The speaker/gender effect: does the speaker’s gender matter when presenting auditory text in multimedia messages?

Current cognitive multimedia design theories provide several guidelines on how to integrate verbal and pictorial information. However, the recommendations for the design of auditory texts (narrations) are still fragmentary, especially with regard to the characteristics of the voices used. In the current paper, a fundamental question is addressed, namely, whether to use a male or a female speaker. In two experiments, learners studied dynamic visualizations on probability theory that were accompanied by narrations. The learner’s gender and the speaker’s gender served as between-subjects variables. In the first study, learners were randomly assigned to speakers of different gender. In the second study, learners could choose among different speakers. The results show that learners achieved better learning outcomes when the narration was presented by a female speaker rather than a male speaker irrespective of the learner’s gender (speaker/gender effect). Being given the choice, learners preferred female speakers, but this individual preference had no impact on learning outcomes. The results suggest augmenting purely cognitive approaches to multimedia design by social-motivational assumptions.     

How reinforcement context affects temporal production and categorization

The behavioral theory of timing assumes that timing is governed by a pacemaker whose pulses move organisms from one state to the next, and that the speed of the pacemaker covaries with the rate of reinforcement in the experimental context. The goal of the present experiments was to clarify just what constitutes that context. In Experiment 1, pigeons responded on signaled fixed-interval 20-sec and 40-sec schedules of food reinforcement that were presented randomly within sessions (alternating condition) or between sessions (isolated condition). In Experiment 2, pigeons categorized the duration of a short or a long set of intervals in the alternating or the isolated condition. Performance in both experiments was under strong control by the signals, with scalar timing between long and short sets, but no significant differences between the alternating and isolated conditions. The context of reinforcement that determines pacemaker period can thus be specific to a particular timing task and signal.     

Perceived Training Needs of Regular and Special Education Student Teachers in the Area of Mainstreaming

The present study sought to identify training needs of prospective teachers in the area of mainstreaming, and to determine whether special and regular education student teachers perceive a need for training in a common core of competencies. Subjects were 400 teachers in training who had finished their teaching practicum. Responses to a 53‐item competency questionnaire revealed that both groups indicated a need for additional training in several similar areas, including communication, classroom management, evaluation, and professional knowledge, needs also identified in the literature for practising teachers. Special education student teachers, however, expressed the need for more extensive training in a range of specific skills in these competency clusters. Implications of these Findings for teacher preparation programs are discussed.     

Beyond learning by doing: an exploration of critical incidents in outdoor leadership education

This paper argues that outdoor leader education and training is characterized by the development of procedural skills at the expense of crucial but usually ignored non-technical skills (e.g. contextualized decision-making and reflection). This risks producing practitioners with a potentially unsophisticated awareness of the holistic outdoor environment impeding the development of links between theory and practice. This paper analyses the application of critical incident theory to a study of undergraduates in a UK outdoor leadership degree programme in order to examine the processes of developing non-technical reflective skills in the students. The study examines a range of critical incidents in a purposive homogeneous sample of students who were asked to identify and reflect on critical incidents in practice settings of their own choice. These settings spanned from the United Kingdom to remote locations overseas. Qualitative data analysis was carried out using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings indicated that outdoor leadership programmes need to develop a broader and holistic skills base rather than concentrate on primarily physical and technical skills. A focus on the critical incident method early in education has the potential to equip practitioners with the holistic and complex set of skills required in the contemporary outdoor workplace.     

