Accurately detecting students’ lies regarding relational aggression by correctional instructions

This study investigates the effect of correctional instructions when detecting lies about relational aggression. Based on models from the field of social psychology, we predict that correctional instruction will lead to a less pronounced lie bias and to more accurate lie detection. Seventy-five teachers received videotapes of students’ true denial messages (e.g., students were innocent) and untrue denial messages (students were involved in relational aggression). A random half of the teachers were either given no further instructions or were told not to use stereotypical non-verbal cues when forming judgements (correctional instruction condition). As predicted, teachers in the correctional instruction condition were slightly better at detecting true than invented stories.     

Perceptions of women managers and their communicator competencies 1

A stepfamily often faces unique challenges that can influence the strength of its bonds. One way in which stepfamily members adapt to these challenges is through communication. This study investigates adolescents’ and young adults’ use of topic avoidance in stepfamilies and its association with satisfaction and the parenting style of the stepparent. The results revealed that the more satisfied the participants were with their mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, and stepfamily overall, the less avoidance they were likely to employ. The findings also showed that more authoritarian stepparenting tended to increase the amount of avoidance, whereas more permissiveness and authoritativeness decreased it. Authoritativeness and authoritarianism were more strongly associated than permissiveness with participants’ avoidance. Perceptions of authoritarian stepparenting were also negatively associated with participants’ satisfaction with their stepparent. Finally, low or high degrees of persmissiveness were associated with low levels of satisfaction, but moderate degrees of permissive stepparenting were associated with moderate degrees of satisfaction with one's stepfamily.     

Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race

Abstract

Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times.     

Testing Creativity and Personality to Explore Creative Potentials in the Science Classroom

Integrating creativity into science classes may pave the way to tapping complex scientific phenomena. Although not yet conclusively defined nor assessed using standardized measures, creativity is understood to support cognitive learning in formal and informal settings. However, the successful integration of creativity in educational modules depends on many factors. As our knowledge of how to identify these factors is still limited, teachers may have difficulties effectively monitoring and fostering creativity. Consequently, a valid means to measure creativity would help teachers to identify creativity and its influencing factors within the limited scope of science lessons. In the present study, we collected data from 538 Bavarian secondary school students (M?±?SD?=?16.96?±?2.99; 65.4%, female) focussing on personality and creativity measures. Comparable to previous studies, two subscales for creativity were applied: act, comprising conscious and adaptable cognitive processes, and flow, describing a creative mental state of full immersion. Since personality is understood to be linked to creativity, we used the Big Five scale with its shortened item battery to assess personality. We found that personal characteristics such as conscientiousness and flow, openness and agreeableness, and extraversion and neuroticism were significantly correlated. Anticipated gender and age differences were only evident when extreme groups were compared: age influenced act in younger male students and flow in older female students. Drawing on the literature and our results, we suggest pedagogical approaches to provide opportunities for creativity in science classrooms.

     

Task Experience as a Boundary Condition for the Negative Effects of Irrelevant Information on Learning

Research on multimedia learning has shown that learning is hampered when a multimedia message includes extraneous information that is not relevant for the task, because processing the extraneous information uses up scarce attention and working memory resources. However, eye-tracking research suggests that task experience might be a boundary condition for this negative effect of extraneous information on learning, because people seem to learn to ignore task-irrelevant information over time. We therefore hypothesised that extraneous information might no longer hamper learning when it is present over a series of tasks, giving learners the chance to adapt their study strategy. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. In experiments 1a/1b, participants learned the definitions of new words (from an artificial language) that denoted actions, with matching pictures (same action), mismatching pictures (another action), or without pictures. Mismatching pictures hampered learning compared with matching pictures. Experiment 2 showed that task experience may indeed be a boundary condition to this negative effect on learning: the initial negative effect was no longer present when learners gained experience with the task. This suggests that learners adapted their study strategy, ignoring the mismatching pictures. That hypothesis was tested in experiment 3, using eye tracking. Results showed that attention to the pictures waned with task experience, and that this decrease was stronger for mismatching than for matching pictures. Our findings demonstrate the importance of investigating multimedia effects over time and in relation to study strategies.     

Skills development for the knowledge economy in Asia: Some conclusions from the OECD experience

The development of a knowledge-based economy relies greatly on developing the skills and education needed for inclusive and sustainable development so that growth will reach all parts of the society. Addressing skills development for all is challenging for all OECD countries; Asian economies are working towards developing integrated pathways of skills and employment. This paper addresses some key aspects of skills development in OECD countries through a case study of small and medium enterprises as a key sector in both OECD and Asian economies. It extracts some lessons from this analysis that apply to the unique nature of skills development in Asia.     

Seizing the opportunity: Collaborative creation of academic integrity and information literacy LMS modules for undergraduate Chemistry

With the recent mass shift to an online environment in the university context and increases in course sizes, the need for online learning management system (LMS) content from departments, libraries, and writing services is at an all-time high. In particular, integrated course content is needed that addresses academic integrity and information literacy skills holistically.To ensure that a large number of first-year students would become aware of the resources and services available to them for research, writing, and academic integrity, a partnership between librarians, faculty, and writing support services has produced a series of scaffolded online learning opportunities for first-year undergraduate Chemistry students in their course LMS. The topics collaboratively identified to support students include: academic honesty and integrity, scientific writing, peer review, finding sources, reading academic chemistry articles, and citing using the American Chemical Society citation style.This column will describe and analyze the program development and implementation, make connections to resource development and promotion, and conclude with the limitations and next steps for growth. The developed materials have evolved over the years, and it is hoped that by sharing our experiences, others can see opportunities for online course content development through academic library partnerships.     

Examining the Effect of Enactment of a Geospatial Curriculum on Students’ Geospatial Thinking and Reasoning

A potential method for teaching geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) is through geospatially enabled learning technologies. We developed an energy resources geospatial curriculum that included learning activities with geographic information systems and virtual globes. This study investigated how 13 urban middle school teachers implemented and varied the enactment of the curriculum with their students and investigated which teacher- and student-level factors accounted for students’ GTR posttest achievement. Data included biweekly implementation surveys from teachers and energy resources content and GTR pre- and posttest achievement measures from 1,049 students. Students significantly increased both their energy resources content knowledge and their GTR skills related to energy resources at the end of the curriculum enactment. Both multiple regression and hierarchical linear modeling found that students’ initial GTR abilities and gain in energy content knowledge were significantly explanatory variables for their geospatial achievement at the end of curriculum enactment, p < .001. Teacher enactment factors, including adherence to implementing the critical components of the curriculum or the number of years the teachers had taught the curriculum, did not have significant effects on students’ geospatial posttest achievement. The findings from this study provide support that learning with geospatially enabled learning technologies can support GTR with urban middle-level learners.