Inspiring and Training Students for Social Action: Renewing a Needed Tradition

In social work, it is believed that certain knowledge and skills are learned more effectively through experience than through didactic classroom content. Members of the faculty of a school of social work have developed a Social Action Day to reinforce curriculum and translate into practice material about advocacy and ethical responsibilities for social action; show the breadth of social work practice; and enhance the school's sense of community. The authors share their experience to inspire other social work faculty, so that they are better able to foster student interest and passion for political action that may generate social change.     

Communication and gender identity: A retrospective analysis

Gender identity constancy and change must be traversed over the life span. The participants in this study, age 67 to 97 years, described their femininity and masculinity and provided examples of same‐sexed and opposite‐sexed behaviors. Their narratives suggest that their interactions with others, circumstances, and life stage all affect their gender identity constancy and change. Gender identity constancy and change appear to result from multiple factors.     

Gerontology Doctoral Training: The Value of Goals,Program Perceptions,and Prior Experience Among Students

This study concerns the educational experiences and progression through the doctoral programs of two cohorts of students in 5 of the 6 gerontology doctoral programs within the United States. The project goals include assessments of change and/or stability in projected career trajectories, as well as an assessment of students' perceptions of the program-student fit in terms of curriculum, research experience, and faculty involvement. This paper focuses on the perceptions and expectations of students during their first year. Perceptions of the programs are mostly positive, but areas for improvement are identified. Further investigations of data through the subsequent years identify areas of focus for continued modification and potential improvement of doctoral programs.     

Curricular design and implementation as a site of teacher expertise and learning

Previously, research about teacher expertise has adhered to relatively fixed notions of teacher expertise. However, in this study, we share data from teacher study group (TSG) meetings, which demonstrate a dynamic understanding of teacher expertise. In these meetings, teachers discursively positioned themselves, their colleagues, and the research team as both experts and learners as they engaged in a community of enquiry around questions of curriculum design and implementation. We argue that teachers’ dynamic and multiple positionings generated especially striking opportunities for learning. As teachers externalized their expert knowledge, their assumptions were brought forth to be examined, challenged, and reconsidered, thus opening space for further learning. We argue that these TSGs thus existed as a site for teacher learning, in which teacher dialog around curricular design, redesign, and the student learning that occurred in the lessons influenced their own learning about their students’ capabilities. We make a case for further research that explores how teacher expertise is interwoven with episodes of teacher learning. We assert that a complex understanding of teacher expertise, grounded in principles of learning occurring through social interaction, has important implications for how the field should move forward in its approach to fostering teacher learning throughout teachers’ careers.     

On the need for expanded guidance in navigating ethical learning research at science museums

Science learning occurs throughout people's lives, inside and outside of school, in formal, informal, and nonformal settings. While museums have long played a role in science education, learning in this and other informal settings has not been studied nor understood as deeply as in formal settings (i.e., schools and classrooms). This position paper, written by learning researchers in a science museum engaged in equity and access work, notes that while the researchers consider the ethics of their work regularly and deeply, little formal guidance exists for the ethical challenges they routinely face in studying science learning. To explore this, the paper first shares contexts of studying informal science education at the Science Museum of Minnesota, including epistemological understandings of both science and research, a commitment to justice-based equity, and existing ethical guidance and processes. Drawing on three research projects, it explores ethical issues pertaining to (a) museum visitors and (b) museum staff and community members engaging in participatory research. First, as visitors do not generally come to a museum to be part of a research study, learning researchers must consider sampling, representation, and data collection methods, balancing these with a museum-goer's desires for their visit. Second, when using participatory methodologies with staff, community members, and young people as co-researchers, ethical considerations involve building relationships, redefining (unanticipated) risks, and data collection and dissemination practices that do not extend existing social inequities or work hierarchies. Ultimately, this position paper argues for expanded or revised ethical guidance that meets the needs of this work, surpasses current guidelines or institutional review board practices, draws on epistemologies outside of a supposedly neutral, individualistic Western framework, and places participants at the center of the work. Such a discussion could enhance the ethical study of science learning across settings.     

Small steps and stronger relationships: parents' experiences of homeschooling children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)

During the current global pandemic, parents and carers in England and across the UK have been asked by the Government to ‘home school’ their child/ren, and a plethora of resources have been produced and made available to assist with this. The perceived detrimental effects of being absent from school have been a driver for the Government in ensuring that schools remain open for as long as possible, and the current pandemic situation is replete with narratives of ‘loss’. Little attention has been paid to any potential benefits for children and families of homeschooling or the opportunities it provides. This paper reports on a small-scale online survey that explored the experiences of parents’ homeschooling their child/ren with SEND during a global pandemic in England. The findings are revealed through a qualitative methodology merged with post-qualitative concepts that emerged post-analysis. Novel findings regarding possibilities for creative and inclusive learning practices, family bonding and children’s improved social and emotional well-being are revealed in this paper.     

Reasons for Utilizing Mental Health Services as Predictors of College Students’ Alcohol Risk

The authors examined college student drinkers’ (n = 153) reasons for seeking counseling services and risk for alcohol problems. Students seeking help for impulse‐ or anger‐related issues and depression were at heightened risk for alcohol problems. Only 10% of students sought alcohol‐related help despite high rates of hazardous alcohol use (80%) and dependence (39%). Targeted screening and intervention in college counseling centers may enable providers to effectively identify and treat students in need of alcohol treatment.     

Using the retrospective pretest to get usable,indirect evidence of student learning

Minimal evidence exists regarding the retrospective pretest’s effectiveness as a tool to obtain usable, indirect evidence of student learning in open admissions institutions. The researcher conducted this study to determine if a retrospective pretest more accurately detected a change in students’ knowledge compared to a conventional pretest–posttest. The researcher designed a 17‐item inventory covering course objectives, and students were randomly assigned to either a retrospective pretest (referred to as post‐then) or a conventional pretest–posttest group. Findings indicated that participants in the post‐then group reported a greater change in knowledge compared to the conventional group. This finding supported the use of the retrospective pretest as a tool for getting usable, indirect evidence of student learning. Future research needs to examine response effect, alternative ways of calculating treatment effect and the confounding influences of other perceptual variables.     

Prolonged Exercise and Changes in Percent Fat Determinations by Hydrostatic Weighing and Scintillation Counting

Abstract

The superiority of motor set reaction time over sensory set reaction time has been accepted since the 1880s. Recently, however, there has been work favoring the sensory set. This study attempted to reconcile the varied findings. Woodworth had suggested that set and stimulus intensity interact. To test that presumed interaction and related ideas, the study proposed to determine not only the effect of motor set and sensory set on reaction time (RT) and muscle electrical activity (MEA), but also, the relationship between motor set and sensory set RT and motor set and sensory set MEA. Twenty-four subjects were tested in sessions that included the placement of electrodes on the motor end point of the extensor digitorum muscle, set instructions, practice, and data collection. Data collection consisted of recording of RT and MEA for 96 trials, 12 recordings at each of four levels of auditory stimulus intensity for each of the two sets. An ANOVA for repeated measures produced a significant interaction between set and intensity for RT; thus the Woodworth prediction was upheld. The results seem best explained in terms of signal detection theory and the attention demands of movement.