Impact of Anatomy Boot Camp on Students in a Medical Gross Anatomy Course

Lincoln Memorial University‐DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (LMU‐DCOM) offers an optional three‐week summer Anatomy Boot Camp course (ABC) to facilitate students' transition into medical school and promote retention of anatomy subject matter. The pre‐matriculation program is a supplemental instruction course that utilizes a small group learning format. Boot camp instruction is led by teaching assistants and two anatomy professors. Enrollees gain early exposure to Medical Gross Anatomy (MGA) course subject matter, which is taught in the fall semester, and learn study skills necessary to excel in medical school. No grade is assigned for the course, therefore participants can study without the fear of potentially affecting grades. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the LMU‐DCOM ABC course using data from four consecutive summers. Independent two‐sample t‐tests were used to compare ABC to non‐ABC students for the following variables: incoming grade point average (GPA) and Medical College Admission Test® (MCAT®) scores, MGA written and laboratory practical examination grades, and final MGA course grade. Additionally, a 26‐question survey was administered to 2012–2014 boot camp participants. There were no significant differences in incoming GPA and MCAT scores. However, boot campers scored significantly higher on the first two lecture and laboratory examinations (P < 0.05) for each year of the study. Thereafter scores varied less, suggesting a faster head start for boot camp participants. Mean MGA final grade was on average 3% higher for the boot camp cohort. The survey feedback supports that the ABC course assists with the academic and social transition into medical school. Anat Sci Educ 10: 215–223. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Accelerating the development of formal thinking in middle and high school students III: Testing the permanency of effects

Two years after the end of a two-year intervention program intended to promote formal operational thinking, the achievement of students initially 12 years of age was tested by their results in British National examinations, taken at age 16. The intervention methodology was set within the context of science learning, so the difference between experimental and control classes was examined first in terms of their science results. The boys achieved an average of 40% more grades of C or above than the controls. This grade is the minimum criterion for higher education in Britain. The achievement was not found equally in all students: About 40% of the boys and 25% of the girls showed effect sizes of two standard deviations in relation to comparable controls, whereas the others did not differ from the controls. Both boys and girls showed significantly higher achievement in English than comparable controls, with an effect size about half that for science. The boys—but not the girls—also showed higher achievement in mathematics. It is argued that this evidence supports the interpretation that the students' increased science achievement was caused by increased general intellectual capacity, and not just by improved domain-specific skills.     

The political dimension in ESE: the construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension

This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension. The model was developed in response to an empirical case study where the data were somewhat confusing. In order understand the empirical data, we used parts of Mouffe’s theory of the political and various scholars’ work on political emotions and placed these aspects in a pragmatist standpoint of experience, emotions and meaning making. The model helped to investigate students’ experiences of the political dimension in situations where they experienced affection, i.e. bodily sensation, and emotions in connection with reflections and discussions about how to handle public issues of sustainable development. The article ends with a theoretical discussion of the findings in order to understand the political dimension in teaching and learning activities and to discern possible directions for future research on political moments in ESE.     

Creativity, integrativism and a pedagogy of connection

A case is made for working in higher education across and between disciplines, variously known as inter- and multidisciplinarity. Integrativism is proposed as an inclusive term for these different but related modes of academic work. Working integratively is presented as a creative activity. The application of integrativism to the curriculum leads to the notion of a pedagogy of connection. Sociocultural theory is a theoretical foundation for a pedagogy of connection which consists of a framework for focusing on the contexts of connection and tools for making connections. Activity theory is the basis of analysing context and analogy and conceptual blending are examples of tools. The pedagogy of connection is demonstrated through the example of a sense of place. The example takes the form of a design experiment.     

VALIDATION OF THE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH SURVEY FOR FIVE SOCIOCULTURAL GROUPS: MULTIGROUP INVARIANCE AND LATENT MEAN ANALYSES

Social‐emotional health influences youth developmental trajectories and there is growing interest among educators to measure the social‐emotional health of the students they serve. This study replicated the psychometric characteristics of the Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a diverse sample of high school students (Grades 9–12; N = 14,171), and determined whether the factor structure was invariant across sociocultural and gender groups. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tested the fit of the previously known factor structure, and then structural equation modeling was used to test invariance across sociocultural and gender groups through multigroup CFAs. Results supported the SEHS measurement model, with full invariance of the SEHS higher‐order structure for all five sociocultural groups. There were no moderate effect size or higher group differences on the overall index for sociocultural or gender groups, which lends support to the eventual development of common norms and universal interpretation guidelines.