Formative evaluation applied to a learning hierarchy

A formative evaluation method applicable to learning hierarchies is described which simplifies data collection by employing results from a posttest. Relations among pairs of lower and higher elements of a portion of a previously formulated hierarchy for graphic skills in kinematics were tested by means of data obtained from a posttest given to 148 secondary-school students. Results were compared with those previously obtained for the same hierarchy by a rigorous validation method. Correspondence of the two sets of results was high. Examination of test responses for discrepant instances yielded further information of value. Results additionally indicate hierarchical relationships to be the same in retention as they were for learning.     

New horizons in philosophy

Good lectures are an important part of the learning process. Lectures could be improved by viewing them as oral communication and by applying sound communication theory to their development.     

Uncertainty,environmental policy and social learning

This note puts the research project which led to this Special Issue in the context of developments in and around environmental policy over the past two decades, from the perspective of someone closely involved. It links political and institutional problems over sustainable development to the changing role and authority of science in contemporary society, and to the new kind of emphasis on social learning to be found in the papers that follow.     

Boyer in the Middle: Second Generation Challenges to Emerging Scholarship

This article reports on an examination of the distinctive second-generation challenges and opportunities faced by an early institutional adopter of the Boyer model of scholarship. Following the first cohort of faculty to be reviewed for tenure and promotion based on these criteria, we report the results of a survey designed to determine the perceptions of faculty and administrators of the degree to which emerging forms of scholarship had been integrated into the university culture including factors such as institutional identity, support structures, and faculty participation. This case study sheds light on the process of adaptation at this single institution and provides glimpses of how cultural change might occur across higher education.     

Meztizaje and remembering in Afro-Mexican communities of the Costa Chica: implications for archival education in Mexico

This paper summarizes some of the major themes of a larger study that used Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica as a case study to understand archival education in Mexico. This study seeks to provide insight on how absences of Mexicans of African descent from the official record and recordkeeping came into being in Mexico; to examine the role that education of archival professionals might play in addressing or contributing to these absences; and to produce recommendations for remedying this under-documentation—at least in part—through changes to what is currently taught in formal archival education at the university level.