Students’ experiences of clinic‐based learning during a final year veterinary internship programme

This study investigated veterinary students’ experiences of clinic‐based learning (CBL) during a comprehensive final year internship programme. Open‐ended surveys (n = 93) were used to gather qualitative data about students’ conceptions of what is learned during CBL and their approaches to learning in clinics. Phenomenography was used for detailed analysis of the variation evident in students’ responses. Relationships between qualitative differences in students’ conceptions and approaches were then evaluated using quantitative statistical analysis. Links to achievement during final year were examined. Close associations were found between the quality of students’ experiences of CBL and achievement during the internship programme.     

Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial

The effectiveness of the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum in improving the education of 3- and 4-year-old children was evaluated by means of a randomized trial. The Tools curriculum, based on the work of Vygotsky, focuses on the development of self-regulation at the same time as teaching literacy and mathematics skills in a way that is socially mediated by peers and teachers and with a focus on play. The control group experienced an established district-created model described as a “balanced literacy curriculum with themes.” Teachers and students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control classrooms. Children (88 Tools and 122 control) were compared on social behavior, language, and literacy growth. The Tools curriculum was found to improve classroom quality and children's executive function as indicated by lower scores on a problem behavior scale. There were indications that Tools also improved children's language development, but these effects were smaller and did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance in multi-level models or after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Our findings indicate that a developmentally appropriate curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development so as to improve both the social and academic success of young children. Moreover, it is suggested that to the extent child care commonly increases behavior problems this outcome may be reversed through the use of more appropriate curricula that actually enhance self-regulation.     

Object permanence in cats and dogs

Object permanence was assessed for cats and dogs, using tasks analogous to those typically employed for human infants. Neither species solved all of the problems correctly when rewarded only by the discovery of a hidden toy. However, both species showed that they had fully developed concepts of object permanence when the problems were changed so that the animals had to search for hidden food in an odor-control procedure. These results indicate that sensorimotor intelligence is completely developed in these nonprimates.     

S(he) loves me,s(he) loves me not: Predictors of relational information‐seeking in courtship and beyond

This study extends Baxter and Wilmot's (1984) work on the secret tests couples use to acquire information about the state of their relationships. No gender differences were found in levels of testing or in the use of specific tests in our sample of 226 romantically‐involved individuals, who reported on 1025 instances of testing. The effects of commitment, perceptions of partner's commitment, courtship progress, and jealousy on testing were also examined. Overall amount of testing was inversely correlated with courtship progress, suggesting that such tests characterize the earliest stages of courtship, and positively correlated with jealousy. In addition, females who perceived that their partners were less committed to their relationships were slightly more likely to engage in relational information‐seeking. Reliance upon specific tests was associated with several of the relationship measures. For instance, Endurance tests were best predicted by perceptions of high partner commitment; Separation tests were used when commitment by self and partner was low, when the relationship had not advanced much, and when the information‐seeker was jealous; and use of Triangle tests was associated with jealousy. Several significant contingencies were found among dimensions of the testing situation. The type of test used was associated with what respondents learned about their partners' commitment, with the probability of engaging in state‐of‐the relationship talks, and with the deliberate versus accidental nature of the testing episode. It was also found that deliberate tests were more likely than accidental ones to lead to feelings that the future course of the relationship was predictable and to open communication about the relationship. Finally, tentative support was found for a confirmatory bias in testing in which testers set themselves up to learn that their partners value the relationship.     

Eventual school placement of kindergartners observed as high risk in the classroom

To determine whether children's observable kindergarten behavior might predict eventual educational risk, 40 of 94 children originally observed in their classrooms at the beginning of kindergarten were followed at completion of second grade. The 40 subjects appeared to be representative in that they did not differ significantly from the total sample in terms of original kindergarten classroom behavior, sex, or race. Using four clusters of kindergarten behavior, significant differences were found in eventual special placement and in ratings of teacher anecdotal material. Attending behavior correlated highly with eventual risk, leading to speculation about early identification procedures.     

The Hierarchical Ordering of Conceptual Systems in Biology: problems of Student teachers

This article illustrates some of the problems faced by Student teachers of biology when they try to realize the process of ‘didactic transformation’ (Boschhuizen, 1982, p. 200) while planning their classes. This ‘didactic transformation’ raises questions of choice, structuring and sequencing. A content structure (Boschhuizen, 1982, p. 200) has been proposed: “the hierarchical concept‐map”. Joyce & Weil (1980, p. 91) point out the lack of heuristics to draw these hierarchical concept‐maps.

In cooperation with Student teachers, teacher trainers and pupils a method has been developed to draw hierarchical concept‐maps. This method has been called a method of subject‐matter analysis (Boschhuizen, 1982). This method has been introduced as a component of the curriculum of the teachers’ training course at the Free University in Amsterdam. The problems of testees who realize the process of ‘didactic transformation’ following their own cognitive structure with or without making use of the method of subject‐matter analysis, have been examined.

This research has resulted in a classification of these transformation problems.     

Effects of Headings on Text Summarization

A summarization task was used to study whether headings influence readers' representations of the topic structure of a text. College students (Experiments 1-3) and sixth- and eighth-graders (Experiment 3) summarized a multiple topic text that (a) included headings introducing every new subtopic, (b) included headings introducing half of the new subtopics, or (c) included no headings. In all experiments, topics were more likely to be included in a summary if they were signaled than if they were not signaled. This effect was magnified when the text was only half signaled: Signaled topics were more likely to appear in a summary if only half the text topics were signaled than if all of the topics were signaled; however, unsignaled topics were less likely to appear in a summary if half of the text topics were signaled than if none of the text topics were signaled. The findings demonstrate that readers rely heavily on headings in a task that emphasizes attention to a text's topic structure. It is suggested that previously observed signaling effects on text recall are mediated by effects on how readers represent a text's topic structure. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.