Education research speaks—dare we listen?

From learning theorists, from political and social scientists, from counseling psychologists, from cognition scientists, and from pedagogical researchers, have come messages that have the potential of quiet revolutions.     

An example of the teacher expectation effect in mixed ability teaching

Much interest has been shown recently in teacher expectation or “self-fulfilling prophecy” effects, despite the difficulty of making objective observations of the phenomenon. The present case study concerns a population of twelve mixed-ability chemistry classes in a comprehensive school in the U.K. The poor behavior of one of the groups led to a stigma being attached to it by staff, and for various doubtful reasons, this became associated with another class as well. A statistical analysis of examination marks shows that neither reputation was justified in terms of academic achievement, and quantifies possible teacher expectation effects arising from the situation. The findings demonstrate the ease with which academic achievements can be hampered unwittingly by the prejudices of a teacher even in a well-structured learning situation.     

Changes in serum haptoglobin as an acute response to a marathon road race

In order to assess the possible occurrence of acute haemolysis with prolonged exertion, serum haptoglobin levels were determined from venous blood samples collected from eight male runners immediately preceding (PreRH), immediately following (PRH1), and 6 h following (PRH2) completion of a marathon road race. The subjects' mean age, percentage of body fat, and maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) were 46 +/- 9 years, 12.1 +/- 3.4% and 54.9 +/- 8.4 ml kg-1 min-1, respectively. The mean race finish time for the subjects was 3:35 +/- 0:18 h:min. The PreRH, PRH1 and PRH2 averaged 129 +/-18, 97 +/- 48 and 86 +/- 35 mg dl-1 respectively. Significant differences of -32.5 mg dl-1 between PreRH versus PRH1 and -42.5 mg dl-1 between PreRH versus PRH2 were found. The difference between PRH1 and PRH2 of -10.6 mg dl-1 was not significant. No significant correlations were found between the decreases in serum haptoglobin and VO2max or race finish time. The data suggests to occurrence of an acute haemolysis with performance of the marathon road race.