Transformations and Transfer: Preschool Children Understand Abstract Relations and Reason Analogically in a Causal Task

Previous research suggests that preschoolers struggle with understanding abstract relations and with reasoning by analogy. Four experiments find, in contrast, that 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 168) are surprisingly adept at relational and analogical reasoning within a causal context. In earlier studies preschoolers routinely favored images that share thematic or perceptual commonalities with a target image (object matches) over choices that match the target along abstract relations (relational matches). The present studies embed such choice tasks within a cause-and-effect framework. Without causal framing, preschoolers strongly favor object matches, replicating the results of previous studies. But with causal framing, preschoolers succeed at analogical transfer (i.e., choose relational matches). These findings suggest that causal framing facilitates early analogical reasoning.     

Science teachers' views and practices in planning for teaching

This article studies the views and practices of a group of secondary school science teachers toward lesson planning. The two main questions posed are: “What do teachers do when they prepare their lessons?” and “What do teachers think of their own planning?” We describe the decisions made by the teachers, the things they take into account, what they give most importance to, the time spent, the source of their knowledge, and how they evaluate the results. The information was obtained by structured personal interviews, which were compared with reports written by the teachers. Our findings led us to reflect on ways in which lesson planning may be introduced into training programs. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 493–513, 1999     

Service Learning as a Pedagogy of Whiteness

In this article we employ whiteness as a conceptual framework to contextualize how faculty develop and implement, and consequently how students experience, service learning. A vignette that illustrates the pervasiveness of whiteness in service learning is followed by an analysis that details how whiteness frames the teaching and learning in this service learning experience. Through this example and analysis, we seek to increase instructors’ capacity and confidence to interrupt the patterns and privileges of whiteness that too often are normalized in service learning.     

Balancing Head and Heart: The Importance of Relational Accountability in Community-University Partnerships

In this article we introduce a “head and heart” approach to community-engaged scholarship. Through the literatures of Aboriginal scholarship and engaged scholarship we reflect on a community-university research and program development project undertaken in response to health and education concerns of Aboriginal people in Canada. We suggest that the head and heart approach was crucial to the program’s success and provides access to an ethical space where multiple worldviews are recognized and where the importance of relational accountability becomes evident. We then examine the implications of this approach for engaged scholarship and higher education practices.     

On the potential for using immersive virtual environments to support laboratory experiment contextualisation

This paper explores the hypothesis that embedding a laboratory activity into a virtual environment can provide a richer experimental context and hence improve the understanding of the relationship between a theoretical model and the real world, particularly in terms of the model's strengths and weaknesses. While an identified learning objective of laboratories is to support the understanding of the relationship between models and reality, the paper illustrates that this understanding is hindered by inherently limited experiments and that there is scope for improvement. Despite the contextualisation of learning activities having been shown to support learning objectives in many fields, there is traditionally little contextual information presented during laboratory experimentation. The paper argues that the enhancing laboratory activity with contextual information affords an opportunity to improve students’ understanding of the relationship between the theoretical model and the experiment (which is effectively a proxy for the complex real world), thereby improving their understanding of the relationship between the model and reality. The authors propose that these improvements can be achieved by setting remote laboratories within context-rich virtual worlds.     

Pre-training perceived wellness impacts training output in Australian football players

The impact of perceived wellness on a range of external load parameters, rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and external load:RPE ratios, was explored during skill-based training in Australian footballers. Fifteen training sessions involving 36 participants were analysed. Each morning before any physical training, players completed a customised perceived wellness questionnaire (sleep quality, fatigue, stress, mood and muscle soreness). Microtechnology devices provided external load (average speed, high-speed running distance, player load and player load slow). Players provided RPE using the modified Borg category-ratio 10 RPE scale. Mixed-effect linear models revealed significant effects of wellness Z-score on player load and player load slow. Effects are reported with 95% confidence limits. A wellness Z-score of ?1 corresponded to a ?4.9 ± 3.1 and ?8.6 ± 3.9% reduction in player load and player load slow, respectively, compared to those without reduced wellness. Small significant effects were also seen in the average speed:RPE and player load slow:RPE models. A wellness Z-score of ?1 corresponded to a 0.43 ± 0.38 m·min^?1 and ?0.02 ± 0.01 au·min^?1 change in the average speed:RPE and player load slow:RPE ratios, respectively. Magnitude-based analysis revealed that the practical size of the effect of a pre-training perceived wellness Z-score of ?1 would have on player load slow was likely negative. The results of this study suggests that monitoring pre-training perceived wellness may provide coaches with information about the intensity of output that can be expected from individual players during a training session.     

Does Religious Education as an examination subject work to promote community cohesion? An empirical enquiry among 14- to 15-year-old adolescents in England and Wales

This study begins by examining the way in which, in both England and Wales, Religious Education has become implicated in political discussion regarding the role of education in promoting community cohesion. The relationship between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity (as an affective indicator of community cohesion) is then explored among 3052 14- to 15-year-old students. After controlling for contextual factors (school type and geographical location), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion) and religious factors (Christian affiliation, worship attendance, personal prayer and belief in God), a small but significant positive association was found between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity. This finding may be interpreted as supporting the view that Religious Education works to promote community cohesion, although the wider debate that the community cohesion agenda has generated among religious educators needs further exploration.     

Explaining Constrains Causal Learning in Childhood

Three experiments investigate how self‐generated explanation influences children's causal learning. Five‐year‐olds (N = 114) observed data consistent with two hypotheses and were prompted to explain or to report each observation. In Study 1, when making novel generalizations, explainers were more likely to favor the hypothesis that accounted for more observations. In Study 2, explainers favored a hypothesis that was consistent with prior knowledge. Study 3 pitted a hypothesis that accounted for more observations against a hypothesis consistent with prior knowledge. Explainers were more likely to base generalizations on prior knowledge. Findings suggest that attempts to explain drive children to evaluate hypotheses using features of “good” explanations, or those supporting generalizations with broad scope, as informed by children's prior knowledge and observations.     

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on caregiver mental health and the child caregiving environment in a low-resource,rural context

Early child development has been influenced directly and indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic, and these effects are exacerbated in contexts of poverty. This study estimates effects of the pandemic and subsequent population lockdowns on mental health, caregiving practices, and freedom of movement among female caregivers of children 6–27 months (50% female), in rural Bangladesh. A cohort (N = 517) was assessed before and during the pandemic (May–June, 2019 and July–September, 2020). Caregivers who experienced more food insecurity and financial loss during the pandemic reported larger increases in depressive symptoms (0.26 SD, 95% CI 0.08–0.44; 0.21 SD, 0.04–0.40) compared to less affected caregivers. Stimulating caregiving and freedom of movement results were inconsistent. Increases in depressive symptoms during the pandemic may have consequences for child development.