Autoshaping in the rat: Interposing delays between responses and food

Rats were exposed to an autoshaping procedure in which each lever-contact or leverpress delayed trial offset and, hence, food delivery. Yoked subjects received identical trial-food pairings as did delay subjects. This procedure was studied at two delay values (2.5 and 10.0 sec) in experimentally naive rats and those which had previously received 25 sessions of autoshaping. The delay procedure retarded the acquisition of autoshaped responding in naive subjects and reduced responding for experienced subjects. Yoked subjects responded at higher levels than did delay subjects throughout training.     

Systems View of School Climate: a Theoretical Framework for Research

School climate has been widely examined through both empirical and theoretical means. However, there is little conceptual consensus underlying the landscape of this literature, offering inconsistent guidance for research examining this important construct. In order to best assist the efforts of developing causal models that describe how school climate functions, we propose the Systems View of School Climate (SVSC). This theoretical framework was formed by deconstructing prior models and empirical research on school climate into themes and highlighting their implicit assumptions. Using the SVSC to synthesize this existing literature, school climate is defined as the affective and cognitive perceptions regarding social interactions, relationships, values, and beliefs held by students, teachers, administrators, and staff within a school. School climate is situated within Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner 1989) to guide future research in this domain and help specify levels of research or analysis, thereby providing utility as a theoretical framework for future causal models. The SVSC provides a roadmap for research by demarcating school climate from related constructs, suggesting related contextual and structural constructs, and delineating proximal and distal systems which may shape the nature of school climate.     

Trends in child maltreatment literature

INTRODUCTION: To identify possible gaps in the child maltreatment literature the present study examined the development of the child maltreatment literature over a 22-year period, including temporal trends for child maltreatment types, the characteristics of the research participants, and sources of participant recruitment. METHOD: Child maltreatment articles (N=2090) published from 1977 to 1998 (inclusive) in six specialty journals were coded on type of article, type of child maltreatment, gender and parental status of participants, abuse role of participants, and recruitment source of participants. RESULTS: Across the period studied the annual percentage of quantitative articles (articles with inferential statistics) increased, whereas the annual percentage of theoretical articles decreased. The annual percentage of articles examining child physical abuse (CPA) decreased, whereas the annual percentage of articles examining child sexual abuse (CSA) increased. The percentages of articles examining child neglect (CN) or child emotional abuse (CEA) remained consistently low. Distinguishing child maltreatment types in research articles increased. Males were underrepresented in CPA perpetration and CPA adult victimization articles, but adequately represented in CSA perpetration and CPA child victimization articles. Females were adequately represented in CPA perpetration and CSA child and adult victimization articles. Recruitment from universities and outpatient mental health facilities increased; recruitment from medical settings decreased. CONCLUSIONS: CN and CEA literatures need to be developed first by theoretical, then by quantitative works. In addition, the publication of more research on male subjects for CPA perpetration and adult CPA victimization is needed.     

THE INFLUENCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION ON THE ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS OF PHYSIOTHERAPY

The majority of physiotherapists are trained in hospital‐based schools outside the mainstream of further and higher education. It has been assumed that professional standards of competence are maintained through central control of the syllabus, nationally set examinations and centrally appointed examiners.

During the last decade, a small number of schools have transferred to polytechnics and begun to develop internally examined courses. It is essential that students who are successful in these examinations are automatically eligible for Membership of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

This paper describes the planning of an internally examined course which is acceptable to the professional bodies as well as to the Sheffield City Polytechnic. It explores some of the conflicts which have arisen concerning the extent to which control of the profession should extend to control of the curriculum in any and every institution. It concludes that the Chartered Society's need to control right of entry to the profession and to monitor standards of competence is reconcilable with lecturers’ desire to design a course and appropriate methods of assessment which reflect their overall rationale.     

Learning style preferences of external degree students

Thirty learning style preferences are profiled for a group of adult male students enrolled in an external degree program. The Canfield Learning Style Inventory was used to assess the adult students' learning styles. These external degree students had eleven significantly different learning preferences compared to Canfield's norm group. Correlations between learning styles and traditional learning environments also were examined. Implications of the results, strengths and limitations in the research are discussed.     

Quantitative skills as a graduate learning outcome: exploring students’ evaluative expertise

In the biosciences, quantitative skills are an essential graduate learning outcome. Efforts to evidence student attainment at the whole of degree programme level are rare and making sense of such data is complex. We draw on assessment theories from Sadler (evaluative expertise) and Boud (sustainable assessment) to interpret final-year bioscience students’ responses to an assessment task comprised of quantitative reasoning questions across 10 mathematical and statistical topics. The question guiding the study was: do final year science students graduate knowing the quantitative skills that they have, and knowing the quantitative skills that they do not have? Confidence indicators for the 10 topics gathered students’ perceptions of their quantitative skills. Students were assigned to one of four categories: high performance-high confidence; low performance-low confidence; high performance-low confidence; or low performance-high confidence – with those in the first two categories demonstrating evaluative expertise. Results showed the majority of students effectively evaluated their quantitative skills as low performance-low confidence. We argue that the application of evaluative expertise to make sense of this graduate learning outcome can further the debate on how assuring graduate learning outcomes can enhance student learning.     

Examining the influence of teacher behavior and curriculum-based movement breaks

Little research has explored the impact of teacher behavior in the relationship between classroom movement breaks and student outcomes. The authors' primary purpose was to explore teacher behavior during classroom movement breaks to determine if teacher behavior served as a moderating variable in the relationship between physical activity and student achievement. The second major aim was to examine these relationships across two different types of movement breaks: (a) academic-content movement breaks and (b) aerobic-based movement breaks. Children (n = 466) in Grades 3–5 from four elementary schools served as participants in the study. Results found that teachers who encouraged students to move and teachers who moved themselves did not necessary have students with higher activity levels during the movement breaks. However, significant differences across the type of movement break provided were found. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Expanding capacity and promoting inclusion in introductory computer science: a focus on near-peer mentor preparation and code review

A dilemma within computer science departments is developing sustainable ways to expand capacity within introductory computer science courses while remaining committed to inclusive practices. Training near-peer mentors for peer code review is one solution. This paper describes the preparation of near-peer mentors for their role, with a focus on regular, consistent feedback via peer code review and inclusive pedagogy. Introductory computer science students provided consistently high ratings of the peer mentors’ knowledge, approachability, and flexibility, and credited peer mentor meetings for their strengthened self-efficacy and understanding. Peer mentors noted the value of videotaped simulations with reflection, discussions of inclusion, and the cohort’s weekly practicum for improving practice. Adaptations of peer mentoring for different types of institutions are discussed. Computer science educators, with hopes of improving the recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups, can benefit from expanding their peer support infrastructure and improving the quality of peer mentor preparation.