Enhancing learning in the life sciences through spatial perception

Recent educational research finds if students are encouraged to form mental images of events, objects and written or spoken words, learning of the material is enhanced. The inability to image an item may, in fact, hinder one's learning efforts in some disciplines. To find if low spatial apptitude does have a deleterious effect on learning in the life sciences, two hundred and fifty undergraduates taking a nonmajor's biology course were given tests to measure their visual-spatial awareness. Students falling more than one standard deviation from the mean were classified as low in spatial cognition and were randomly sorted into an experimental and a control group. Exercises known to enhance spatial understanding were conducted weekly with the experimental group. When the final grades for the course were examined at the end of the semester, it was found that students in the experimental group scored significantly better than the control group in the biology course. These students, however, did not reach the same level of proficiency as the students who were measuring high in spatial ability initially.He became interested in visual-spatial aptitude and its effect on learning as a doctoral student at Rutgers University and furthered his studies on the topic as a post-doc at Birmingham University in England. While there he worked with Janic Weikowski and I. MacFarlene Smith, two premier British researchers on spatial perception. Dr. Lord has published several articles on spatial learning and given numerous presentations on the topic in recent years.     

Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes

The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, characterised by trust, honesty and care for the self and for each other, that enabled a sharing of authentic voices and a reaffirming of identities that were made vulnerable through the exposing of the self as an emotional, politicised subject. Drawing on existing theoretical understandings of critical feminised spaces enabled us to create a pedagogical framework for work with students in further developing caring and co-caring communities of practice that are not alternative to, but are outside the performativity landscape of education.     

Locomotor activity and exploration: The use of traditional manipulators to dissociate these two behaviors in the rat

An apparatus designed by Berlyne was used to dissociate locomotor activity and inspective exploratory responses with the aid of traditional manipulators. In this apparatus, novel and complex stimulation increased exploration but did not affect locomotor activity (LA), d-amphetamine (1.5 mg/kg) increased LA but decreased exploration. These findings provide a double dissociation of the behavioral components. In addition, low intrasubject correlations for the two behaviors were demonstrated. Results are discussed with reference to the need for simultaneous separate measures to obtain valid indices of exploratory behavior and LA.     

The ‘double-edged sword’ of a sessional academic career

ABSTRACT

There have been widespread changes to working arrangements and employment relationships, including significant decreases in continuing/full-time employment contracts. This trend is particularly notable in academia, with more universities relying on the expertise of sessional, teaching-focused academics. This qualitative study extends understanding of this important group of professionals, identifying sessional work as a ‘double-edged sword’ and suggesting a typology of sessional academic careers to be tested in future research. It reports on the diversity among sessional academics, some enjoying the autonomy and flexibility of this working arrangement, others seeking more job security and greater alignment with continuing employment. It also identifies synergies and contradictions between sessional academic careers and key themes in the contemporary careers literature.     

Learning and nonlearned neophobia enhancement both contribute to the formation of illness-induced taste aversions by deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus bairdi)

An investigation was made of the occurrence of learned and nonlearned aversions in the acquisition of illness-induced taste aversions in mice of the genusPeromyscus. It was determined: (1) that illness following the ingestion of a novel flavor both produced aversions specific to that flavor and also enhanced neophobia directed toward novel flavors in general; (2) that the specific aversion and the enhanced neophobia appeared to be mediated by independent processes, with no indication that the enhanced neophobia was dependent upon the integrity of the specific aversion; and (3) that illness following the ingestion of familiar water produced enhanced neophobia, which did not appear to be mediated by an aversion to water. It was noted that the results were fundamentally in agreement with those previously obtained with laboratory rats, except that a demonstration of the independence between the two types of aversions has not yet been reported in those animals.     

Developmental Differences in Decoding the Meanings of the Appraisal Actions of Teachers

Teachers convey evaluations through such "appraisal actions" as ability versus effort attributions for children's performance, spontaneous displays of warmth versus matter-of-fact acceptance, and attention versus inattention. Some appraisal actions (e.g., ability-effort) require an understanding of multiplicative relations to arrive at an "adult" interpretation. Others (e.g., attention-inattention) do not. First through sixth graders watched videotaped scenes in which teachers attributed one child's performance to ability but chided another for lack of effort even though he had given an equivalent performance, hugged one child but not another for equivalent performance, and paid attention to one child's oral report but not another's. Younger students (ages 5-9 to 7-10) rated the ability-attributed and hugged children as smarter; older students (ages 9-9 to 11-10) rated the effort-attributed and unhugged children as smarter. In contrast, no age differences were found in decoding attention versus inattention. The results suggest that younger children use a different strategy in decoding the meanings of complex appraisal actions.     

A Learning Curve‐Based Assembly Game

This article describes a game used in an MBA‐level operations management course to help students understand the concept of the learning curve. Student teams participate in an interactive, hands‐on Lego assembly exercise, measuring their times through repeated trials after which they calculate their team's learning curve rate. The exercise is oriented to illustrate the mechanisms by which learning occurs both individually and organizationally. After students complete their work in groups, the data is aggregated across the class and analyzed to further illustrate key principles of the learning curve. A modified version of the game based on cup‐stacking has been developed for online students.