Utility value interventions in a college biology lab: The impact on motivation

Science writing, such as lab reports, allows students to form a meaningful understanding of scientific concepts. However, students often view scientific writing as unimportant and utilize surface level approaches when completing writing assignments. The current study implemented three experimental interventions (directly-communicated, self-generated, and hybrid) aligned with prior literature and designed to improve the utility value of lab reports in college settings. Participants (n = 1,002) were recruited from 43 lab sections of an introductory biology course at a large southeastern university. Measures of subjective task value (utility value, attainment value, cost, and intrinsic value) were collected pre-, mid-, and post-intervention. The self-generated and hybrid groups exhibited higher self-reported utility value by posttest compared to the control group. Requiring students to generate their own utility value toward a task, followed by a written reflection, increases students' maintained and situational interest for biology laboratory reports.     

Why are they not accessing it? User barriers to clinical information access

The Medical Library Association''s InSight Initiative provides an open and collaborative environment for library and industry partners to discuss vexing problems and find solutions to better serve their users. The initiative''s fifth summit, continuing work from the previous summit, focused on understanding how users discover and access information in the clinical environment. During the summit, participants were divided into working groups and encouraged to create a tangible product as a result of their discussions. At the end of the summit, participants established a framework for understanding users'' pain points, discussed possible solutions to those points, and received feedback on their work from an End User Advisory Board comprising physicians, clinical researchers, and clinical faculty in biomedicine. In addition to the pain point framework, participants are developing MLA InSight Initiative Learning content with modules to educate librarians and publishers about critical aspects of user behavior. The 2020 Insight Initiative Fall Forum will serve as a virtual home for constructive dialogue between health sciences librarians and publishers on improving discovery and access to information.     

Play, Language, and Maternal Responsiveness: A Longitudinal Study of Deaf and Hearing Infants

Language, maternal responsiveness, and developmental play levels were investigated in 43 middle-class dyads at 9, 12, and 18 months: hearing child/hearing mother (hH), deaf child/deaf mother (dD), deaf child/hearing mother (dH). Group dH provides information about play when language is delayed and maternal responsiveness decreased. Group dD provides information on developmental effects of diminished audition. There were no 9-month group play differences. At 12 months, hH infants displayed more representational play than infants in either deaf group ( p < .001). At 18 months, hH and dD children displayed more preplanned play than dH children ( p = .01). At 12 and 18 months, language was associated only marginally with play levels. Maternal responsiveness was significantly associated with 18-month-olds' preplanned play ( p = .01).     

“I Hope to Remain the Same”: Continuity and Change in College Students' Sexual Possible Selves across the First Semester

This study replicates and extends research on college students’ sexual possible selves by longitudinally examining their sexual expectations, fears, and behavioral strategies at the beginning and end of the first semester in college. Open-ended responses were collected at two time points (T1, N?=?78; T2, N?=?40) and were analyzed using directed content analysis. First semester students’ salient expectations and fears focused on abstinence, interpersonal relationships, quantity, conditional sex, decreasing/avoidant behaviors, and fears related to sexual health/well-being, sexual assault/coercion, self-focus, and increased sexual risk at both T1 and T2. However, two new themes emerged at T2: maintain (expected) and partner-focus (feared). At both time points, behavioral strategies included abstinence, making opportunities, restricting boundaries, sexual health/well-being, thoughtful/informed decisions, and self-assertion/protection. Quantitative frequency comparisons were also conducted to examine changes in the prevalence of the reported categories and indicated shifts in salient expectations, fears, and strategies across the first semester. Implications for sexual education are discussed.     

Dis(en)abled: legitimating discriminatory practice in the name of inclusion?

This article explores tensions between the policies and practice of inclusion and the lived experiences of disabled young people in education. Drawing on the narratives of two young men who participated in a small pilot study, it utilises theoretical concepts related to disability, structure and agency, and power and control, as it explores the ways in which inclusion can create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) forms of exclusion. Focusing on the young men's experiences of further and higher education, it is argued that inclusive practices and policies, however well intentioned, can create new and subtle forms of marginalisation through the structures and discourse intended to address exclusion. I conclude by questioning whether, in a diverse and disparate society, in which all our lives are defined by the extent to which we are more or less equal than others, inclusion can ever be anything other than an illusory concept.     

Cooperating Teaching as a Professional Development Activity

This study examined cooperating teachers’ perceptions of how student teacher supervision is aligned with the standards of the National Staff Development Council (NSDC). The conceptual framework of this research advanced that serving as a cooperating teacher is equivalent to a professional development activity. The researcher adapted an instrument from the NSDC to measure cooperating teachers’ perceptions in grades K-12. The survey was completed by 181 out of the 287 sample population. Cooperating teachers moderately agreed that student teacher supervision aligned with the standards of the NSDC. This role used the three categories needed for effective professional development: context, process, and content.