Hierarchical Mentoring: A Transformative Strategy for Improving Diversity and Retention in Undergraduate STEM Disciplines

In the United States, less than half of the students who enter into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate curricula as freshmen will actually graduate with a STEM degree. There is even greater disparity in the national STEM graduation rates of students from underrepresented groups with approximately three-fourths of minority students leaving STEM disciplines at the undergraduate level. A host of programs have been designed and implemented to model best practices in retaining students in STEM disciplines. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professors Program at Louisiana State University, under leadership of HHMI Professor Isiah M. Warner, represents one of these programs and reports on a mentoring model that addresses the key factors that impact STEM student attrition at the undergraduate level. By integrating mentoring and strategic academic interventions into a structured research program, an innovative model has been developed to guide STEM undergraduate majors in adopting the metacognitive strategies that allow them to excel in their programs of study, as they learn to appreciate and understand science more completely. Comparisons of the persistence of participants and nonparticipants in STEM curricular, at the host university and with other national universities and colleges, show the impact of the model’s salient features on improving STEM retention through graduation for all students, particularly those from underrepresented groups.     

Can textured insoles improve ankle proprioception and performance in dancers?

With the aim of determining both the acute and the chronic effects of textured insoles on the ankle discrimination and performance ability of dancers, 60 ballet dancers from the Australian Ballet School, aged 14–19 years, were divided into three groups (two intervention groups and a control group), age- and level-matched. In the first 5 weeks (weeks 1 to 5), the first intervention group (GRP1) was asked to wear textured insoles in their ballet shoes and the second intervention group (GRP2) was not given textured insoles to wear. In the next 5 weeks (weeks 6 to 10), GRP2 was asked to wear the same type of textured insoles and GRP1 did not wear the textured insoles. The control group (CTRL) did not wear textured insoles during the whole 10 weeks. All participants were tested preintervention, after 5 weeks and after 10 weeks for ankle discrimination score (AUC scores). Dance performance was assessed by 5–7 dance teachers. Pre-to-post change in AUC scores was significantly greater for the groups wearing insoles than for the controls (P = .046) and the size of pre-to-post changes did not differ between the two intervention groups (P = .834). Significant correlation was found between ankle discrimination score and performance scores, using the textured insoles (r = .412; P = .024). In conclusion, the stimulation to the proprioceptive system arising from textured insoles worn for five weeks was sufficient to improve the proprioceptive ability and performance ability of ballet dancers.     

Faculty Perspectives on Course and Teacher Evaluations

Student ratings of instruction have been the subject of numerous studies with much of the research focusing on the validity and reliability of the ratings themselves. Comparatively little empirical investigation has been devoted to the perceptions of the individuals who are the subjects of the ratings, that is, the faculty. The current study explored faculty perspectives on the usefulness of student ratings for formative and summative purposes, and the actual use of student ratings for summative purposes. Contrary to what might have been deduced from the anecdotal literature, the results of this study do not portray a great deal of resistance to student ratings in general or to their use for formative and summative evaluation. It was also found that student ratings are actually being used for the latter purpose. The usefulness of the student feedback was viewed differentially by the faculty, with feedback on their interaction with students seen as most useful, followed by feedback on their grading practices, global ratings of instructor and course, and finally structural issues of the course.     

Tracing the Sources

This article explores health journalists’ sourcing patterns in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium across a range of different media including newspapers, magazines, radio, television and online health news websites. A cross-sectional quantitative content analysis of health news items collected in February 2015 (N?=?981) was established to examine the number and origin (e.g. industry, citizens, experts) of sources (N?=?1998) mentioned in health news stories with particular attention paid to differences across various media types. Despite recent claims of media convergence, cross-media comparisons are scarce and, for a specialized beat such as health, nonexistent. The key findings of this study indicate that ordinary citizens and academic experts constitute the two largest source categories. The small share of industry-related sources confirms journalists’ skeptical attitude towards content provided by the industry. But on closer inspection, large differences can be observed across various media types. On the one hand, ordinary citizens occur with relatively high frequency on television but hardly make an appearance in online news items. Academic sources, on the other hand, are dominant online but nearly absent in television news items. In sum, this analysis demonstrates that health journalists’ source uses differ across various media platforms.     

