Brain Engagement During a Cognitive Flexibility Task Relates to Academic Performance in English Learners

English Learners (ELs), students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, are a fast-growing, understudied, group of students in the U.S. with unique learning challenges. Cognitive flexibility—the ability to switch between task demands with ease—may be an important factor in learning for ELs as they have to manage learning in their non-dominant language and access knowledge in multiple languages. We used functional MRI to measure cognitive flexibility brain activity in a group of Hispanic middle school ELs (N = 63) and related it to their academic skills. We found that brain engagement during the cognitive flexibility task was related to both out-of-scanner reading and math measures. These relationships were observed across the brain, including in cognitive control, attention, and default mode networks. This work suggests the real-world importance of cognitive flexibility for adolescent ELs, where individual differences in brain engagement were associated with educational outcomes.     

God does not play dice: causal determinism and preschoolers' causal inferences

Three studies investigated children's belief in causal determinism. If children are determinists, they should infer unobserved causes whenever observed causes appear to act stochastically. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds saw a stochastic generative cause and inferred the existence of an unobserved inhibitory cause. Children traded off inferences about the presence of unobserved inhibitory causes and the absence of unobserved generative causes. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds used the pattern of indeterminacy to decide whether unobserved variables were generative or inhibitory. Experiment 3 suggested that children (4 years old) resist believing that direct causes can act stochastically, although they accept that events can be stochastically associated. Children's deterministic assumptions seem to support inferences not obtainable from other cues.     

Metacognition and Middle Grade Mathematics Teachers: Supporting Productive Struggle

Communicating mathematical ideas through writing, listening, and verbalizing allows students to think about how they “think” about mathematics. By focusing this communication on a reflection of how one thinks about mathematics, metacognitive writing engages students as mathematicians and learners. In this article we describe a professional development that we implemented with middle grade mathematics teachers focused on metacognitive writing as a tool to support productive struggle in the mathematics classroom. Thus, this practitioner article adds to the knowledge base on how to develop middle grade teachers metacognitive writing through engagement in productive struggle. Recommendations for practice are included.     

Impact and educational outcomes of a small group self‐directed teaching strategy in a clinical neuroscience curriculum

The complexity of the material being taught in clinical neuroscience within the medical school curriculum requires creative pedagogies to teach medical students effectively. Many clinical teaching strategies have been developed and are well described to address these challenges. However, only a few have been evaluated to determine their impact on the performance of students studying clinical neuroscience. Interactive, 2‐hour, self‐directed small‐group interactive clinical case‐based learning sessions were conducted weekly for 4 weeks to integrate concepts learned in the corresponding didactic lectures. Students in the small groups analyzed cases of patients suffering from neurological disease that were based on eight learning objectives that allowed them to evaluate neuroanatomical data and clinical findings before presenting their case analysis to the larger group. Students’ performances on the formative quizzes and summative tests were compared to those of first‐year medical students in the previous year for whom the self‐directed, small‐group interactive clinical sessions were not available. There was a significant improvement in the summative performance of first‐year medical students with self‐directed clinical case learning in the second year (Y2) of teaching clinical neuroscience (P < 0.05) when compared with first‐year students in the first year (Y1) for whom the self‐directed learning approach was not available. Student performance in the formative assessments between Y1 and Y2 was not significantly different (P = 0.803). A target of ≥70% student scoring above 80% in the final summative examination was met. The current study revealed evidence for the impact and educational outcomes of a self‐directed, clinical teaching strategy in a clinical neuroscience curriculum for first‐year medical students. Anat Sci Educ 11: 478–487. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial

The effectiveness of the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum in improving the education of 3- and 4-year-old children was evaluated by means of a randomized trial. The Tools curriculum, based on the work of Vygotsky, focuses on the development of self-regulation at the same time as teaching literacy and mathematics skills in a way that is socially mediated by peers and teachers and with a focus on play. The control group experienced an established district-created model described as a “balanced literacy curriculum with themes.” Teachers and students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control classrooms. Children (88 Tools and 122 control) were compared on social behavior, language, and literacy growth. The Tools curriculum was found to improve classroom quality and children's executive function as indicated by lower scores on a problem behavior scale. There were indications that Tools also improved children's language development, but these effects were smaller and did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance in multi-level models or after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Our findings indicate that a developmentally appropriate curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development so as to improve both the social and academic success of young children. Moreover, it is suggested that to the extent child care commonly increases behavior problems this outcome may be reversed through the use of more appropriate curricula that actually enhance self-regulation.     

How Do You Know You're Old? Gender Differences in Cues Triggering the Experience of Personal Aging

In order to evaluate the gender differences on the experience of aging, 142 individuals 50 years of age and older completed an interview regarding experiences with another individual conveying the message that they were “old.” Interviewees were asked about the type of situation, the age and gender of the response person, and the perceived intent and feelings associated with the experience. Results showed that 72.3% of the experiences could be classified into one of three categories: discount/benefit, physical features/appearance, and performance. While no gender differences were found in the location/setting of the incident, the response person, or the age of the response person, findings indicated that for men, the incident was classified as a “benefit/discount,” while for women it was classified as “physical features/appearance.” In addition, the presumed intent of the situation was viewed as negative and hurtful by women, and both genders reported that the incident made them feel self-conscious and/or elicited a negative self-assessment. These results illustrate that the self-reported experiences that make one feel old and potentially change an individual's identity are important to understand in the context of growing older as a gendered experience.     

Alumni Perspectives on Career Preparation during a Postdoctoral Training Program: A Qualitative Study

Published evaluations of career preparation of alumni from long-standing postdoctoral fellowship programs in the biomedical sciences are limited and often focus on quantitative analysis of data from extant publicly available sources. Qualitative methods provide the opportunity to gather robust information about specific program elements from structured postdoctoral training programs and the influence of this training on subsequent career paths of alumni. In-depth interviews with a subset of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP) alumni (n = 27), representing more than 25 years of the program’s history and multiple career sectors, were conducted to assess alumni reflections on the training environment and career preparation during their time in the CPFP. NVivo software was used to analyze data and identify major themes. Four main themes emerged from these interviews, including: the value of structured training curriculum, mentorship, transdisciplinary environment, and professional identity. Even when reflecting on training that occurred one to two decades earlier, alumni were able to highlight specific components of a structured postdoctoral training program as influencing their research and career trajectories. These results may have relevance for those interested in assessing how postdoctoral training can influence fellows throughout their careers and understanding salient features of structured programs.     

RECONSTRUCTING DEWEYAN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION FOR A GLOBALIZING WORLD

As democratic citizenship education gains importance worldwide, one wonders whether common civic education practices in the United States, such as mock elections, are adequate models for other countries, or whether they fall short of realizing the goal of promoting democracy in different regions and cultures. Despite various controversies, one fundamental question remains: How should we teach democracy? Should we teach it as a system of government or as a way of life? Jessica Ching‐Sze Wang finds inspiration in Dewey's life and works. She draws on Dewey's experience during the First World War and his insights into the connection between democracy and education to reconstruct a culturally and morally robust form of democratic education, as opposed to the politically dominated one currently being practiced. Wang concludes that Deweyan democratic education thus reconstructed can help us better realize democracy as a way of life for our globalizing world.