AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN SUBJECTIVE COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING

Age and discipline differences in attitudes toward mandatory retirement and related issues were assessed among 85 faculty at a private university. Age differences were minimal and outweighed by discipline variations. In general, both age groups agreed that mandatory retirement should be abolished, even though the impact of this on universities was seen as negative. Concern over the rights of the individual and respect for the potential contributions of older faculty appeared to be the major reasons for the preferred abolition of a fixed retirement age. Attitudes toward tenure among the young and toward projected activities following retirement among both age groups did not appear to be related to the mandatory retirement issue.     

Differential effects of prenatal rhythmic stimulation on neonatal arousal states.

This study tested Salk's hypothesis that the human fetus is prenatally imprinted to the repetitive intermittent sound of the maternal heartbeat. 2 groups of neonates were selected prior to birth based on low (70-80 bpm) and high (100-110 bpm) maternal resting heart rates. At 24-48 hours old, the neonates were exposed to a 75-bpm, 105-bpm, or a no-sound tape, each prior to 1 of 3 different mealtimes. The prediction, based on Salk's hypothesis, that neonates would quiet most to their own mother's heart rate compared with the unfamiliar heart rate was not supported. Greater arousal reduction was found for any rhythmic sound compared with no sound. M-st important, clear prenatal influences on postnatal quieting behavior were demonstrated. Babies born to low-heart-rate mothers fell asleep faster, slept longer, and cried less under all conditions than did high-maternal-heart-rate children.     

Supporting university content specialists in providing effective professional development: the educative role of evaluation

Evaluation of professional development (PD) has traditionally been composed of summative and formative feedback, and has focused on assessing the extent to which the PD impacts participating teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices. This study establishes an additional purpose for PD evaluation – as educative opportunities for professional developers, particularly for PD providers who are university-level content specialists (e.g. scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, engineers). Through analysis of data collected as state-wide evaluators for one US Midwest state’s Improving Teacher Quality Grant PD programs, and utilizing an analysis methodology which we term ‘recommendation traces,’ we examine formative evaluation recommendations that we made to four different PD projects over three years. Findings from this study shed light on how content specialists who work in PD projects can learn about effective PD through project evaluation efforts.     

Learning to learn through work? The importance of Australian apprenticeship and traineeship policies in young workers’ learning careers

This paper examines young workers’ beginning engagement in learning through work, placing it in the context of Australian policy on entry-level training. Eleven young people were followed through their first year of full-time work and the significant adults involved in their working and learning lives were also interviewed. The study demonstrates that the presence of a contract of training (an apprenticeship or traineeship) is a strong predictor of a young worker’s propensity to regard the workplace as a learning environment. However, unsatisfactory interactions with employment or training providers can create disillusionment with policy interventions that are meant to assist. Moreover, the habit of learning through work is not only a function of policy and training frameworks, but is also affected by individuals’ abilities to learn how to learn. The paper concludes by arguing that, for those young people starting work who are not in a contract of training, additional assistance may be required in order for them to continue the habit of lifelong learning in the new environment of work.     

Reflections on teaching research ethics in education for international postgraduate students in the UK

Research ethics in education is a challenging topic to teach and to learn. As the staff and student body in UK higher education and elsewhere diversifies, the challenges increase as shared reference points diminish. My teaching reflections focus on a key tension explored in this article: how the imperative of internationalising the curriculum conflicts with hegemonic codes of conduct regarding research ethics that seem resistant to change. The framework of threshold concepts is applied to the teaching and learning of research ethics in education not, as is usual, to identify such concepts, but to draw attention to the critical role of the intersection between learner and curriculum and how institutional expectations need to be re-appraised.     

A Comparison of Professional Development Models for Teachers of Primary Mathematics and Science

The authors have been involved in two substantial Australian teacher professional development projects, with the Mathematical Association of Victoria and with the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria, which focused, respectively, on a whole‐school professional development and an extended workshop programme. The research described in this paper explores the experiences of participants in these two programmes, in order to identify the advantages and limitations of each type of professional development model in supporting teacher development, and the different needs of teachers in relation to mathematics and science. The findings from a questionnaire, supported by participant interviews, show a range of differences in experience and outcomes due to programme style and subject area. These are used to suggest a developmental framework for conceptualizing teacher professional development needs.     

Feedback Analysis of the Movement Mechanisms of Handwriting

To extend the feedback analysis of legibility in handwriting, a coordinate force transducer has been devised that makes possible the separate sensing of the right-left and near-far directions of writing motions and the converting of these movements to their electrical analogs. This method of transducing handwriting motions made possible systematic measurement of the effects of feedback displacement and delay of the visual feedback of writing movements and of analyzing the types of variation in legibility related to variable feedback factors. Results showed that differential directional defects and general disturbances in legibility and timing of writing movements occurred in relation to both visual feedback displacement and delay of writing motions. The findings give added support to the view that writing is not a form of discrete stimulus-response behavior or stimulus tracking, but consists of self-generated forms of response comparable to steering, in which accuracy, legibility, and learning are directly determined by feedback time factors and directional specificity of particular right-left and near-far coordinates of movement that dynamically control and project visual input in the writing act.