家的修复力

1 When Becky Rohrer rescued an abandoned wreck of a house and lovingly transformed it into a cozy inn, she ended up healing her life as well. Emotionally and spiritually, the distance she's traveled from the life she once lived to where she is today seems almost impossible to measure.……     

High-Resolution Ultrasonic Imaging of Artworks with Seismic Interferometry for Their Conservation and Restoration

Artworks are an inseparable part of the cultural heritage of societies and provide us with a unique look at cultural developments through time and space. For the best possible conservation, it is paramount to know the constituent materials, condition, and construction techniques of the objects (e.g. painting on wood, fresco, sculpture). Such information is required not only for the surfaces of the objects, but also for the interiors; in the imaging discipline, this is known as depth imaging. Here, we introduce a new method for non-invasive depth imaging as an alternative to traditional non-invasive methods when the latter cannot be used to obtain the required information. We use ultrasonic transverse-wave transmission measurements and turn them into virtual reflection measurements. We achieve this by applying seismic interferometry with active sources. Obtaining reflection measurements by seismic interferometry allows us to apply an advanced imaging technique – prestack depth migration, as used in seismic exploration – to produce a high-resolution depth image of an object. We apply our method to ultrasonic data recorded on a mockup of a painting on a wooden support. We validate our method by comparing our results with an image from X-ray computed tomography.     

Attitudes towards being assessed in group work: The effects of self-efficacy and collective efficacy moderated by a short educational intervention

Being assessed in group work is a balance between cooperation and competition. Self-efficacy and collective efficacy are important concepts in understanding how group work progresses and what attitudes assessment evokes. The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of a short educational intervention on the association between efficacy beliefs and attitudes towards being assessed in group work. In a randomized, controlled study of 22 pupil work groups, half of them got a short educational intervention. The work groups were formed for this study. The pupils answered a questionnaire before the intervention and after doing group work for 3 to 6 weeks with a study-specific task. A moderated mediation analysis showed that attitudes towards being assessed in group work significantly are related to self-efficacy mediated through perceived collective efficacy and that this relationship is stronger in the intervention group. In the context of work group assessment, we have shown that self-efficacy and collective efficacy are two separate, but related concepts that are dependent on each other when it comes to pupil attitudes towards group work assessment, and that a relatively short educational intervention to teachers and pupils had an effect on the attitude. However, the older girls' attitude towards group work assessment was the least positive of all, which may indicate that the intervention depends on gender and age.     

Classroom Location,Activity Type,and Physical Activity During Preschool Children's Indoor Free-Play

Early Childhood Education Journal - Preschool children spend most of their day in the indoor classroom, but it is unknown which learning centers or activity types are associated with physical...     

“What’s in it for Me?” A Study on Students’ Accommodation or Resistance during Group Work

This article explores students’ accommodation and resistance while participating in group work. The data collected are from fieldwork observations in several classrooms over the course of four terms in different secondary school classes in Sweden, and also from interviews with the students. Through this data analysis, we report that the students accommodated for such reasons as amusement, compliance, fulfilling expectations, and striving for high marks. The reasons for students’ resistance were blending, inability, stage fright, and vagueness. Macro-sociological concepts from Ziehe's cultural theory were used to capture explanations for students’ behaviour in order to understand why students, on a micro-sociological level, accommodate or resist when using group work as a learning mode. On the basis of results, three models of interpretation were developed, namely, individual, institutional, and structural.     

How cognitive,metacognitive, motivational and emotional self‐regulation influence school performance in adolescence and early adulthood

This contribution aims to examine how different areas of self‐regulation are related to academic achievement in adolescents and young adults. The study involved participants, drawn from following age groups: 14–15, 17–18 and 22–23. In order to get information about cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and emotional aspects of self‐regulation, self‐report questionnaires were used. Differences between age‐groups revealed following tendency: there has been a decrease in all fields of self‐regulation from age of 14 (end of primary school) to the age of about 18 years (end of secondary school), and then results slowly improved to the age of about 22 years (students of undergraduate studies). The results obtained are mirroring perceived competence of self‐regulation and differ from the results concerning metacognitive accuracy. Metacognitive self‐regulation persists as an important predictor of school achievement at all developmental levels, and the motivational self‐regulation has significant impact on performance in the first and second age group.