On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non‐poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second‐ and third‐grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code‐related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent.     

Simultaneous measurement of back and front foot ground reaction forces during the same delivery stride of the fast-medium bowler

Six male cricket bowlers (mean +/- s(mean): age 23.5 +/- 1.3 years; height 1.83 +/- 0.04 m; body weight 826 +/- 20 N) performed their typical bowling action at a set of stumps positioned at standard pitch length (20.1 m). A specially designed force platform rig allowed the correct positioning of two force platforms to be achieved beneath an outdoor polyflex runway (0.017 m depth) for each player's delivery stride pattern. For the back foot, the peak vertical ground reaction force was 1.95 +/- 0.08 kN (2.37 +/- 0.14 BW) and the braking force was 0.77 +/- 0.12 kN (0.94 +/- 0.16 BW). For the front foot, the peak vertical force was 4.80 +/- 0.92 kN (5.75 +/- 0.98 BW) and the braking force was 2.93 +/- 0.56 kN (3.54 +/- 0.67 BW). The mean peak vertical loading rate for front foot contact was 205 +/- 52.8 kN x s(-1) (249 +/- 64 BW x s(-1)) with mean values ranging from 81 to 446 kN x s(-1) (98 to 540 BW x s(-1)). The range for back foot contact was much smaller, 25-70 kN x s(-1) (30-85 BW x s(-1)), with a mean of 41.7 +/- 7.10 kN x s(-1) (50.6 +/- 8.6 BW x s(-1)). Mean peak impact occurred 24 ms after touchdown for the back foot and 16 ms after touchdown for the front foot. At impact, mean peak loading rates were greater for the front foot at 246 kN x s(-1) (298 BW x s(-1)), with a range of 80-483 kN x s(-1) (98-534 BW x s(-1)), than for the back foot at 65 kN x s(-1) (79 BW x s(-1)), with a range of 40-84 kN x s(-1) (49-110 BW x s(-1)).     

How Do You Know You're Old? Gender Differences in Cues Triggering the Experience of Personal Aging

In order to evaluate the gender differences on the experience of aging, 142 individuals 50 years of age and older completed an interview regarding experiences with another individual conveying the message that they were “old.” Interviewees were asked about the type of situation, the age and gender of the response person, and the perceived intent and feelings associated with the experience. Results showed that 72.3% of the experiences could be classified into one of three categories: discount/benefit, physical features/appearance, and performance. While no gender differences were found in the location/setting of the incident, the response person, or the age of the response person, findings indicated that for men, the incident was classified as a “benefit/discount,” while for women it was classified as “physical features/appearance.” In addition, the presumed intent of the situation was viewed as negative and hurtful by women, and both genders reported that the incident made them feel self-conscious and/or elicited a negative self-assessment. These results illustrate that the self-reported experiences that make one feel old and potentially change an individual's identity are important to understand in the context of growing older as a gendered experience.     

Alumni Perspectives on Career Preparation during a Postdoctoral Training Program: A Qualitative Study

Published evaluations of career preparation of alumni from long-standing postdoctoral fellowship programs in the biomedical sciences are limited and often focus on quantitative analysis of data from extant publicly available sources. Qualitative methods provide the opportunity to gather robust information about specific program elements from structured postdoctoral training programs and the influence of this training on subsequent career paths of alumni. In-depth interviews with a subset of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP) alumni (n = 27), representing more than 25 years of the program’s history and multiple career sectors, were conducted to assess alumni reflections on the training environment and career preparation during their time in the CPFP. NVivo software was used to analyze data and identify major themes. Four main themes emerged from these interviews, including: the value of structured training curriculum, mentorship, transdisciplinary environment, and professional identity. Even when reflecting on training that occurred one to two decades earlier, alumni were able to highlight specific components of a structured postdoctoral training program as influencing their research and career trajectories. These results may have relevance for those interested in assessing how postdoctoral training can influence fellows throughout their careers and understanding salient features of structured programs.     

Breaking the Cycle: Future Faculty Begin Teaching with Learner-Centered Strategies after Professional Development

The availability of reliable evidence for teaching practices after professional development is limited across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, making the identification of professional development “best practices” and effective models for change difficult. We aimed to determine the extent to which postdoctoral fellows (i.e., future biology faculty) believed in and implemented evidence-based pedagogies after completion of a 2-yr professional development program, Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching (FIRST IV). Postdocs (PDs) attended a 2-yr training program during which they completed self-report assessments of their beliefs about teaching and gains in pedagogical knowledge and experience, and they provided copies of class assessments and video recordings of their teaching. The PDs reported greater use of learner-centered compared with teacher-centered strategies. These data were consistent with the results of expert reviews of teaching videos. The majority of PDs (86%) received video ratings that documented active engagement of students and implementation of learner-centered classrooms. Despite practice of higher-level cognition in class sessions, the items used by the PDs on their assessments of learning focused on lower-level cognitive skills. We attributed the high success of the FIRST IV program to our focus on inexperienced teachers, an iterative process of teaching practice and reflection, and development of and teaching a full course.     

Envisioning the Academic Library: A Reflection on Roles,Relevancy and Relationships

The focus of this article is to reflect on current and near future issues and trends concerning academic libraries. This includes an overview of the literature on embedded librarianship and a focus on the need for more participatory and collaborative approaches to library services.

The core argument is that academic libraries need to continue to adapt their roles and develop stronger relationships across the university in order to maintain and promote their relevancy to all stakeholders. Embedded roles in research and teaching, and an embedded existence through collaboration and outreach will strengthen the academic library's presence within its parent institution.     

Priming and Fake News: The Effects of Elite Discourse on Evaluations of News Media

Fake news has become a prominent topic of public discussion, particularly among elites. Recent research has explored the prevalence of fake news during the 2016 election cycle and possible effects on electoral outcomes. This scholarship has not yet considered how elite discourse surrounding fake news may influence individual perceptions of real news. Through an experiment, this study explores the effects of elite discourse about fake news on the public’s evaluation of news media. Results show that exposure to elite discourse about fake news leads to lower levels of trust in media and less accurate identification of real news. Therefore, frequent discussion of fake news may affect whether individuals trust news media and the standards with which they evaluate it. This discourse may also prompt the dissemination of false information, particularly when fake news is discussed by elites without context and caution.