Ethical issues of behavior modification research in schools

Behavior modification research in the classroom was examined by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects because of the increasingly widespread use of behavioral procedures in the schools, the effectiveness of these procedures in changing academic and social behavior, and the consequent concern about potential misuse. In order to foster the responsible use of behavior modification procedures in the schools on a practical as well as a research basis, the following ethical issues being considered by researchers and the involved public are discussed: informed consent, determination of classroom goals, legitimacy of rewards and aversive controls in the classroom, conceptions of behavior modification as manipulative and mechanistic, who can implement the procedures, research design, and accountability. The authors conclude that the issues regarding protection of human subjects in behavior modification research are no different from other treatment-oriented research with children. However, the high degree of parental and teacher involvement in both research and practice requires shared responsibility for the prevention of misuse of behavior modification procedures.     

"北京模式"的奥林匹克教育——东方特色和发展中国家模式

从国际化视角初步探索北京奥林匹克教育在整个奥林匹克教育历史中的角色,它的特征以及它可能给奥林匹克运动留下的遗产.北京模式的奥林匹克教育有三个特点:在文化上和组织上体现东方文化和社会的特色;它的基本知识内容符合一个发展中国家的需求;它的物质内容符合一个发展中国家的需求.     

The key to success in elite athletes? Explicit and implicit motor learning in youth elite and non-elite soccer players

In sports, fast and accurate execution of movements is required. It has been shown that implicitly learned movements might be less vulnerable than explicitly learned movements to stressful and fast changing circumstances that exist at the elite sports level. The present study provides insight in explicit and implicit motor learning in youth soccer players with different expertise levels. Twenty-seven youth elite soccer players and 25 non-elite soccer players (aged 10–12) performed a serial reaction time task (SRTT). In the SRTT, one of the sequences must be learned explicitly, the other was implicitly learned. No main effect of group was found for implicit and explicit learning on mean reaction time (MRT) and accuracy. However, for MRT, an interaction was found between learning condition, learning phase and group. Analyses showed no group effects for the explicit learning condition, but youth elite soccer players showed better learning in the implicit learning condition. In particular, during implicit motor learning youth elite soccer showed faster MRTs in the early learning phase and earlier reached asymptote performance in terms of MRT. Present findings may be important for sports because children with superior implicit learning abilities in early learning phases may be able to learn more (durable) motor skills in a shorter time period as compared to other children.     

Teaching Them to Teach: Programmatic Evaluation of Graduate Assistants’ Teaching Performance

Academic libraries are one of the most important sources of “on the job” training for future library instructors. Librarians who supervise and assess these future library instructors (often in graduate assistant positions) often choose to provide observations and feedback each semester to these instructors in training. Scholarly literature, however, provides little information on whether this system helps graduate assistants to develop as teachers. The authors of this article assessed graduate assistants’ performance as teachers over three semesters using a system of observation and self-assessment. They analyzed both patterns and areas of growth and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this system.     

Rats remember not wisely but too well

Rats were trained in a three-alternative spatial delayed matching-to-sample task in a starburst maze. Samples consisted of rewarded forced choices of one arm, and retention was indicated by rats’ returning to that arm after a 90-sec delay. If a rat made an error on its first choice, it was returned to the start compartment and allowed a second choice. Unlike in previous experiments with this task, all three arms were available during the animals’ second choices. The rats tended to perseverate in their second choices by returning to the arm that they had erroneously visited on their first choice. In Experiment 1, the accuracy of second choices following first-choice errors was below chance during the first block of sessions, when a 90-sec delay intervened between the first choice and the second choice, and at chance during the second block of sessions, when a short (5–6 see) delay intervened between first and second choices. In Experiment 2, long-delay and short-delay sessions were randomly presented to naive subjects. Similar results were obtained. In both experiments, the tendency to repeat the erroneous first choice was greater when long delays separated the two choices than when short delays were used. The results suggest that rats make their first-choice errors because they erroneously encode or remember the location of the sample and that they base their second choices on the same erroneous-memory. The increase in perseveration at long delays implies some kind of rehearsal-like mechanism that slows forgetting of the memory controlling the first choice.     

Modular programming of curricula

A large scale modularisation of curricula in higher education based on relatively large modules is discussed. These modules are flexible courses and not the well known small instructional modules within a course. The idea of these so-called programme modules, together with some applications and implications are discussed in the context of the Dutch higher educational system which is quite similar to that in other Western European countries. One implication is a less static concept of what a curriculum is. This may affect students, teachers, curriculum planners and legislators in their thinking about what kind of education a university can offer (in the near future) to its potential clients.