Dosuperior teachers employ systematic instructional planning procedures? A descriptive study

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which a group of superior elementary and secondary school teachers employed systematic instructional planning practices. The research method employed was a multicase design in which nine teachers (five secondary and four elementary) from a single school district were studied. Qualitative data in the form of written surveys and face-to-face interviews were collected and analyzed. Results revealed that most of the teachers' planning activities centered around six types of decisions. When the teachers' planning activities were compared with a systematic approach to instructional planning, the two approaches were found to be different in several important ways: the teachers did not place much emphasis on specifying objectives, creating objectives-based tests, or making other instructional decisions in light of objectives. Implications for teaching preservice teachers about systematic planning are discussed. The authors would like to thank the nine teachers who participated in this study, and Julia O'Brien, who helped to conduct it.     

Assessing the Impact of a Ceremony in Honor of the Body Donors in the Development of Ethical and Humanistic Attitudes among Medical Students

Activities related to body donation programs, such as donor memorial ceremonies, provide the opportunity to complement student training, especially with regard to the ethical and humanistic elements involved in medical training. This study sought to assess the impact of a ceremony in honor of the body donors has on ethical and humanistic attitudes in medical students. Medical students were surveyed about their perceptions of changes in themselves, respect for donors and donor families, and their relationship with patients. The effect of the students' contact with the family of the donor was analyzed in students who had contact with the cadaver in the dissection room and had either participated or not participated in the donor memorial ceremony. A total of 370 questionnaires were answered by first-, second-, and third-year medical students at the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre in 2017. The students who participated in the ceremony presented more positive responses in relation to commitment to their studies, reflection on death, and positive development of empathy when compared to those who did not attend the ceremony. Most of the students that attended the ceremony suggested the event led to an improvement in the doctor–patient relationship. These results suggest that cadaver dissection with accompanied memorial ceremony involving contact with donor families is an effective means of fostering ethical and humanistic attitudes among medical students from the beginning of the course.     

How Adults’ Actions,Outcomes, and Testimony Affect Preschoolers’ Persistence

Across four experiments, we looked at how 4- and 5-year-olds' (n = 520) task persistence was affected by observations of adult actions (high or low effort), outcomes (success or failure), and testimony (setting expectations—“This will be hard,” pep talks—“You can do this,” value statements—“Trying hard is important,” and baseline). Across experiments, outcomes had the biggest impact: preschoolers consistently tried harder after seeing the adult succeed than fail. Additionally, adult effort affected children’s persistence, but only when the adult succeeded. Finally, children’s persistence was highest when the adult both succeeded and practiced what she preached: exerting effort while testifying to its value.     

What Students Should Know About Technology: The Case of Scientific Visualization

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Starting with the focal question, “what should students know about technology?” we describe and illustrate a way of designing educational...     

Rats do show primacy and recency effects in memory for lists of spatial locations: A reply to Gaffan

It has been demonstrated that rats display both primacy and recency effects in list-learning experiments for both item- and order-recognition memory for spatial location information. Contrary to a suggestion made by Gaffan (1992) that previous demonstrations of primacy effects in rats are not valid due to statistical and methodological problems, we show that (1) it is not likely that our results are due to experimenter bias and/or nonindependence of trials, (2) primacy and recency effects are obtained whether or not one uses a training criterion, and (3) when many of the published reports from our laboratory are combined, the number of subjects and trials are sufficient to evaluate the validity of primacy and recency effects in list-learning experiments.     

A systematic literature review on intangible assets and open innovation

Despite the growing interest, Open Innovation (OI) in Intangible Assets (IAs) research is still fragmented and displays a limited contextual focus. This paper aims to provide a clearer view of these issues and represents a first step toward filling such research gap. A systematic literature review and a synthesis of high-quality contributions with a focus on a general overview of research on OI and IAs in OI processes have been carried out. By critically evaluating the current body of literature and definitions, we have moved a step further toward comprehending the multiple facets of existing research and highlight several promising areas for future development. In particular, we have analyzed the role of IAs in OI practices by selecting a synthesis and a critical review of their different exploitations. We have combined multiple algorithms to produce a clear topical taxonomy of the multiple strands of research lying at the interface of OI and IAs.     

A Comparison of Procedures for Estimating Person Reliability Parameters in the Graded Response Model

Person reliability parameters (PRPs) model temporary changes in individuals’ attribute level perceptions when responding to self‐report items (higher levels of PRPs represent less fluctuation). PRPs could be useful in measuring careless responding and traitedness. However, it is unclear how well current procedures for estimating PRPs can recover parameter estimates. This study assesses these procedures in terms of mean error (ME), average absolute difference (AAD), and reliability using simulated data with known values. Several prior distributions for PRPs were compared across a number of conditions. Overall, our results revealed little differences between using the χ or lognormal distributions as priors for estimated PRPs. Both distributions produced estimates with reasonable levels of ME; however, the AAD of the estimates was high. AAD did improve slightly as the number of items increased, suggesting that increasing the number of items would ameliorate this problem. Similarly, a larger number of items were necessary to produce reasonable levels of reliability. Based on our results, several conclusions are drawn and implications for future research are discussed.