An extinction trial as a reminder treatment following electroconvulsive shock

Animals given electroconvulsive shock (ECS) following active avoidance training were found to exhibit poor retention of the active avoidance response. However, this deficit was alleviated if the animals received an extinction trial for active avoidance prior to retention testing. That the trial was an extinction trial was demonstrated by the fact that exposure to the trial decremented the performance of animals not given ECS after learning. The implications of these findings for explanations of retrograde amnesia are discussed.     

What do students want most from written feedback information? Distinguishing necessities from luxuries using a budgeting methodology

Feedback is a key concern for higher education practitioners, yet there is little evidence concerning the aspects of assessment feedback information that higher education students prioritise when their lecturers’ time and resources are stretched. One recent study found that, in such circumstances, students actually perceive feedback information itself as a luxury rather than a necessity. We first re-examined that finding by asking undergraduates to ‘purchase’ characteristics to create the ideal lecturer, using budgets of differing sizes to distinguish necessities from luxuries. Contrary to the earlier research, students in fact considered good feedback information the single biggest necessity for lecturers to demonstrate. In a second study, we used the same method to examine the characteristics of feedback information that students value most. Here, the most important perceived necessity was guidance on improvement of skills. In both studies, students’ priorities were influenced by their individual approaches to learning. These findings permit a more pragmatic approach to building student satisfaction in spite of growing expectations and demands.     

The Language Proficiency Profile-2: Assessment of the Global Communication Skills of Deaf Children Across Languages and Modalities of Expression

Data are presented from two studies that investigate the developmental trends and concurrent validity of a measure of language and communication skills for deaf children, the Language Proficiency Profile-2 (LPP-2), developed by Bebko and McKinnon (1993). The LPP-2 was designed to evaluate the overall linguistic/communicative skills of deaf children, independent of any specific language or modality of expression. It focuses on the totality of the children's communication skills. Experiment 1 investigated developmental trends of the LPP-2 for both deaf and hearing children, studying a combined sample of deaf and hearing children from the United States and Canada. Experiment 2 investigated the relationship between the LPP-2 and two commonly used measures to assess deaf children on language development (Preschool Language Scale-3) and early reading skills (Test of Early Reading Ability-Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing). Results from the two studies indicate that the LPP-2 has good utility not only as a measure of overall language development but also as a predictor of achievement for English language and early reading skills.     

Learning through discussions

Students studying a third‐year e‐commerce subject experienced face‐to‐face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students' experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students' understanding of what they were learning through discussions, and how they went about engaging in them. Quantitative analyses are used to investigate how the students' experience related to their performance. Key outcomes of the study include that the quality of the students' experience of learning through discussions is positively related to their performance and that face‐to‐face and online discussions have qualitatively different benefits for learning.     

Reimagining the role of mentor teachers in professional experience: moving to I as fellow teacher educator

New accreditation requirements for Australian initial teacher education programs require that universities and schools establish quality partnerships to ensure strong links between pre-service teachers’ university-based learning and school-based professional learning experiences. This paper focuses on the shifts of identity, thinking and practice that occurred for five school-based mentor teachers as they co-created new professional experience practices alongside university-based teacher educators in a Teaching Academies of Professional Practice (TAPP) project. Interview data was analysed through the theoretical framework of Dialogical Self Theory to examine how the repositioning of mentor teachers as fellow teacher educators allowed for expansion in the understanding and enactment of their role. The findings of this study suggest that partnerships between schools and universities can enhance learning opportunities for all participants when commitments are made to creating collaborative and dialogical spaces to support new approaches to teacher education.     

掌握未来：我们正在起跑点

“我们正在阅读一本页数无限的书的第一章的第一节……” 我不知道这段文字是谁写的，我一直很喜欢并用它们来提醒自己，那就是未来操之在我。我们可以掌握神秘而不可知的未来，把它塑造成我们所能想像的任何形象，一如雕刻家可以将未成形的石头刻出雕像一样。[第一段]     

A comparison of signaled vs. unsignaled free-operant avoidance in wild and domesticated rats

Three experiments compared the performance of domesticated hooded rats and nondomesticated black rats under signaled and unsignaled free-operant leverpress avoidance. There was no difference between groups in asymptotic shock rates under unsignaled avoidance; however, the black rats avoided much more successfully when the signal was present, while the hooded rats showed little or no improvement. When a longer signal was employed (10 vs. 5 sec), the effects were essentially the same. The black rats generally had higher response rates, and this difference was most pronounced in extinction, where the hooded rats made very few responses. The domesticated rats received a disproportionately large number of shocks early in the session (warm-up) under unsignaled avoidance, but this tendency was much less pronounced for the black rats. However, both groups showed appreciable amounts of warm-up during signalled avoidance. The findings are discussed in terms of differences in levels of activation/arousal between domesticated and nondomesticated animals.     

Curriculum authoring tools and inclusive classroom teaching practice: a longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the longitudinal application of a suite of curriculum authoring tools (CATs) to inclusive classroom teaching practice in a secondary school setting. The study sought to establish whether the incorporation of the CATs into the teachers’ curriculum development and implementation covaried with improved implementation integrity of classroom teaching practice over time. A repeated measures design was used to establish whether those teachers with high levels of tool use also recorded higher levels of implementation integrity in their use of specific inclusive teaching practices. The effects of the tools were measured using 578 50‐minute classroom observations gathered over a 2.5‐year period. The results indicated that higher levels of implementation integrity in classroom practice covaried with the extent to which the tools were used for the design and implementation of curriculum.     

Government,business and the public: The role of environmental education in creating sustainable urban places

This paper focuses on the need to further environmental education research within a context in which local government, local business and tertiary institutions are viewed as interlinked components of the development process. Research and interaction with local stakeholders offers an opportunity to chart a path that intersects and then fuses environmental education with that of environmental and development practice. The paper focuses on three research initiatives that highlight the intrinsic need to create a learning society and how to gain more robust recognition for the role of environmental education research as a developmental process. The three research initiatives deal with the integration of environmental management systems thinking in local government (case 1), how a local government envisaged environmental education campaign constitutes challenges for environmental education research (case 2), and how pollution highlights the need for partnerships in addressing the Polluter Pays Principle (case 3). Findings from the research underscore the lack of environmental concerns within the decision-making process in local government. Paucity of capacity to monitor and act on challenges within this sector also point to the need for coordinated action against industrial misdemeanours, where self-regulation is still far from a reality. Most importantly, we argue that environmental education research and practice should contribute to the strengthening of facilitation skills and systems thinking amongst researchers who work within networks of stakeholders who must ensure sustainable urban places in the future.     

The effects of explicit timing on middle‐school students’ writing production across 5‐ and 15‐min sessions

Enhancing rates of accurate, active, academic responding can enhance learning. Both temporal manipulations (i.e., reducing time to work on assignments) and providing multiple distributed temporal cues (MDTC), sometimes referred to as explicit timing, have been shown to enhance rates of accurate mathematics responding. The current study was designed to evaluate the effects of session length (i.e., 5 vs. 15 min to write) and temporal cues (i.e., a single initial temporal cue vs. MDTC) on seventh‐ and eighth‐grade students writing assignment rates and writing accuracy. Results showed that the 5 min writing sessions did result in significantly greater rates of accurate responding than the 15 min sessions; however, explicit timing did not significantly alter writing rates or accuracy. These findings suggest that educators can enhance rates of accurate writing by reducing writing session lengths. Discussion focuses on applied implications of providing briefer writing sessions and future research investigating the interaction between multiple temporal cues and assignments.