Methods and impact of correcting heart rate data errors during exercise in older adults

Heart rate (HR) by time curves could be useful as a measure of treatment fidelity (TF). The purposes were to describe the frequency of common recording irregularities (e.g. errors) observed during exercise, validate a process to correct those errors, and determine whether there is a clinically meaningful benefit to data correction. In total, 1895 exercise sessions from 69 older adults with hip fracture were inspected for errors in the placement of event markers (duration of exercise) and signal artifacts. Marker errors occurred in 33% of the participants and corrected in 324 sessions. Signal artifacts occurred in 96% of the participants and eliminated in 702 sessions. Computer code was 85% accurate in detecting signal artifacts, compared to 97% for investigators. HR was significantly higher after correction, but the average change was only 0.69 + 1.20 beats per minute. An HR monitor showing HR by time curves (HRxTC) can be used to evaluate TF during exercise.     

Using Performance-Based Assessments to Prepare Safe Science Teachers

Standard 9 of the National Science Teachers Association Standards for Science Teacher Preparation is designed to ensure that science teacher preparation programs provide preservice science teachers with the knowledge and skills to understand and successfully engage students in a safe and ethical manner. This standard contains four components describing science teachers’ legal and ethical responsibilities, appropriate use of instructional materials (chemicals in particular), emergency procedures and safety equipment, and guidelines for proper use of living organisms in the classroom. In this article, we describe the requirements of Standard 9 and provide guidance on assessments that can be used to present evidence for preservice teachers’ competence in each of the four components.     

Recent Sexual Assault and Suicidal Behaviors in College Students: The Moderating Role of Anger

Sexual assault and suicide are 2 of many issues facing college students. Recent research calls for an examination of anger in suicidal behavior. Through a series of moderated logistic regression models, the authors examined the moderating effects of anger on the association of recent sexual assault and suicidal behaviors. Results support the moderating role of anger in the association of sexual assault with suicidal thinking, but not with self‐injury or suicide attempts. The authors discuss practitioner implications.     

Criticality in international higher education research: a critical discourse analysis of higher education journals

The current study utilizes the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211 Ajzen 1991) to examine an instructor confirmation-interaction model in the instructional communication context to discover a means by which instructors might cultivate positive student attitudes and increase beliefs that interactions with instructors would be beneficial in the future. Specifically, the model examines how teacher confirmation (Ellis 2000) influences students’ behavioral intention to communicate with instructors. Surveys were distributed to 343 college students (41.7% male and 58.1% female) in a basic communication course. Results were primarily consistent with the proposed model; teacher confirmation was significantly related to attitudes toward communicating with an instructor, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were also positively related to students’ behavioral intention to communicate with the instructor. However, results reveal attitudes toward communicating do not predict students’ behavioral intention to communicate with instructors. It is recommended that future models examine a more contemporary, hi-tech representation of attitude toward student-instructor interactions as it may produce a significant association with students’ behavioral intent to communicate with them. The study concludes with theoretical and practical implications to examine student classroom communication via the confirmation-interaction model and the theory of planned behavior.     

Considerations and Strategies for Teaching Online Counseling Skills: Establishing Relationships in Cyberspace

As technology advances and the use of online counseling becomes more routine, attention must be paid to instruction regarding online counseling skills. The authors present considerations for teaching basic online counseling skills to master's‐level counseling students. Recommendations are made for helping students to establish and maintain therapeutic relationships online. Suggestions specific to counselor preparation and future research are provided.     

A study of students’ reasoning about probabilistic causality: Implications for understanding complex systems and for instructional design

Understanding complex systems requires reasoning about causal relationships that behave or appear to behave probabilistically. Features such as distributed agency, large spatial scales, and time delays obscure co-variation relationships and complex interactions can result in non-deterministic relationships between causes and effects that are best understood statistically. Causal Bayesian Research (e.g. Gopnik and Schulz in Causal learning: psychology, philosophy, and computation, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007) suggests that summing across probabilistic instances is inherent to human causal induction, yet other research (e.g. Schulz and Sommerville in Child Development 77(2):427–442, 2006) suggests a human tendency to assume deterministic relationships. Classroom science learning often stresses the replicability of outcomes, putting this learning in tension with understanding probabilistic patterns in complex systems. This investigation examined students’ reasoning patterns on tasks with probabilistic causal features. Microgenetic studies were conducted in multiple sessions over a school year with students in kindergarten, second, fourth and sixth grades (n = 16) to assess their assumptions when dealing with tasks from four domains: social; games; machines; and biology. Later sessions attempted to scaffold students’ understanding using connection making and analogical reasoning. This paper reports on the overall patterns and trends in the data. Most students held a deterministic stance at the outset; however, at least one student at each grade level reasoned probabilistically from the start. All students except one eventually revealed at least one topic for which they held a primarily probabilistic stance. The results have implications for how students reason about complex systems and for how patterns of co-variation and evidence in science are discussed.