Die Familie als informeller Bildungsort

Zusammenfassung Der Frage nach den Steigerungsm?glichkeiten der (informellen) „Grundbildung“ und der F?rderung von Basiskompetenzen wird aus bildungsbiographischer Perspektive nachgegangen, indem die familiale Bildungswirklichkeit in ihrem Wechselverh?ltnis zur schulischen Bildungswirklichkeit anhand eines Fallbeispiels dargestellt wird. Am Beispiel der Vermittlung und Aneignung von information literacy wird gezeigt, dass es unumg?nglich ist, in der schulischen Bildungswirklichkeit von einer Kulturrelativit?t und Kulturgebundenheit von information literacy als wichtigem Element von informeller Bildung auszugehen, die an unterschiedlichen Bildungsorten erworben wird und eine entsprechende Vernetzung der Bildungsorte voraussetzt. Um Bildungsarmut zu verhindern und m?glichst für alle Menschen die Voraussetzungen für die Gestaltung eines eigenen Lebenslaufs und die Entwicklung einer verst?ndigen kulturellen Teilhabe- und sozialen Anschlussf?higkeit zu schaffen, muss sich, so die These, die Institution Schule mehr für informelle Bildung und die p?dagogische Bearbeitung von kultureller Differenz sowie den Umgang mit Heterogenit?t ?ffnen, damit der oft diskriminierende Umgang mit kultureller und sozialer Differenz in der Schule nicht in eine fürsorgliche (p?dagogische) Belagerung und Entmündigung der Schüler durch die Schule umschl?gt. Dabei ist es wichtig, die informellen Bildungsleistungen der Familie anzuerkennen und weiter zu entwickeln und in Verbindung mit der verst?rkten F?rderung von Erziehungspartnerschaften zwischen Eltern und p?dagogischen Fachkr?ften darauf hinzuarbeiten, die Grundbildung und den Erwerb von notwendigen Basiskompetenzen zu st?rken und das schulische Abwertungsdilemma von au?erschulisch erworbenen informellen Bildungsgehalten „f?rderdidaktisch“ zu bearbeiten.      

The creatine content of Creatine Serum™ and the change in the plasma concentration with ingestion of a single dose

Three samples of Creatine Serum? ATP Advantage from Muscle Marketing USA, Inc. were assayed for creatine by two different techniques by four independent laboratories, and for creatinine by two different techniques by two laboratories. A further sample was assayed for phosphorylcreatine. Dry weight and total nitrogen were also analysed. Six male volunteers ingested in random order, over 3 weeks: (A) water; (B) 2.5?g creatine monohydrate (Cr?·?H₂O) in solution; and (C) 5?ml Creatine Serum? (reportedly containing an equivalent amount of Cr?·?H₂O). Blood samples were collected before and up to 8?h after each treatment and plasma was analysed for creatine and creatinine. Eight-hour urine samples were analysed for creatine. Ingestion of 2.5?g creatine monohydrate in solution resulted in a significant increase in plasma creatine (from 59.1±11.8?μmol?·?l^?1 to 245.3±74.6?μM μmol?·?l^?1; mean±s) and urinary creatine excretion. No increase in plasma or urinary creatine or creatinine was found on ingestion of Creatine Serum? or water. Analysis showed 5?ml of Creatine Serum? to contain <10?mg Cr?·?H₂O and approximately 90?mg creatinine. Phosphorylcreatine was not detectable and only a trace amount of phosphorous was present. Total nitrogen analysis ruled out significant amounts of other forms of creatine. We conclude that the trace amounts of creatine in the product would be too little to affect the muscle content even with multiple dosing.     

A commentary on the Special Issue “Innovations in measuring and fostering mathematical modelling competencies”

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This is a commentary on the ESM 2021 Special Issue on Innovations in Measuring and Fostering Mathematical Modelling Competencies. We have grouped the ten...     

Focus: the elusive icon: Einstein, 1905-2005. Introduction

As Einstein's portrait comes increasingly to resemble an icon, we lose more than detail--his writings and actions lose all reference. This is as true for his physics as it is for his philosophy and his politics; the best of recent work aims to remove Einstein's interventions from the abstract sphere of Delphic pronouncements and to insert them in the stream of real events, real arguments. Politically, this means attending to McCarthyism, Paul Robeson, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Philosophically, it means tying his concerns, for example, to late nineteenth-century neo-Kantian debates and to his own struggles inside science. And where physics is concerned, it means attending both in the narrow to his responses to others' work and his reactions to his own sometimes misfired early work on, for example, general relativity and to the wider context of technological developments. Einstein remains and will remain a magnet for historians, philosophers, and scientists; the essays assembled here represent a strong sampling--but only a sampling--of a fascinating new generation of work on this perennial figure.