The Willingness-to-Pay for the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen as a Public Good

In this paper some of the results of a Contingent Valuation (CV)-Study of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, are presented. The estimated aggregated willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the Royal Theatre through taxes shows that the Danish population wants to pay at least as much as the theatre receives in public subsidies. The visitors comprise only about 7 per cent of the total population, but the non-users' WTP is quite substantial which is the interesting point. It means that the non-users are willing to pay an option price and that the Royal Theatre has non-use value. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Developmental changes and socioeconomic differences in mother-infant picturebook reading

Picturebook reading is a common form of interaction between parents and young children. This study examined developmental changes and socioeconomic differences in picturebook interactions of motherinfant Argentine dyads. 21 middle and 18 low SES mothers with their 12 to 24 months-old infants interacting with two different books, were observed. It was found that mothers of both SES groups adjusted the level of their demands not only to the task requirements (books) but also to the age of the infant. However, it was also found that the style of the interaction was different depending on the SES of the mother-infant pair. A more demanding and elaborated maternal language along with a linguistically more competent child were found in the middle SES group.     

“These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty”: Older Children and Adults Struggle With Induced‐State Episodic Foresight

We explored children's and adults’ ability to disengage from current physiological states when forecasting future desires. In Study 1, 8‐ to 13‐year‐olds and adults (N = 104) ate pretzels (to induce thirst) and then predicted and explained what they would want tomorrow, pretzels or water. Demonstrating life‐span continuity, approximately 70% of participants, regardless of age, chose water and referenced current thirst as their rationale. Individual differences in working memory and undergraduate grade point average were positively related to performance on the pretzel task. In Study 2, we obtained baseline preferences from adults (N = 35) and confirmed that, prior to consuming pretzels, people do not anticipate wanting water more than pretzels the next day. Together, these findings indicate that both children and adults are tethered to the present when forecasting their future desires.     

Learning from human cadaveric prosections: Examining anxiety in speech therapy students

Human anatomy education often utilizes the essential practices of cadaver dissection and examination of prosected specimens. However, these exposures to human cadavers and confronting death can be stressful and anxiety‐inducing for students. This study aims to understand the attitudes, reactions, fears, and states of anxiety that speech therapy students experience in the dissection room. To that end, a before‐and‐after cross‐sectional analysis was conducted with speech therapy students undertaking a dissection course for the first time. An anonymous questionnaire was administered before and after the exercise to understand students' feelings and emotions. State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory questionnaires (STAI‐S and STAI‐T) were used to evaluate anxiety levels. The results of the study revealed that baseline anxiety levels measured using the STAI‐T remained stable and unchanged during the dissection room experience (P > 0.05). Levels of emotional anxiety measured using the STAI‐S decreased, from 15.3 to 11.1 points (P < 0.05). In the initial phase of the study, before any contact with the dissection room environment, 17% of students experienced anxiety, and this rate remained unchanged by end of the session (P > 0.05). A total of 63.4% of students described having thoughts about life and death. After the session, 100% of students recommended the dissection exercise, giving it a mean score of 9.1/10 points. Anatomy is an important subject for students in the health sciences, and dissection and prosection exercises frequently involve a series of uncomfortable and stressful experiences. Experiences in the dissection room may challenge some students' emotional equilibria. However, students consider the exercise to be very useful in their education and recommend it. Anat Sci Educ 10: 487–494. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Bearing witness to teaching and teachers

Abstract

In this article, the author elucidates the idea of bearing witness to teaching and teachers. The orientation derives from a philosophical and field-based inquiry pivoting around the questions What does it mean to be a person in the world today? and What does it mean to be a person in the role of teacher? From 2012 to 2014, the author interacted closely with 16 teachers from 8 different state-funded schools in a large, culturally diverse US city. The endeavor included extensive classroom visits, whole-group discussion meetings, and a systematic series of individual interviews. The article shows how the orientation of bearing witness calls fresh attention to the person who occupies the role of teacher. It illuminates the easy-to-overlook truth that it is persons, rather than roles as such, who educate. The author argues that bearing witness contributes importantly to remembrance of deep educational values.     

Changes in the Impact of Family Education on Student Educational Achievement in Sweden 1988–2014

The main aim of this study was to investigate the development of the correlation between family education and student achievement in Sweden, which previous research has found to be stable, in spite of increasing school segregation and widening differences in levels of achievement between schools. Based on register data for populations of graduates from compulsory school between 1988 and 2014, correlations between parental education and student grades were estimated. The correlation was found to increase by .04 units between the early-1990s and 2014. The main reasons why this has not been found in previous research are that too coarse a categorization of parental education has been used, a declining quality of measurement of grades, and demographic changes related to immigration.     

The Minnesota International Counseling Institute (MICI) 1989—Present: History,Joyful Moments,and Lessons Learned

This article describes the Minnesota International Counseling Institute, a biennial counseling institute created by faculty in the University of Minnesotas Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology Program. One hundred and fifty-two international counseling personnel from 40 countries have participated in the Minnesota International Counseling Institute. After eight Institutes and nearly 20 years, we wish to share our experiences with the international counseling community. The article presents reflection and evaluation by the faculty on our cumulative experiences with the MICI, including history, guiding principles, format, participants, evaluation, successes, lessons learned, and struggles. We hope our experience will be useful to other counseling and human development professionals and adapted by others interested in promoting counseling across cultures.     

Undergraduate Laboratory Exercises Specific to Food Spoilage Microbiology

Food spoilage has an enormous economic impact, and microbial food spoilage plays a significant role in food waste and loss; subsequently, an equally significant portion of undergraduate food microbiology instruction should be dedicated to spoilage microbiology. Here, we describe a set of undergraduate microbiology laboratory exercises that focus specifically on food spoilage which were taught in 2 lab periods as part of the undergraduate food microbiology lab curriculum at Cornell University. The lab was broken down into 3 exercises. Two exercises lead students to determine the likely source of contamination in a canned salsa through (exercise 1a) plating and observation of colony morphology and (exercise 1b) determination of the thermal resistance for those isolates. The final exercise (2) involved detection of the spoilage bacterium Alicyclobacillus in apple juice. Spoiled juice demonstrations were also prepared in this exercise for students to observe sensorial changes resulting from spoilage, emphasizing that spoilage is not always visually detectable. Students were able to successfully determine the source of contamination based on the results of their laboratory findings, which they used to make recommendations for production to reduce microbial food spoilage in the canned salsa product. Based on student answers to discussion questions provided following lab exercises, participants were able to (a) identify the significance of microbial spoilage and how spoilage is principally different from food safety, (b) describe varying sensorial changes associated with microbial spoilage, and (c) employ methods and analysis to evaluate sources and type of contamination. Downloadable handouts and stepwise instructions are available as supporting information.     

Curriculum and Society: Rethinking the Link

This article argues that the link between educational curricula and society as a whole has become critically uncertain. This crisis is linked to a number of factors related to the post-modern world view, including: the disappearance of grand utopian social visions of the kind that used to underpin educational policy; the lack of adequate theoretical tools; and the way in which academics are exposed to a multitude of different cultural norms. The author argues that this situation calls for a fundamental re-thinking of the link between curriculum and society, based on a more flexible and pluralistic approach.