Variables affecting alternation behavior in the cockroach,Blatta orientalis

To investigate alternation behavior in the cockroach as an invertebrate, three T-maze experiments were conducted assessing the effects of (a) intratrial (exposure) and intertrial (exposure to test) interval, (b) brightness similarity of the alternatives and response-direction factors, and (c) an initial free-choice vs. a varying number of forced-choice exposures. Alternation was enhanced with a long exposure on Trial 1, a short interval between Trial 1 and Trial 2 (test), greater dissimilarity (or discriminability) of the arm brightnesses and more frequent forced-choice exposures to an arm prior to test. These results highlight the role of intramaze brightness cues as controlling alternation in the cockroach and accord well with a response-to-change interpretation of the phenomenon. In addition, they suggest that the alternation paradigm can be used effectively to assay short-term memory storage in neurologically simple organisms.     

Multimedia Science Kits: A Museum Project on Women Scientists and Their Research

The University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM) is creating multimedia outreach kits on the research of women scientists. The collaborative effort has included Nebraska Educational Telecommunications, curricula developers, biographers, graphic designers, and evaluators. The goal of the project is to increase the number of girls interested in pursuing careers in science, and to this end, women scientists are presented as role models. Wonderwise kits target students in grades four through six through student-centered, inquiry-based activities, specimens and tools, videos of the scientists working in the field, resource-based CD-ROMs, and short biographies of the scientists. This project presents a model of how museums can collaborate with schools to improve science education on a statewide basis.     

Using narrative and discourse analysis in researching co‐principalships

After completing a longitudinal study of co‐principal shared leadership initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the author discusses some of the issues raised by her research design and methods. First, she explains the storying techniques she used to construct case narratives of each initiative. While these accounts drew largely on the participants’ own words, she shows how her own narrative analysis shaped them. She then explains a ‘pragmatic’ discourse analysis that combines elements of Foucauldian and feminist critical and poststucturalist theory (Fraser, ). In using this for a secondary analysis of the case narratives, the aim was to illuminate some of the discursive influences that were shaping, and being shaped by, the individual co‐principals and their evolving shared leadership practices. The author encountered a range of dilemmas, however, as she tried to cross boundaries between these ‘realist’ and poststructuralist research approaches. She reflects here on the implications of what Lather () has called ‘the ruins of a feminist ethnography’ and associated issues that have been raised around authorial distance and representation and participant voice and confidentiality.