Correction to: Computational Thinking,Between Papert and Wing

Science & Education -     

Prenatal Risk Predicts Preschooler Executive Function: A Cascade Model

Little research has considered whether prenatal experience contributes to executive function (EF) development above and beyond postnatal experience. This study tests direct, mediated, and moderated associations between prenatal risk factors and preschool EF and IQ in a longitudinal sample of 1,292 children from the Family Life Project. A composite of prenatal risk factors (i.e., low birth weight, prematurity, maternal emotional problems, maternal prepregnancy obesity, and obstetric complications) significantly predicted EF and IQ at age 3, above quality of the postnatal environment. This relationship was indirect, mediated through infant general cognitive abilities. Quality of the postnatal home and child-care environments did not moderate the cascade model. These findings highlight the role of prenatal experience as a contributor to individual differences in cognitive development.     

Training and Learning

Some philosophers of education think that there is a pedagogically informative concept of training that can be gleaned from Wittgenstein's later writings: training as initiation into a form of life. Stickney, in ' Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley' takes me to task for ignoring this concept. In this essay I argue that there is no such concept to be ignored. I start by noting recent developments in Wittgenstein scholarship that raise serious issues about how we should handle the translation of Arbrichtung and arbrichten. I then concentrate on the substantive philosophical issues about the very idea that training can have a pedagogically productive role in education. I show that what work training does is a function of the prior skill set of the trainee. This means that we have to endorse some form of rationalism and acknowledge that the learner can only respond to training if they already possess sufficient mental equipment to generate the appropriate responses.     

Social working memory: Memory for another rat's spatial choices can increase or decrease choice tendencies

In two experiments using a radial-arm maze, pairs of rats made choices among eight maze locations, each containing a large quantity of one of two food types. The choices made by 1 rat affected the choices made by the other rat. Under most conditions, visits by 1 rat increased the tendency of the other rat to subsequently choose that maze location. However, the effect depended on the quality of the food available in a particular location. When it was possible for the rats to observe each other on the maze arms and a rat had experienced that a location contained the less preferred food type, a previous visit to that location by the foraging partner decreased the tendency to visit that location. These effects are attributed to working memory for the spatial choices of another rat, and they indicate that memory produced by a rat’s own visit to a maze location is integrated with memory for the behavior of another rat to determine spatial choice     

Students’ Perceptions of High School Science: What has Changed Over the Last Decade?

This paper presents comparative questionnaire data from three different samples of Australian high school students in an attempt to see if anything has changed in relation to how they perceive the science they experience in the compulsory years of secondary school (grades 7–10). Questionnaire data were obtained from 1,585 high school students in 2011 and 2,016 students in 2005 and findings are compared with those reported in a national report (Goodrum et al. 2001). Results show significant increases in the frequency with which students report that their science teacher takes notice of their ideas and in the use of computers and the Internet. There have also been changes regarding the rapid provision of feedback, the use of understandable language by teachers and the contextualisation of the new work in terms of work already covered. Little appears to have changed, however, in relation to the teacher-directed pedagogies employed to teach science where there appears to be a higher incidence of copying notes and fewer opportunities for students to investigate topics in which they are interested. The findings suggest that while there have been some positive changes, there are still many students who indicate that the science they experience in secondary school is irrelevant to their everyday life and to their future. It seems that the curiosity and wonder one would hope is associated with studying science is missing for a large proportion of students. It is clear that further actions need to be undertaken to transform this continuing situation.     

US inflation with trace and simultaneous fear conditioning

Two experiments with rat subjects in a conditioned punishment paradigm are reported. These experiments attempted to determine if the events entering into association with the CS following conditioning with informative (forward) and noninformative (simultaneous) CSs were comparable. In Experiment 1, exposure to intense shock alone following trace (ISI = 10 sec) conditioning with moderate shock enhanced the suppressive effects of a 2-sec CS. A similar manipulation following explicitly unpaired CS-US presentations (ISI = 2 min) had no effect. These data were taken as evidence that the CS and US were associated during trace conditioning. Experiment 2 showed that exposure to intense shock following simultaneous conditioning also enhanced suppression to the CS. These results suggested that simultaneous and forward conditioning procedures yield similar forms of associative learning.     

Population density and nonaggressive competition

The Calhoun (1962) paper has become a keystone article for the population density literature. Although a few research reports have followed, several aspects of population density and the behavioral phenomena identified by Calhoun have been ignored. For example, the consummatory behavior in-aggregate property of the behavioral sink is an unstudied phenomenon. Furthermore, although the literature on potential population reduction mechanisms has grown rapidly, the mechanisms of pup mortality (cannibalization by adults) as identified by Calhoun has not been pursued systematically. Finally, the question of whether social or spatial density or other factors constitute the potent variables in the development of social pathology has not been tested directly. The purpose of these five related experiments was to investigate aspects of these behaviors.     

Similarity of science textbooks: A content. Analysis

The investigator completed a content analysis of the astronomy portion of science texts at three grade levels (4th, 5th, and 6th) that were produced by five different publishers. The analysis used an operant paradigm and compared the responses expected of students who used one science text to those expected of students using other science texts. The response comparisons were made both within and across grade levels. Using similarity of the responses expected of students as a basis of comparison, elementary school science texts produced by different publishers had more in common across grade levels than within grade levels. Less than 50% of the responses expected of students at one grade level were common to other science texts at the same or different grade levels.     

University autonomy and public policies: A system theory perspective

This article addresses problems facing universities because of external pressures for changes in their teaching, research, and governance and management policies and practices to align them with public policies. The view is put that governments are introducing public policies in times of economic recession to achieve rationalisation of human, physical and financial resources in higher education and to foster initiatives that shape university teaching and research to serve the needs of society and assist in national economic recovery. Examples of these external pressures, which have resulted in intrusions into the autonomy of university governance and management, are provided in the context of general system theory. It is assumed that the pressure of public policies on universities will continue and that each university should have a development plan for its present and future teaching and research activities, which has the endorsement of the government higher education advisory agency so that university management can function on a secure basis. The effectiveness and efficiency of functioning at the various levels of the university system should be assessed by periodic evaluative reviews. The quality of management by academic leaders should be fostered by the establishment of national centres for the study of higher education management and policy. The relationship between government higher education advisory agencies and universities should be renegotiated so that, as interdependent and interrelated parts of the higher education system, they work in joint co-operation to ensure the most effective and appropriate development of each institution. Nevertheless, a state of equilibrium between the university system and the supra (social) system within which it exists will never fully be achieved. The fundamental role and functions of a university require that it be concerned with teaching and researching both ageless and current phenomena. Hence, a perfect equilibrium state cannot exist if external social pressures are for the main weight of university activities to be shifted to providing service for the current needs of society.