Are four heads better than one? A comparison of cooperative and traditional teaching formats in an introductory biology course

The objective of this experiment was to compare the impact of a cooperative learning format with a traditional lecture-oriented format in the teaching of introductory biology. Differences were found in favor of the cooperative learning format in measures of student satisfaction, the ability to find information on one's own, the acquisition of factual knowledge, and the ability to work with others. The results of this study affirm the viability of using a cooperative learning approach over a traditional lecture format.Judith E. Miller is Director of Educational Development and Professor of Biology and Biotechnology at WPI, Worcester, Massachusetts. She received the Ph.D. in Microbiology from Case Western Reserve University and the B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University. Her special interests include the restructuring of technical courses to include cooperative learning and educational productivity. James E. Groccia is the Director of the Program for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He received the Ed.D. in Educational and Counseling Psychology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the M.S.Ed. in Social Science Education from Hofstra University, and the B.A. in Psychology from Hartwick College.     

Excellence through Special Education? Lessons from the Finnish School Reform

The present article focuses on connections between part-time special education and the good results of Finnish students in PISA studies. After a brief summary of the comprehensive school system and special education in Finland, PISA results are analysed. The analysis shows that the relative amount of special education targeted at language problems is highest in Finland among those countries from which comparative statistics are available. The writers argue that this preventive language-oriented part-time special education is an important factor behind the good PISA results.     

A concurrent assessment of schedule-induced aggression and schedule-induced polydipsia in the rat

Rats subjected to FI 60-sec and FI 120-sec schedules of reinforcement were permitted concurrent access to a licking tube and a restrained target rat. While both polydipsia and attack occurred, polydipsia was the predominant scheduleinduced behavior. When attack occurred, and the licking tube was also available, attack usually followed licking in the interreinforcement interval. Eliminating access to the target did not influence polydipsia, and removal of the licking tube did not affect the frequency of aggressive episodes.     

Personality Types,Learning Styles and Educational Goals

Attempts to broaden conceptions of learning styles to represent more adequately individual differences in motivation/emotion, as well as cognition, are limited by a paucity of relevant theory. Personality theories should, but do not, provide a satisfactory conceptual framework for this endeavour. In an attempt to remedy this situation, a new personality typology is outlined which, it is argued, provides a coherent system within which to construe and conduct research upon learning styles. The implications of the theory for educational goals, couched in terms of learning styles, also are discussed.     

Claiming unclaimed spaces: virtual spaces for learning

The purpose of this study was to describe and examine the environments used by teacher candidates in multi-user virtual environments. Secondary data analysis of a case study methodology was employed. Multiple data sources including interviews, surveys, observations, snapshots, course artifacts, and the researcher’s journal were used in the initial case study, while using the resulting narratives of each student’s experience for the secondary data analysis. All data were coded and reviewed iteratively to inductively deduce the key considerations for virtual world environmental design. Five assertions were derived from the data to help guide the development of virtual learning environments. These five assertions focus on: novelty, the role of realism, fantastical and outdoor environments, maneuverability, and design for movement.     

Transformation of Patriarchal Regimes, Literacy, and Schooling

Literacy has been among the most publicly contested domains in gender struggles; the way that history of literacy is gendered and interpreted makes a difference to the way reading and writing is thought of today. Broadly understood, gender signals a wide range of concerns with subjectivities, social relations, and historical dynamics. Literacy campaigns can be linked both to attempts to consolidate patriarchalism in early modern Europe and to complex struggles attending its 18th-century demise. In 19th-century England, both bourgeois and oppositional public spheres engendered patterns of solidarity, identity, gender polarization, and exclusion in which contested notions of individual and collective literacy played a key role. Elsewhere, schools were called upon to engender a proletariat or tame its radicalism, teach females how to read or change their reading habits, instruct children in writing or give them to understand that their mother tongue did not count as school knowledge.     

Interpreting in mental health settings: issues and concerns

Sign language interpreters in mental health settings face extreme linguistic and cultural difficulties in interpreting basic, everyday language used in these settings. This is particularly true when deaf clients have limited English proficiency, which often requires interpreters to use expansion techniques in order to render messages successfully. To examine how diagnostics may be affected by interpretation, Brauer (1993), Montoya et al. (2001), and Steinberg, Lipton, Eckhardt, Goldstein, and Sullivan (1998) translated two widely used psychological screening instruments into American Sign Language (ASL). The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule-IV (DIS-IV) were selected for translation, and data from the three studies are presented and discussed. Their implications in terms of the expectations and stresses placed on interpreters are described within a framework of demand and control theory. Finally, sections of the Code of Ethics of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) are examined relative to both the issue of confidentiality and what the interpreter's contribution should be in mental health settings.