Conditioned cardiac and behavioral response topography to an olfactory CS dissociates with age

Conditioned cardiac and behavioral responses to an olfactory stimulus (CS) paired with electric shock (US) were studied in 16-, 23-, and 75-day-old rats. Heart rate and behavior were recorded during a single 15-trial training session in which a 10-sec olfactory stimulus (amyl acetate) was either paired or explicitly unpaired with the US. In the preweanling rats, the conditioned cardiac response consisted of anincrease in heart rate (tachycardia) and a slight increase in investigatory behaviors. In contrast, the conditioned cardiac response in the adult rats consisted of adecrease in heart rate (bradycardia) and a striking increase in behavioral immobility (freezing). The 23-day-old rats showed a dichotomous pattern of responding; some showed preweanling-like conditioned responses and some showed adultlike responses. Developmental changes in neural organization and degree of learning are discussed as possible determinants of the transition from infant to adult modes of responding.     

Charts in Excel – A Series Matter

The Chart Wizard in Microsoft Excel is supposed to make chart drawing so easy that a child can do it, yet many intelligent adults fail to use it successfully. This article suggests some simple principles that resolve many of the difficulties.     

Setting Personalized Homework Exercises Using ISCUS

This article describes how a spreadsheet‐based tool can be used to provide personalized statistics homework exercises for each student in a class.     

Schooling citizens: policy in practice in South Africa

The notion of ‘student citizen’ is implicit in a range of national and provincial policy documents in South Africa, with citizenship promoted as both an expected outcome of schooling and an encouraged practice within schools. This paper provides an account of how policy on student citizenship was translated differently into practice in four secondary schools in Cape Town, each with a different former racial categorisation under apartheid. It argues that student engagement with citizenship varied considerably between the schools and in many cases was significantly different from the policy framework. Influencing factors included staff–student relations, socio‐historical contexts and how diversity was played out in the schools.     

Paraprofessionals in early childhood classrooms: an examination of duties and expectations

Millions of dollars are expended, in the USA and elsewhere, to provide paraprofessionals or ‘teaching assistants’ for regular early childhood classrooms. However, little consistent information exists related to best practice in the use of paraprofessionals in these early childhood settings. This article describes a study employing the use of 159 teacher and 161 paraprofessional surveys and classroom observations in 23 randomly selected kindergarten and four-year-old classrooms. Paraprofessionals delivered large amounts of group instruction and frequently managed student behavior. Furthermore, it was found that a lack of understanding of specific duties and expectations related to the roles of paraprofessionals was characteristic of both teachers and the paraprofessionals themselves.     

The IFLA Trend Report: Looking Beyond the Walls in Library Planning

Strategic planning requires us to stop and take a closer look at our organizations and consider the impact that changes in the profession are causing, influenced by the society around us. These considerations lead us past our library walls, past our institutional walls and into a more speculative world of changes in the technological society. Scholars and pundits have provided us with many scenarios for the future, including a world of solely electronic resources and hyper-connected users. But how closely does this match reality and what are the trends in our larger society that will affect how we work in the future. This article provides an overview of several reports on the students and technologies that we work with and closely explores the IFLA Trend Report. The report was developed after discussions with individuals representing many non-academic, non-library organizations and provides us with a view of the larger trends forecast for the information society. The report is envisioned as a living document that invites further comment and wider distribution to the library world and beyond.     

Fathers' Early Contributions to Children's Language Development in Families from Low-income Rural Communities

This study utilized a large sample of two-parent families from low-income rural communities to examine the contributions of father education and vocabulary, during picture book interactions with their infants at 6 months of age, to children's subsequent communication development at 15 months and expressive language development at 36 months. After controlling for family demographics, child characteristics, as well as mother education and vocabulary, father education and father vocabulary during the picture-book task were related to more advanced language development at both 15 and 36 months of age. Only mother education, but not vocabulary during book-reading was related to children's later language. These findings support the growing evidence on the importance of fathers in understanding children's early communication and language development.     

Implementing curriculum evaluation: case study of a generic undergraduate degree in health sciences

This case study presents a longitudinal, evidence‐based approach to health science curriculum reform and evaluation. Curriculum in higher education must meet the needs of diverse stakeholders and must respond to dynamic local, national and international contexts, and this creates challenges for evaluation. The long lead time prior to the introduction of new or revised university curriculum (at least two years), the length of degree programmes (three to five years) and the lag time in the availability of objective indicators of degree outcomes (at least one year post‐graduation) mean that findings may be obsolete before an evaluation can be completed. Few would argue that evaluation is important and methods and approaches for conducting curriculum evaluation are proposed in the literature, although few published reports of the outcomes of comprehensive evaluations are evident. This paper discusses potential for evaluation to establish responsive communication between students, teaching staff and programme administrators, ensuring a match between the intended, implemented and attained curriculum.