfields except engineering. This finding persists evenwhen corrections are made for differences in the fieldsthat women and men study and for sample selection bias. Because of this underprediction, womenmost probably are underrepresented relative to theirmerit in freshman classes and scholarship competitionsat selective public universities. The differences in predicted grades are small, but account foran underrepresentation of women by at least 5% of thefreshman classes of the University of California atBerkeley (200 to 300 a year) in the late 1980s. Various solutions to this underprediction by the SATsand the dilemmas they pose for public universities suchas Berkeley are explored.     

Childhood homelessness,resilience, and adolescent mental health: A prospective,person-centered approach

School districts and other service providers are increasingly aware of the substantial mental health needs of students experiencing family homelessness. Past findings are mixed regarding whether homelessness conveys unique risk beyond the risks associated with extreme poverty. With prospective longitudinal data on homelessness experiences across childhood, we utilized latent profile analysis as a person-centered approach to conceptualizing mental health outcomes in adolescence for 3,778 youth. We considered literal family homelessness as well as families living doubled-up, and we employed propensity score matching to identify a comparison group of nonhomeless students balanced across a range of covariates to address systematic bias. Results indicated that students who experienced literal homelessness during childhood were significantly less likely to demonstrate profiles of resilience in mental health functioning. We considered our approach and findings in light of challenges and opportunities particularly relevant to the school context.     

REASON AND CULTURE IN COSMOPOLITAN EDUCATION

In this essay, Leonard Waks reviews three recent books on cosmopolitan education: Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; Neil Burtonwood's Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism, and Schools: Isaiah Berlin and Education; and Thomas Popkewitz's Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science, Education and Making Society by Making the Child. Each of the three books challenges cosmopolitan universalism. Appiah argues that universal principles do not help us understand how members of distinct cultural groups can flourish in close proximity. Burtonwood adds that the expression of these principles in conflict situations can offend and humiliate illiberal groups and render them culturally reactive, inventing restrictive ideals of cultural “purity” that block cosmopolitan harmony. Popkewitz argues that the cosmopolitan premise of enlightenment for all imposes civilizing disciplines on those the dominant groups perceive as “others,” disciplines that render them abject. Taken together, the three books provide important planks in a comprehensive critique of cosmopolitan universalism as a philosophy of education.